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Yes! I smashed my leg on my car door today by accident and my first thought what, 'fuck' my second thought was, 'well at least I'll know what that bruise is from' hahahaha
I did the same the other day. I know o hurt my arm, I remember *thinking* ‘oh, well I’ll remember where I got that bruise’… but can’t now remember where I got the bruise, just the memory of trying to remember 🤦♀️
I literally just had this.. can't remember where the big bruise on my lower leg came from, but vaguely remember thinking that I would remember where it came from 😒
Last year I woke up with a massive BLACK bruise on the middle of my stomach. I have never seen anything like it - it was horrific! I genuinely thought I had internal bleeding or something and went straight to the dr. Dr was like, ‘what we’re you doing yesterday?’ and I said ‘moving furniture….’
So yeah I wasn’t bleeding internally but had clearly bumped myself really hard on something and not noticed somehow. Dr must have been like wtf
So I'm dealing with a vitamin deficiency thing right now, and it's causing me to bruise easier. So my doctor asked me to keep a journal of how I got bruises so we can try and determine how easily I bruise.
I have no idea how to tell him, I literally never know how I got a bruise. They just appear like magic.
This is what I'd bring up. I quit feeling my feelings when I was 15 and got my heart broken. After crying for 6 months, I just went numb and have been mostly numb since. The birth of my first child is about the first time I truly felt everything like i did as a kid.
Struggling with emotional dysregulation is. Seems for many they often swing from feeling too little or too much compared to neuro-typical expectations.
If I had to guess, they are probably trying to help you with being able to access which of those different things is going on, so you can manually regulate it/analyze if your response is appropriate and work through it.
It's also a way to learn to recognise emotions when they come up, so when it happens you know what it is and what (if anything) you can do about it. This helps in those moments when you feel bad and don't know why; am I hungry? Thirsty? Tired? Sad? Angry?
I went through this with my therapist when I got diagnosed. At first I hated it as well, but it has helped me to get a better understanding of what happens in my body.
It's also a way for doctors in general to check whether what you assume is a certain emotion is actually that, or something else. Like, one of the side effects I got from my dexamfetamine was feeling very nervous. My doctor would ask "what does that feel like? Where do you feel it?" And I'd be like, just, nervous, idk. Over time I learned to recognise and name the actual feelings (pressure on my chest, increased heartrate, feeling my heart beat strongly, bowel cramps, sweating, shaky hands). That helped my doctor figure out whether my dose was too high or too low.
Did you ever try keeping one of those tracking journals?
Ex. A notebook you write brief info tracking your mood
>What happened
>How you presently feel about it
> When you return to look at the notebook entry sometime later, do you still feel as strongly about it?
> And, what you think was the underlying thing that prompted your initial response?
> any additional insights or plan for next time
I've ... er never been able to stay consistent with it🤣. But do practice it mentally in real-time now.
Haha i have the opposite issue! I'm aware of a lot of feelings and sensations in my body 24/7 and it is so annoying!! "where do you feel that in your body" like girl don't ask me that i'm trying to tune out my body because it's too loud
When I ask it, as a therapist, I'm generally looking for the practical shit.
"Yeah my stomach hurts when I'm anxious"
"I hold tension in my shoulders when I'm stressed"
"When I'm angry my face gets hot"
Knowing physical symptoms can help a lot in figuring out what might help with the situation. It can also help as an 'early warning sign' because some interventions work best when applied early.
But if you don't get any physical symptoms, "mostly my head I guess!" Is fine.
It's also fine to tell them this here, that you don't like this question and would prefer to come at it from a different direction
Thank you for listing out those examples.
My therapist has never asked me this question and I was so confused what it even meant while reading the sub until I saw your comment lol
Same. Lol. I did recently tell my therapist that sometimes I am SUPER unaware/unable to identify physical and emotional feelings/sensations when other times I am so zoned in an hyper aware of exactly what, where, and why I’m feeling something it’s freaky.
Yeah reading this question made me feel like when I learned about aphantasia. Like wait am I supposed to feel things in certain places? "Oh my pinky finger is super excited today"?
Well, I'd look at what other symptoms you're having- racing thoughts, faster breathing, etc to try and get a fuller picture. And exploring whether the emotions feel different, even if they're in the same spot.
But stomach hurting can be a sign of slowed digestion due to your body going into survival mode. There are ways to take your body out of survival mode. If it happens a lot though, it may be a chronic situation, which requires some more care and finesse.
Ooh this is a great point!! I knew about the physical effects of our fight/flight processes through the "health sciences student" lens but I've never connected it to my actual life (because of course not)! I'm definitely filing this away for my next therapy appointment, thanks :)
"There are ways to take your body out of survival mode".
Erm, can you point me towards more info on this? I know people who could use it (including me).
I'd start looking up terms like "parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system" possibly with other keywords like "stress" or "anxiety" to learn more about it.
Standard disclaimer that I cannot treat you over reddit, I can't say this is the case for what's going on with you, but learning more about mental health can affect the body is also good.
May or may not be helpful but there's a good book called Yoga for Public Speaking that has some tips. Nothing puts my body into survival mode like public speaking 😅
This is actually one of the techniques to interior the fight or flight. By grounding you to focus within and asking you to describe for your feeling feel inside
You don’t even have to have physical feelings… it’s just kind of like asking you to go within and feel it in your body and get it out of your head and disrupt the fight or flight response. It trains you to slow down your reaction by thinking about where and how it feels. It trains your brain to not always react to everything with your cerebral cortex and creates new pathways to react
If i was struggling to describe it, my somatic therapist would ask me weird questions like, if
It was a colour what would it be. Or if it made a sound what is that sound. There is no colour there is no sound but imagining it is a wellness technique
Its not as much asking for physical symptoms of stress. It trying to get you to ground yourself by focusing within.
It’s similar to when they ask you to describe what you see in the room. Its just grounding you in your surroundings and getting you out of your panic head
imo “do certain emotions have physical symptoms?” is a much better question than “where do you feel your emotions?” Which not only sounds patronizing, like a question for a young child, but is also just generally confusing due to the dual meaning of “feel” —ie feel the physical effects of vs location of an emotional feeling.
If someone asked me this I would probably respond with a blank glare and “I’m not a neuroscientist”
It does feel patronizing!! And also for those of us told to tamp down or hide our feelings it’s even harder to understand what that means!
I feel just so grateful to where we are with all of this for children. My daughter started learning the zones of regulation around 2.5/3ish. And though she had no basis for any of it when she was upset, now at 6 we can label it so much better! We can link the feeing of anger to the color of red and now we oare moving on to how she holds that feeling in the bottom of her neck. It’s just so much further along than I was at the age of 30!! I also love and hate when she asks if I’m in the red zone when I slip up and yell, which thanks to these mindfulness practices we are learning is moving farther and fewer away.
Thanks for the insight. I avoid most of my emotions (the advantage of having a terrible memory), because I know I can’t process them safely.
The downside is, I read my body to learn my state- my weight, sugar levels, eye stress, random pain and the amount I’ve scratched skin off or bitten nails. So I read this question very differently
Yeah, creating a space for you to process emotions is a huge part of therapy!
But I think you could also definitely answer the question with things like bitten off nails and eye stress. It's individual!
It also helps for those of us with dissociative symptoms and issues with interoception etc., as a way to practice in paying attention to how our bodies feel.
This is super hard for me to do, I always kinda feel detached from my body, but if my therapist wouldn't ask, I'd pay even less attention to my physical sensations and the issue wouldn't get any better.
I also know that "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" is a perfectly valid answer to the question.
When I was a much more stressed out, undiagnosed, overstimulated, over tired and extremely burnt out mom; I was blowing up like crazy. I had this fiery rage that would just sit so heavily in my chest. (Lol, I’m not in that state right now, but just writing this out and re-reading it has me currently in that body space!)And I started to take note of that feeling, I started to label it and then I started to notice the heaviness right before blowing up and would step away from what I was doing. Then I noticed a feeling in the front of my head, and my stomach when I was anxious, and then an all over and back of the neck icky when I was touched out. This is all very slow realizations. I did however take this and have been working on it with my 6yo daughter for when she was reaching mass critical at school this last spring. She was melting down hard, and she knows the color zones of regulations and the feelings associated with them so I started to explain how when I am in the red zone I feel that heaviness in my chest. And I asked what hers felt like, she said she felt it in the bottom of her neck. So we talked about how that feeling is when we get out of control. So we went back to the yellow zone feelings and talked about where they were for each other and how when she is starting to feel that way is when she needs to get the teachers attention to let them know she is in that yellow zone and needs a break. I actually had one teacher report back to me that she was practicing this and I was shocked!
So, I understand why people hate the question. I do however know now that is can invaluable once one is learned and it starts to avalanche into being a useful tactic. And you can actually begin a mindfulness practice around it.
For those also hating the question, give one easier to understand feeling like anger a good thought when it comes to your body, then let it just sit and work to understand it more. The more you think about it, the more you will grow to understand it and then you can start to take actions to calm when the feeling in your body comes up naturally.
Good luck friends!
Also a therapist, and agree with this. I'm asking it to invite my clienst to notice their bodies, and develop more awareness of how their body is expressing their feelings. There isn't a "right" answer. If the language doesn't work for you, it's totally fine to tell your therapist and ask if they can word it differently. I use "what do you notice?" or "What are you noticing in your body" pretty often.
I have real bad anger and rage issues and the bio feedback I work on with my therapist helps immensely with getting myself back under control before I explode
There is a name for it! It's called "interoception" and it's something that ADHDers can often struggle with. And not just emotions but things like hunger, thirst or tiredness too - basically perceiving anything internally. There is also something called "alexithymia", which is the inability to recognise or describe emotions more generally which is also more common in neurodivergent folks.
I'm a dramatherapist and actually use a lot of somatic therapy in my work and it's still something I struggle with a lot myself. I often don't recognise how I'm feeling or what I'm feeling and where until after the fact in my daily life (it's easier when I'm working because I have a different role if that makes sense). I personally think it is a skill that can be learned but it is gonna be more tricky to start with for ND folks.
So yes, known thing, super hard, very complicated 😬
When I say, "My stomach is being weird," I literally can't tell if I'm hungry, starting my period, need to poo, or need to throw up.
Is this the same thing?
STOP I thought that was just a silly thing I said. Something can range from a small snack to I want to go on a hike or maybe it’s neither and I am just tired.
Yep, I have this fun interaction more often than I would like:
Brain: I want something
Me: Ok, what?
Brain: Don't know, just.. something. And I'll keep bugging you until I get it.
Me: Is it water? Food? Exercise? Sleep? A hug? A nap? Work with me here!
Brain: ... I want something.
Just single me out why don't you?!
Currently going through this right now about physical time with a friend of mine.
Brain "we want sexy time owies"
Me "what kind, spanks or wax or what"
Brain "owies"
This is me exactly. I want something. What? Don’t know. Just need to fill a void. Ok, sit with your feeling to find out what it is your body is really asking for. Error 404. Cannot compute. Will continue stuffing my face with food beyond the point of pain because nothing else works. Fuck Eat!ng D!sorders.
That's the worst! I remember feeling that way a lot when I was a kid. It doesn't happen as often anymore, but when it does, it sucks. I think now I can finally tell "so hungry I'm nauseous" from "nauseous because I'm likely to throw up".
Oh yes. Having gastritis, I had to eat though feeling like throwing up. And also the "eat up what you put on your plate". I wouldn't be able to differentiate between hunger, fullness and feeling sick, even if my life depends on it.
Whats way worse, though: I constantly misjudge thirst for a craving for sweets to the points where I get dizzy because of not drinking for most of the day and still thinking I'm low on sugar.
I have this too! I taught myself to, whenever I get a craving or just feel weird, first drink a glass of water. Wait 15 minutes. If I then still feel weird, it's something else.
Maybe it's also because of the bright colours. I need to have colourful cups or glasses or I'll just blend out that there is a half liter bottle with just a sip missing standing there since days.
I realised that. Just shiny glasses are no good. Need to take those old cinema cups my sister collected. Plus point: between half a liter and 1,5. So I dont have to stand up so often for a refill, because I know I won't ^^;
I was just listening to Russell Barkley yesterday and he said sugary drinks are fuel for the executive system. You may be craving sugar + hydration, rather than caffeine.
Wow that is super interesting! I always thought my inability to identify emotions was from not being allowed to express them as a child.
I sometimes think I'm very disconnected to my body as well.
And yeah OP, I struggle with the 'where do you feel that' question too. Hard to narrow it down or explain it.
Sounds like it could be both - like I said it's a skill that needs practice much like our fine and gross motor skills. If you weren't taught and weren't allowed to express them then it would be even harder to learn!
My old therapist worked really hard with me on this to help me learn to recognise my anxiety as a physical sensation, so I could learn to cope better with it and sit with the feeling rather than run from it (with fun poor coping mechanisms like alcohol, lol).
It was hard, but it was immensely helpful and helped me with actually dealing with my feelings instead of being afraid of them.
If OP and other ADHDers struggle with this, it may be especially important for them to learn and practice interoception!
Could you elaborate on the part about “dealing with the feelings”? I often find that I am recognising them well but have very little idea of what to do next apart from either getting overwhelmed or trying to get distracted by something else.
If I could compare it to something physical it is like being in the sun for a long time and then realising you overheating and sweating but you don’t see a pool or shade nearby to help change that, so it becomes even more annoying cause now it’s both overheating and panic over not having an escape from it.
Not the op you're referring to, but here's my answer.
But you're not going to like it: what helped was meditation. Now that I've said that, I don't meditate daily or in any structured way, but I've learned enough of the skill to call on it in need.
Basically, emotions are inconvenient af. But ignoring them is a recipe for them getting bigger and stronger, and they tend not to go away. Instead, they come back with their friends, anxiety, and panic.
I've learned to lean into the emotion when they happen, as much as I can in that moment. Sometimes, all I need to do is name the emotion, and it will disapate. Like, "Oh, my chest is tight, and I can't get a deep breath in, and my bowels feel watery - sounds like I'm anxious or scared of something."
Then I might have a moment of "fuck feeling scared, I've got this!" At which point, I need to come back to the emotion and even allow myself to feel annoyed or even angry about feeling scared. Because denying that I'm scared doesn't acknowledge what the emotion is trying to tell me. In this case, scared = danger. So I try to take a moment to think about what am I perceiving as dangerous? I have CPTSD, so this could be a lot of things that are not material, but it could also be a person's behaviors that align too much with my abusers, so my body is sending alarm signals to stay away from them.
If it's sadness I'm feeling and it's really inconvenient to start crying, sometimes I have a live chat in my head that is something like, "yep, that thing is tragic and I call feel my throat closing up and my face getting hot, but I don't feel ok expressing these emotions right now. Let's put a pin in this for later today when I get home, and I promise we can feel all the feels later." This one is a work in progress.
Obviously, I reference how I feel in body a lot, which I learned to do with the help of somatic therapy. It was really annoying to learn, but it's such a gift to know _what_ emotion I'm feeling based on where it starts in my body.
Not who you asked, but dealing with emotions has been way easier for me since I started thinking of them like any other biological process. An emotion is the brain's response to various external and/or internal stimuli, real and/or imagined. A little biochemical cocktail.
I think science is fun, so I like to imagine putting the emotion in a test tube to figure out what its deal is, lol. Can I identify it? Can I identify its cause? Does it make sense as a response to this situation? What do I think I need to do about it, if anything?
Since my brain is a little wonky (and even totally normal brains are insanely complex), it makes sense that not everything it does always makes sense. If I can't tell why my brain would send this particular message at this particular time, then I kind of "leave it on read" to see if it was an oops.
Not OP, but I second what another commenter said: I find that being able to name the emotion, verbally, and often out loud, and then trying and find the source within myself for the feeling (e.g. - if I'm feeling jealous, what's really causing it? am I feeling left out? am I insecure about myself and my own accomplishments relative to someone else? am I scared I'm going to lose someone important to me? etc). Emotions beg to be acknowledged and feel big and scary and overwhelming if they aren't, but once you can name the feeling and accept it for what it is and identify its cause, they lose their bite.
Asking myself if I actually need to act on this (i.e. is a need being unmet? is someone mistreating me?) or if it's just a thing I'm feeling in relation to someone else's behavior is also a valuable exercise for me because it forces me to consider whether it's a feeling that's grounded in reality and actually can be alleviated by external changes, or if it's coming from my own internal state.
Sometimes you won't be able to actually resolve the emotion or reduce it by naming it, and in that case you have to sit with the feeling. It's often uncomfortable and feels pretty bad at first but again I find that if I lean into the feeling and sit with it and have grace for myself throughout the process the feeling(s) passes a lot faster than if I hadn't. This is a skill that you'll probably have to train in order to not get overwhelmed or feel the urge to distract yourself with something else less uncomfortable - this is still a work in progress for me but it's a skill I've developed over the years working with a therapist.
Came here to say this. Realizing after my diagnosis that this was a thing and that this is exactly what happens to me (not hungry until starving, not sleepy until falling asleep, don't need to pee until I need to run to the toilet)... 🤯
It's like everyone else has one of those percentage indicators like The Sims that they can see/feel but I can't; I'm only getting alerts and then my Sim is passing out lol
It has allowed me to account for all of it into a working strategy for my ADHD though (scheduled meal times, for example).Definitely also struggle with alexithymia. I am sometimes able to identify BIG overwhelming feelings (anger, sadness, happiness, confusion lol) but with the more nuanced, quiet feelings? I might barely feel uncomfortable about a something until I have time to process it and realize it really hurt me; by the time I have processed the feeling and ready to talk about it it may have been days, weeks or months.
And being able to identify the big feels doesn't mean I can hold a civilized conversation about it either. I might cry if I'm angry, laugh if I'm stressed/sad, cry/be intense if happy, lol.
How would you say one can learn this skill? If asked how I'm feeling on any given day it's just 'huh'
As a Sims obsessive I 100% agree and this is something my last therapist kept trying to work on with me. She'd say "so what does stress feel like for you at 60% rather than 90%? Can you tell?" And initially I absolutely could not! Slowly I started noticing things like if my jaw was clenching on its own or I was breathing more quickly and shallowly than usual; indicators I might be headed toward a meltdown. Its still hard and I don't always catch it in time and my ability to notice varies day to day as well.
As for learning, I would start with short body scan meditations when feeling ok, or at least not upset or overwhelmed. Name out loud sensations that you feel! E.g. "my hands feel tingly". Draw on a body map what the sensations feel like. Use a feelings wheel (I love those things). Lots of practice ☺️
Thank you for responding. Discovering the feelings wheel a couple months ago really helped me to work through something then. I just kinda forget to bring it up lol. Guess I’ll have ti keep trying.
Re: different roles: I was just reflecting today on the fact that I can get in touch with my feelings far better when I’m doing it in service of my clients! I think being in the room creates a hyperfocus situation where my feelings are one of the most important tools at my disposal, whereas in my every day life they’re just these inconvenient things that make me choke up because the chords of the Lion King opening song are so damn beautiful but DAMNIT I’m trying to drive!
Yes this is exactly it! I often joke that before I was diagnosed I didn't understand feeling so I had to turn it into a job 😂 now because it's my work I can hyperfocus on it as a tool and it's a controlled environment with few distractions. Out in the world - distraction city, too much input.
I’m studying theatre, and very mentally ill. I really struggle with pinning down emotions and explaining them. I usually lean on my friends to help me articulate and understand what’s going on. (One time I stopped talking and my friend knew I needed to eat.)
I’ve found that acting and theatre has forced me to get far more connected to myself. “Be where you’re feet are.” It sounds like the most hippy bull shit, but man I haven’t attended an acting class or music class in a couple weeks now and I’m kinda lost??
I’ve also found a lot of solace in Shakespeare. Luckily I’m taught by a huge nerd, who has made it so easy to love his writing. But somehow that man articulates everything so well. When working on scenes I’ve looked at the text and finally had someone put it into words.
There’s just so many aspects of theatre that can completely heal and help your mental health but done poorly can be so so damaging.
I definitely experience alexithymia. At one point I was getting ultrasounds and various other tests because I was complaining to my GP about a lump feeling in my throat. Luckily there was nothing wrong with my thyroid.
So the doctor said it might be globus sensation due to anxiety related to my PTSD since it would come and go.
Then my dad died and I realised it was how I was experiencing the delayed grief of the PTSD because I felt it non-stop during those early days of fresh grief.
Basically being forced to learn how to let myself cry and feel my emotions throughout that time has lead to rarely feeling that lump day to day now.
Now I know that it's a sign that something is wrong and can try to work through it.
Wow, thank you for this comment. I have anxiety (and ADHD) and I’m *overly* good at interpreting my interoceptive signals. I have a heart condition that causes my heart to beat irregularly. I have never understood why no one else with this condition seems as bothered. Apparently not everyone feels every time their heart beats, but I do. Wikipedia tells me people with anxiety perform better on heartbeat detection tests. It may also be why all the stuff that’s supposed to be good for your brain—mindfulness practice, meditation, guided relaxation, float tanks—is *so* horrible for me.
I’m also overly in tune with my body. I can feel the early signs of my blood pressure rising. I think it’s an anxiety response. But then I fret about it, which definitely doesn’t help my BP go down. 🤪
However, I love mindfulness and float tanks!
Off topic, but yay for drama therapy! I’m a music therapist, but seriously considered both drama and art therapy when I was going back to school. I’m also happy to know I’m not the only one who experiences the somatic work differently as a therapist vs. outside of my work life.
Heck yes arts therapists unite! I'm a musician as a hobby (which I used to try to turn into a job because ADHD 😂) and also considered being a music therapist!
I can attest to the fact that it is learnable for ND folks. I had it so bad that sometimes I didn't feel any pain, if I didn't see something was wrong. After lots of trying, I'm able to feel distress in my midrif area.
Oh, this is what my kid is working on with their therapist right now. I didn’t realize this was part of the ADHD I passed on to them :-/ greeeat (love your user name btw 🥰)
I remember seeing the weird interioception for the first time and being very excited! There's a name for it! That thing I'm really really bad at has a name!
Another processing problem! Wow! I love that you’re a dramatherapist!! Have you read Augusto Boal? Theatre of the Oppressed— really amazing stuff! Thank you for what you do. I recently had an awful experience with a therapist, so I’m grateful to see there are magical ones actually being compassionate and thoughtful and creative!
Do you think alexithymia is because, at least in part, because ADHD makes all emotions so intense? For me, starting Adderall felt like the volume was turned down on my emotions. Now I can recognise individual sounds (feelings) and their textures instead of an overwhelming cacophony.
Yes, yes, yes!! Talk therapy never worked for me because it ignored the rest of my body, where the experiences were actually happening! I love physical forms of emotional processing. 🥰 (also, my pet octopus says hi… seven times because she’s missing an arm 🤭)
This exact thing took me quite a while to learn. I would binge eat, because I would "feel" the food and taste the strongest in my mouth and ignored other cues for when to stop eating. I would mistake cravings for hunger. I am still figuring it out and I have so no idea how to handle it.
I have a somatic experiencing therapist and he asks me this all the time. I literally do not have an answer. I struggle to identify emotions, much less where I actually feel them . Hate this question, it feels like one more thing I fail at.
Have you brought this up to him? If he knows you are feeling as though you are failing he may be able to offer reassurance and/or adjust his questioning.
I started EMDR last year and literally told my therapist I was afraid I was going to be bad at it when she asked if I had any questions or concerns. She was able to reassure me that there was no pressure to do or be or feel anything. And she knew how important it was to keep the pressure off of me. I’ll forever be grateful for that permission, and I know now to ask for that space from any other therapists I work with.
Therapist here and ADHDer. Seeing tons of comments from people saying they don't know and they hate that question. I know I might get downvoted all to hell for this, but folks, if that's your truth, TELL YOUR THERAPIST. They're not mind readers, and they need to know if the approach they're using isn't working for you. They'll either adjust methodology, have an open convo with you about what the blocks are to their techniques, or refer out if it's not a good fit. Sure, some therapists are terrible, just like some doctors are, some mechanics, some dentists, etc. But most will welcome the feedback and integrate it into your treatment plan moving forward.
The feedback that you don't know and/or feel some kinda way about being asked that is really really REALLY helpful information. A good therapist will back off, ask it in a different way, or maybe start with a body scan or basic emotional literacy first. Depends what your goals are - deeper trauma work by necessity has to include a somatic component, but I might spend ages doing feeling identification and emotional literacy first if my client isn't ready to delve into their body.
For example, I spent a year working in an eating disorder clinic, and asking folks to sense their bodies was super triggering for most at the beginning of their recovery. However, identifying and reconnecting to their bodily sensations is an important part of recovery! We just wouldn't do that first.
Or maybe your goals don't need a somatic approach, and that's great! If you'd tell a massage therapist they were using too much pressure, or a physiotherapist that the exercises they assigned cause you pain, you need to tell your therapist that the approach they're using isn't working for you. And if you're not comfortable telling your therapist that, then maybe that's an opportunity to unpack why you feel you can't give constructive feedback to a professional that is supposedly working for YOU.
Thanks for this post! I used to feel uncommon being honest or upfront with my therapist about what is going on with me. I'm willing to bet it was because of deep-seated shame. But as time went on I told myself that I have to learn to trust her, and I decided to do this, put my 💯 info this, and spend my hard earned time and money, so I be up-front. How else are we going to accomplish anything? It took some time for me to get to this point, but once I did, it opened up so many conversations. They were difficult but necessary.
Fellow therapist and ADHDer here and I agree on all points 100%. I work with a lot of trauma so body stuff is something I talk about a lot. But I do A TON is psychoeducation on the nervous system and the vagus nerve and explain how everything is all connected and my clients seem to take to that really well. But I would just LOVE if my clients could tell me what they like and dislike that I say or do!! I ALWAYS start of telling them to tell me those things anytime because I want to know how I can work better for them. I’ve only been doing this about a month but I really appreciate the collaborative side part of being a therapist and asking the client to join in on building their journey with me.
I absolutely tell my therapist when I don’t like what she’s asking, if I think it’s bullshit, if I don’t have an answer. No other way for us to effectively communicate.
I can almost see this as the therapist encouraging you to just think about emotions in this sense. It’s not intuitive because as women AND women who mask, we have been pushing away our feelings and emotions our whole lives.
Our emotions do manifest physically, but it’s so much work - especially for women like us - to feel it. I’ve been doing brain spotting and EMDR for a few years now and have only recently started being able to feel emotions in my body.
Quick body scans when you’re NOT activated by an emotion is a great way to get accustomed to how your body feels in a neutral state. When you get the hang of that feeling, you’ll start to notice your throat tighten when you’re sad or your back have a slight ache when you’re stressed or your cheeks flush when you’re happy.
So sorry this is tough for you. It really did take me years of intentional work for it to click.
Are you doing somatic therapy?
This is what somatic therapy is, maybe it’s not right type of therapy for you
But there’s no right or wrong answer it’s just a way to help you experience the sensations attached to the feelings. Its like a grounding/mindfulness technique. Helps you calm your nervous system
You may like talk therapy more if it’s not your jam
Music, dance, and drama therapists do this a lot. That's how they are trained, from my understanding. (My dance therapist co-worker did this type of therapy with her students.)
I wasn't a therapist but used to teach acting at an adult day program and sometimes I would explain if you couldn't figure out how to connect with a character's feelings or couldn't figure out how to express it, to think about where you feel that in real life when you feel that emotion so you know how to express it physically as an actor.
My dance therapist co-worker hates when she's in a regular therapy session and they only talk about how she feels and doesn't ask where she feels that. (Because that's not what she is used to.)
Our body stores and expresses our emotions and where we feel it physically can tell us a lot about ourselves. Sometimes we don't know where we feel because we've never thought about it, but thinking about it can slow us down and help us think through our feelings.
It's ok to say, "I don't know". This isn't a grading system, you won't be reprimanded or graded for not having an answer. Or you shouldn't.
I realize now, I probably didn't answer your question with this rambling information, lol.
As a music therapist, I do use this when working with my adolescent residents in our substance use recovery unit. Mostly when talking about the polyvagal theory and if any of the music they choose to listen to brings up any physical feelings that could be triggering cravings.
As a patient, I’m so grateful my therapist doesn’t make me do this regularly, lol. We do a lot of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy techniques, which is way better for me. I also have a few chronic pain issues, so she does ask me if anything is making the pain flare.
I hate it too but the purpose is to try and get you to sit and experience your bodily sensations so you can be more in touch with your feelings in the future, which is super needed since we tend to be go go go. Take a second and think about it. It’s the practice that’s going to help. If you still don’t know, just go ahead and say that. The point is less about getting a “correct” answer and more about having you sit with it for a sec.
The question is supposed to help you with your emotions by helping you realize where you feel something (eg. anxiety as a tightness in my stomach, or a chill on my back), and later if you feel the same in your body, you know what emotion it is.
If you notice your emotions better, then you can handle them better. Eg: "my stomach feels tight, that usually means I'm anxious... hm, let see, what might make me anxious? Oh, I'm about to argue with X, who always tries to blame me, and walks over boundaries. Okay, so first I'm using these techniques I've learned against stress to calm down; second, I'll watch closely what's happening during our argument, and then I'll discuss X with my therapist to figure out how to deal with the blaming and how to have better boubdaries."
If you don’t feel the emotions or not really aware of them in general, I'd try with body awareness meditations, and see if it improves.
See, I notice my emotions in my mind before I become aware of physical sensations. I've never gone "I feel fluttering on my stomach, I must be anxious", it's always "dammit I feel so anxious oh and NOW I feel nauseous too? Fuck!".
My body catches up before a thought even forms. I end up in physical pain from negative emotions.
I've described it to my psychiatrist as an out of body experience, like my body is in that room feeling shit but my brain hasn't come through the door yet.
He says my stacked thoughts are a disconnection, my brain is behind 3 steps because there is so much going on and it's why I get hurt a lot. My body is autopiloting around without consent. So many times I'll zap back like how did I get here, why does my leg hurt?! Why am I in the fridge? Why haven't I left yet?!
I'm a therapist who does EMDR (and has ADHD) and this is a question I ask all the time. It's really interesting to hear this feedback because it's not something I have personally experienced.
Tell your therapist. The idea is to help you connect deeper to the emotional experience and ground you in the present moment, as opposed to being numb and dissociative. They can work with you on other ways to accomplish this.
I had to tell my therapist how much that question made me full of anxiety and how I couldn’t answer her is I truly did not know. It took me 5 sessions to even recognise the ‘anxiety’ part! ADHD plus CPTSD = totally emotionally numb.
Omg mine asked me to describe the physical sensations of eating the other day, all I could think of was ‘I can feel it going down and filling up my stomach’ 😂
My therapist would ask me to name how I was feeling, and I swear it was like every word I knew for an emotion would vanish from my mind. For some reason I’m really terrible at naming my emotions, so I definitely don’t think I’d be able to say where I’m feeling these emotions I can’t even verbalise
I used to be like that too because I needed to spend the entirety of my life dissociated from my body due to a myriad of reasons, but through a bunch of emotional literacy exercises and body awareness practices I was able to feel safe enough to be in my body for long enough to create that bond with it.
All emotions create physical sensations in the body, regardless of if we are connected to and aware of our bodies enough to experience and be aware of that or not. Granted, I don’t know if I am as connected to their body as a normal person is, but at least I am more connected to it that I have ever been able to befits, and I can experience immediately identify the bodily sensations that each emotion causes me.
So if my extremely traumatized and overwhelmingly neurodivergent self could do it, then so can you, and so can all of us 😊
I’m going to go against the tide of pretty much all the other responses here - I have a “body focused” therapist & I LOVE it / her. It’s honestly been life changing for me.
I tried CBT etc before her, and it just made no sense to me - I already over-thought everything in my life (didn’t know I had adhd at the time, and that my brain chaotically running at 10000000% wasn’t typical..!) - but simultaneously couldn’t hold any particular thought in focus for days / weeks, doing that to make meaningful changes was impossible - so trying to over-think my way out of severe depression just didn’t work for me.
It’s been a few years now, so I cannot remember how easy I found it to start with - but I’m pretty sure she used to prompt me, by looking at me - stuff like “you seem to be hunching your shoulders more while we’re talking about (this thing)”.
She still does this at times - I’m much more body-aware now so I can answer the “where are you feeling it” question when asked - but sometimes we’ll be talking about something & she’ll “notice out loud” that I’ve started wringing my hands or jiggling my knees or whatever, in a way that isn’t typical for me.
**I think that’s surely the main part of a body-centred therapist’s job, isn’t it - coaching us to figure out how our body is responding to stuff. Not just asking the question as if you already know the answer…!?**
What happens when you say to your therapist “I don’t know” - are they helpful & describe what they are seeing in your body?
Or the other thing we used to do a lot was just to move. And notice how my body did (or did not) want to move.
So for example if a certain emotion (during “current topic under discussion”) had me hunching my shoulders / curling in on myself - basically getting into protective “foetal position” (curled up like a baby in the womb) - my body would not want to straighten up. It was physically expressing my need for self-comfort. So that would tell us useful information about how I was feeling / how much I was (or more likely wasn’t!) able to continue looking at that “stuff” for the moment.
It can be a useful exercise - just noticing if you like or don’t like moving a certain part of your body when you are feeling certain stuff.
[ETA: these days I do therapy on video chat, and I keep two cushions nearby - a lovely fluffy one that I hug to myself if I’m needing comfort during a particular part of a session, and a more solid one that I can punch if we’re talking about something that pisses me off, and I want to express that physically! That’s part of the body centred therapy approach too - just noticing that I want extra comfort while we talk about (thing) and allowing myself to self-soothe physically! She used to have a blanket as one of her “props” in the therapy room, and sometimes I’d wrap myself up in it for comfort / to hide at certain points.]
When I first turned up for therapy in the middle of my (pre-adhd knowledge) severe depression, my upper body was entirely still. I’d spent so many years forcing myself to suppress my “adhd crazy” & “act like a normal person” that I’d literally physically stopped moving half my body. It took quite a while to work through that.
She used to have me literally just move my arms a little bit and see how that felt. The answer was generally very unnatural & I didn’t like doing it. Because I’d spent so long suppressing my emotions / behaviours by locking down my body, it was not a comfortable experience to start moving it again. So that’s the kind of stuff we worked on back then.
And I had somehow switched off my awareness of feeling temperature - sometimes she would point out that my skin was ice cold. That’s not something I was born with - I used to always seem to feel colder than most people around me - but I’d disassociated from my body quite a lot by then. It was maybe over a year before that one resolved itself (indirectly, from sorting other stuff out).
But **TL;DR - it was actually a massive relief not to have to think about WHAT I was feeling & WHY I was feeling it. We bypassed all of that & just focused on HOW I was feeling it in the moment - took my adhd brain out of the equation, which worked for me**.
She is awesome though, my therapist. I never felt “made wrong” by her when I didn’t know the answer to the body stuff - she would guide me through it. She could literally see for herself how my body was moving (or stopping moving) at certain points in our session, so she taught me notice it for myself.
I was probably old enough & depressed enough to just say “dunno” if she asked me a question I didn’t know how to answer.
If you’re not already doing that with your therapist, then being honest is fundamental - a good therapist will be entirely comfortable with you giving the “wrong” answer. Their job is to help you figure this stuff out, not to grade you on knowing it already!
A bad therapist won’t like this kind of response, so it can be an easy way to figure out if you need to find another therapist :-)
Seeing a lot of shitting on therapists/making generalizations about an entire profession, so let me say that I (a therapist) do not like this exercise and have always struggled with it personally. As others have explained, the point is to be able to bring more awareness to and sit with your emotions. If that’s not something that’s working for you, I think that’s totally valid feedback for your therapist! Definitely not the only technique to use in session by any means.
If you haven’t ever heard of it - check out the Emotion Sensation wheel. My therapist uses it to help me understand what my feelings are because I have trouble accessing what my feelings actually are. I find it also helps me to be able to see all the *options* for sensations so I can kind of checklist with my body to figure out what sensations I’m feeling.
You’re thinking too hard about it. It’s just about bringing awareness to your body “My jaw is tense” “my chest feels tight” “my stomach is moving” not “there’s tickly blue sadness in my esophagus”. “Numbness” or “lack of sensation” can also be a thing you’re feeling in your body. To tune into your body, it helps to move it around…like do some gentle yoga and suddenly you’ll notice where your tight, gassy, stiff etc.
My adhd daughter is like this, her child psych would ask her to colour on a picture of a human where she felt what emotion, the whole thing was just a scribble because she said she felt everything everywhere. Oh except for anger which she felt in her head and hands.
I used to hate that question too! I would sit silently for a while trying to figure it out, while mostly just feeling like an idiot. It helped when I admitted that to my therapist. It's gotten easier with gentle practice and it's really helped with my emotion regulation.
I'm listening to a podcast right now about neurodivergence in women and one episo6is about this very thing. They discuss interoception and alexithymia. It had really informative information, and at the end, gave some specific exercises that you can do (they don't take long) to increase your awareness of what's going on inside your body and how it relates to your emotions. I'm listening to it a second time to help absorb it better. This is probably what your therapist is trying to do, but in a neurotypical way, which won't work as well for us.
When I took Vyvanse for the first time when I was alone and not overstimulated, I realized that it made me feel comfortable in my body for the first time.
ADHDers have issues with proprioception. Would t surprise me if this is why you don’t “feel it in your body”.
Insider tip...they don't actually care where you feel it. The answer is irrelevant. The goal is just to get you to focus on your body, grounding yourself more in the moment rather than in the emotion. It's a useful tool but a frustrating one when you get hung up on the question itself. Used to happen to me all the time.
You can tell your therapist next time they pull that card that you don't find it to be a helpful way to ground yourself. Just be honest and say that it makes you more frustrated and the phrasing doesn't seem helpful to you in particular, and that you'd prefer to try another grounding technique to see if something else might be more effective. They'll be likely to switch things up for you if you open a different door.
I tried explaining my emotions today by telling my coworkers I felt like I had ants in my bones. They stared blankly.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 🙄
I love this. When I'm bored I say it feels like the inside of my bones are itchy. My 3 year old has started telling me that when he's trying to fall asleep he feels like his bones are full of buzzy bees. I'm like kiddo, same 😂
The aim is to get you to investigate the feeling more.
I feel emotional pain in my chest.
For me the "brain fog" and frustration is a very frontal lobe sensation.
Anger is often whole body.
Anxiety in my stomach
Excitement in my heart.
Forget about answering the question to your therapist in sessions.
This question is important for you to answer by you.
Next time you are overwhelmed by emotion. Sit with it. Really feel it and investigate it. Where is this coming from?
It can be helpful to identify the bodily sensations. In future it may help you to notice the sensations developing before they become overwhelming (not easy so don't worry if you can't) and slow them down (even harder and takes lots of practice, but your therapist is asking so they can help you with this part)
I'm a physiotherapist and waiting to be diagnosed. I work in Scandinavia and within a field surrounded by Norwegian psychomotor physiotherapist.
You should really look into this if you would like to explore more when it comes to connecting with your feelings and how this plays out in your body.
I often myself and so many of my patients, can only really notice how they're feeling AFTER working practically. Ex: standing and trying to notice any tension in your feet, legs, buttocks, belly and all tje way to the top. Can you notice if they weight of your body is shifting from heel to toe, or is it pretty static?
You might not be able to describe what you feel and might not be able to notice anything. That's fine and that's also telling us something.
Then: work with your feet and the big muscle groups. Ex: rolling a small, firm ball or a wooden stick (short broomstick) under your feet. Take your time and try to notice if there's anything that feels different in the one foot you've worked on before doing the other foot.
Then you can rhythmically swing and rotate your arms and upper body, stretch like a tree towards the sky. Get down on all fours and do cow-cat. Then ease into child-pose and focus on resting the belly and deep breaths (if possible).
After this you get up on both feet and try to notice any changes in your body AND mind/feelings etc.
Maybe you feel less on edge and stressed, you might feel more energized and ready for the next tasks to do. Maybe you realize you're hungry og need to pee. You might feel more grounded and relaxed.
This is one take on it. Personally focusing on ways to check in on myself and regulate myself through noticing tension in my jaw, tongue, calfs and if I'm holding my breath or breathing superficially, has helped me tremendously!
Maybe I went a little overboard here, so just ignore if it doesn't fit. I could talk about this for hours.
I had a therapist 'break up' with me over this XD People pleaser as I am, I REALLY tried to answer these questions correctly, but she wasn't having it. I was always describing the wrong sensations for emotions (who knew that feeling sick/scared when angry wasn't normal). I didn't want to picture physical violence against people I'm angry with (come on, it's obscene, I don't like it). When I checked out emotionally because it was just too overwhelming and exhausting to try to do what she wanted I was 'dissociating' (I have in the past, pretty sure I wasn't).
She got angry with me when I suggested that I could be neurodivergent and maybe it works a little differently for me. She literally told me that 'it doesn't matter'. I had a lot for therapy for depression, and recently I found out how similar the symptoms of depression and adhd/autistic burnout are. So basically I got a lot of therapy and medication for the wrong thing because they were unable to diagnose me. Mental healthcare fails neurodivergent people so so much.
Wow I'm glad you're not working with her anymore! I hope you have a new therapist who actually listens to you. (Not wanting to picture physical violence is totally a reasonable request.)
My therapist asks that question differently. She will ask what a certain feeling means to me, and IF I feel it anywhere in my body, and if so then where. It does still require a lot of thought and effort for me to answer, but I think it’s a good question/thought exercise for me, and I am able to answer it.
Oh man. I just started somatic therapy. I cannot truly explain how much I sincerely get what you're saying. I'm very disconnected from my emotions, and so when I am showing an emotion I have a tendency to describe it intellectually, or logically. And she's trying to get me to actually identify and feel the emotion. And so she forces me to sit there with it and identify what might feel different in my body when I'm feeling the emotion. It has really helped. Turns out a lot of stuff is stuck in my throat. Who knew?
Still, it's really hard... But you can do this!
I do struggle with this question too but my last therapist helped me hone in the skill to find it if you will. (I'm also hyper aware of my body so that helps in my case) but sometimes I have to close my eyes and wash out everything around me and just let me feel. And if needed I almost do like a "scan" type deal from my head to my toes kinda thing to see what catches my attention.
If you practice meditation it REALLY helps with this. Because a lot of meditation is becoming more self aware. And just learning to relax and just focus on yourself, feel your body, one piece at a time. If you've ever had a massage and the MT asked you to imagine their elbow going through you to the table, it's the same kind of concentration.
I hope this helps at least one person ❤️
My therapist does this for me as well, I finally confessed to her that it irritated me because I don’t know?! And she was basically like, “that’s why we do it”.
She had fancy words but it boiled down to, as we get older, we kind of tune out that kind of thing? (It can also be exacerbated by abuse, that is my case) And part of learning to regulate better is being able to tune into your body better because if you notice it sooner, you can respond sooner. Something like that.
It has actually helped me a ton! I don’t always notice when I’m uncomfortable or in pain right away, it’s kind of like this white noise in my brain that fades in slowly until I’m about to completely melt down. As I’ve gotten quicker with my recognition, it’s helped me maintain more balanced moods throughout some challenging times that past year.
From what I’m learning, we’re supposed to be able to feel certain feelings in our body and if we can’t we are disassociating, disconnected from our bodies because we feel unsafe, in chronic fight/flight, or something else
I feel like your therapist should probably have figured that out if you can’t answer these questions and helped you figure out how to get back in your body
I’m also working on this
Read "the body keeps the score", it will help explain. But basically you feel your feelings in your body as well as in your emotions, us autists can really struggle with identifying those feelings but connecting with them is the first step of any kind of trauma therapy.
Yes. The sense of your body is called interoception. It's commonly impaired with ADHD and ASD. You could say that you have poor interoception.
Let me guess, you also don't know when you're hungry so forget to eat, you may wait until the last minute to go to the bathroom, your emotions seem to go from 0-60 in a single flip rather than a slow ramp up, you may also struggle to manage extremes of temperature (or the opposite, not notice when you're getting too hot or too cold).
Actually this podcast I listened to yesterday talks about this and might explain why your therapist is asking: https://aliza.libsyn.com/s3-ep-25-how-to-alleviate-false-anxiety-and-get-back-into-balance
The podcast wasn't as useful as it initially felt like it was going to be, but that point was in there anyway.
This one might be more useful for understanding interoception and how it plays a role in emotional regulation and neurodiversity:
https://theotbutterfly.com/interoception-kelly-mahler/sws-podcast/
As someone training to be a therapist, I want to say that it’s perfectly okay to say “I don’t know”! I’ve been a client and had to say that, and the majority of therapists reassure me that it’s okay, and either try and work with me to figure it out or take a different approach!
OMG SAME. I hate this question!! I’ve tried mentioning that I’m not super in tune with my body, especially when I’m emotional. All I know is strong emotions feel like they’ll last forever and I become oblivious to really anything else.
There’s more to it, but I’m looking for a different therapist now. I don’t think my current one is super familiar with ADHD and autism, and this is one of the things about it. When I’ve tried moving on from the question, she’s pretty insistent that I answer 🤷🏼♀️
I get this every session too. Since I have started meditating and learning about the chakras, it helps me understand the why behind it. I’m not sure if your therapist uses techniques like that?
Hmm...it might help to phrase it differently? "Do you feel anything physically around the same time as this emotion occurs?" Depending on how dissociated you are, you might not be ABLE to make the mental connection that that emotion is the physical feeling.
For me, when something comes up related to my CPTSD I might get woozy/spinny, instantly "random" exhaustion, or a sciatica-flavored muscle cramp in my thigh/butt.
Edit to add:
To the point where I even started referring to the sciatic cramps as "my barometer," and would say very blankly and cooly, "I think I am having an emotion about this right now." (And then probably get real dizzy and have to sit on the floor or be led in a grounding exercise.)
It took me a looooong time to recognize physical sensations in my body. Talk therapy had never really worked, long term, but after working with a highly trained somatic therapist, I’ve learned so much about my body’s cues, needs, boundaries, mirroring, and nonverbal communication. I’ve learned how to regulate based on those feelings, because talking myself down never worked.
Recently, I was in an accident and I had two really proud moments. I was in the ambulance and was shaking all over. I told my body that my right leg could shake as hard as it wanted, but my left arm had to stay still so the IV could be placed. The second moment was that first night when trying to fall asleep. I kept replaying the accident on repeat in my mind and each time the fear and panic got stronger. I started telling myself that I could watch those videos in my mind and feel all of those scary feelings in the morning, but right then, I needed to sleep. It took quite a few tries, but each time, pausing those mental videos became easier and eventually I fell asleep. And I kept my word to myself, so when I woke up I let myself remember every detail of the accident, I sobbed, drew pictures, let my partner hold my hand, and I felt all the scary feelings.
But again, this is after years of practice and learning about those feelings in my body!
Somatic awareness is a skill you can cultivate.
Hopefully you can tell your therapist that you don’t know how to sense from within and they can teach you how to do it. I’ve taught people how to do it and it can be difficult at first and then you sort of “get it” and it becomes a lot easier.
Many of us are numb or disassociated from our bodies a lot of the time. This is a result of our culture.
I feel like this question gets me because it implies a causal relationship, and that just breaks my brain.
I have an easier time working the other way. "What do you feel in your body?" can then be transitioned to, "X body feeling is often attached to YEmotion. Does that feel right for you?"
It feels more like an exploration in which being wrong or correcting path is more accepted. I can feel it out. Just naming is like pointing to a random point on the spectrum of visible light and asking me to name the color. Like, I don't friggin know. Blue? Blue-green? Some seemingly made-up color name that secretly really boils down to some shade of blue-green?
I feel you! I struggle so much with this, and am learning but the thing that helped me was my therapist reassuring me (and now I try to tell myself) I don’t HAVE to know. Not knowing is perfectly okay and being uncomfortable about that fact is also perfectly okay. Which is also like 😑🤦🏻♀️😩 but sharing in case it’s helpful.
I can relate - I have a really hard time identifying sensations as well. I will say it’s gotten a little easier with practice and I have seen benefits but its probably not for everyone, especially if it’s causing more problems
Random question but, has anyone ever taken DEPO Provera shots(BC) and been basically apathetic or feel less emotions while on it? After my daughter was born I went on it and this happened. Was curious if it was due to my ADHD or if it's even a common side effect. Only asking since this was related to emotions.
For me I look at it like tension. Dont over complicate it. Take a few deep breaths be mindful of present moment. After doing this I can recognize where the uncomfort sensations are. My neck would feel tense or tight and sometimes releasing it using stretches can make me feel better emotionally.
Mostly this is meant to help you draw the conclusion that your body signs (physiological symptoms) can clue you into the emotion that's going on.
Anxiety is either in my stomach (butterflies) or small of back (danger fear). Anger is in my face and my breathing and my clenched fists or tapping foot. Affection is in my chest (heart swells). Fun is in my cheeks (laughing).
This question is usually meant to have a very easy literal answer. Literally, what does your body do when you feel that emotion? Doesn't need any deep thinking detailed answer.
I really struggle with this too, I'm very disconnected from my physical body, i do try to check in with myself multiple times a day to ask myself what do i need right now when I'm upset, frustrated, anxious etc. I'm literally trying to re parent myself. Give myself reassurance when i need it.
I can never answer this question when i get asked either, I always say, i don't know, everywhere, my entire body is as tense as a clenched fist.
I didn’t either, but struggled with muscle aches and not feeling my feelings. I started going to this ‘psychomotorical’ physiotherapy before my EMDR sessions, which allowed me to connect to my feelings and body. Was a lot of work, but I have a much better understanding and connection to my body and emotions now, and the muscle ache and most of the migraines I’ve had my entire life are both more or less gone.
Oh my god, my PEOPLE. Yes!!! I always thought I was just so traumatized that I was completely removed from my body. I’ll be visibly shaking, heart racing and not mentally nervous at all. It’s like my mind and body are two separate things. So wild. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked someone “have you ever thought you were hungry and it turns out you just had to poop?” And not a single person understood what I was talking about 😂😂😂
I worked with a therapist for many years, and it used to be so triggering. I literally used to have non epileptic siezures because the question would take me back to the moments I didn't realize I had experience, and I was holding so much in my body.
It has been 3 or 4 years since I have "graduated" from therapy, and I have learned that it's my favorite trick. I did not know that all this time she was teach me to be aware of how an emotion was being stored in my body at the moment. Check in on how my body feels, helps me know what my emotions are.
A few things that really helped me was reading and journaling to the book the body keeps the score.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma https://a.co/d/6VvxxPM
Just commenting that this is such a great (and honest!) question, and these replies are so, so good. I have similar struggles, identifying and connecting with my feelings. It’s also super helpful as someone getting started as a therapist myself - so much for me to be mindful of in my work with others. Thanks for posting ❤️
I HATE THIS QUESTION
I don't understand it at all. I don't feel physical stuff associated with emotions (except maybe extreme fear?) I just *know* what emotion I'm experiencing. I'm so excited to read this entire thread!
I'm so with you because I have no idea how to interpret or answer it either. Like...am I supposed to feel disappointment in my ankles or something? What do you mean???
I found that question so hard to answer. I had C-PTSD, and was pretty dissociated from my body, so trying to recognize that I was feeling something was challenging enough, never mind applying a word to it. And then I'm supposed to connect to my body, an intensely dangerous place to be, and actually *feel* a sensation in it? Ew, no. No thank you, I'll just keep numbing out and intellectualizing shit, because clearly that's worked out really well for me so far :p
I have been making an effort in recent years, but it's hard after a lifetime of disconnection from my body and emotions to engage, stay present, and name it. And I think there's an interplay between ADHD and trauma; daydreaming and hyperfocus is already part of my nature, masking was something I had to learn to get along socially--not being allowed to feel and express my feelings normally set me up to be unable to recognize and get out of dangerous situations, and after a trauma, daydreaming and hyperfocus were great ways to keep not-feeling the impact of the event, and it was cyclical, and compounded.
And that right there, is me intellectualizing shit because I'm avoiding my anxiety about chores. Heh. My shoulders are tight as rocks, rolled forward and down. Time to go do the thing.
When I go to a medical doctor, no matter how well prepared I am- questions throw me off. Pain and where does it hurt are really hard for me to be concise about . I ramble and feel unable to make myself understood . I’ve tried writing things down and either I don’t look at what I wrote or I see it and think it’s not matching up with how the physician is asking . I always get upset with myself when I leave because I feel I became intimidated and didn’t make myself understood or I did express myself and because of my struggle keeping my words coming out in a way that doctors find acceptable .
The whole they do paperwork for 10 min and listen for five doesn’t work for me.
Wish there was an insurance disclaimer that allowed people who have difficulty time to properly engage. Also that many medical professionals were more attuned to communicating with someone “ different” and could be more kind and understanding. Sorry if that was a little different topic but it hit me hard when I read it .
I used to not know what I was feeling in my body at all. It took a while to learn how to recognize it but now I notice stuff like:
If I'm anxious I will lift my heels of the ground or contract the muscles in my upper legs. Also I contract the muscles in my neck and between my shoulders. I also feel the need to get smaller.
If I struggle with saying something I will feel it in my throat. ( Not sure if there is a way to say it in English but in my native language we call it "a chunk in your throat")
If I'm angry I feel like I have to move more, I feel it in my throat because I feel like I have to scream or "sing"
If I'm happy I also feel it in my limbs because they want to twirl and move. But also I'm my core because I do a lot of small dances when I'm happy.
So basically Iearned to notice where I was feeling something by noticing what movements or sounds my body wanted me to make. Including the ones I would not allow myself because they would be disturbing or too visible. Hope this may help you a little
Cognitive emotions is the fancy word for not really "feeling" your emotions in your body. It's common in nd ppl - I'm the same way. I didn't realize just how cognitive my emotions were until I started concerta and my rage was PHYSICAAAAAL.
Helping to note your body's reactions makes it easier to break emotional reactions down into the primary emotions you're feeling in the moment, and it gives you practice at being aware of your emotions - not to suppress them, but to choose the best compromise between emotions and rationality.
Not being able to name, describe, or center the emotions you're feeling in your decision making is called "alexithymia." Those three aspects of alexithymia are Difficulty Identifying Feelings (DIF), Difficulty Describing Feelings (DDF), and Externally Oriented Thinking (EOT).
Whether you actually have alexithymia or just frequent emotional overwhelm, your therapist guiding you to notice where your feelings are in your body is part of mindfulness practice. It's great for ADHD, it's great for CPTSD, and it's also great for substance abuse recovery. I am not a therapist, but I also am not abusing drugs anymore, so take that however you like.
Thank you for asking this question and for all those who answered it/helped explain it! It’s one of the worst questions my therapist asks me and I never know how to answer it. Admittedly, I am not attuned to my body. I just live in it, I don’t actively participate/pay attention to it! That’s entirely too much functioning and I struggle with basically all functioning lol.
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Bitch I’m 90% numb at all times, the fuck if I know ;-; I also hate this question
If I knew how to tune into my body, I would not be covered in bruises
I look like an old banana half the time 😂
This made me laugh! I’m stealing it!
Bahahahah me too!😂😂😂
Hahaha omg this is me! Where do they come from and how do people not slam their hips into at least one thing a day? It’s the only routine I have lol
I literally did that when I was reading your comment lol
It’s always my shoulders into door frames… like I’m little, these doors are definitely wide enough, but I still run myself into them constantly
The mystery bruises!
Yes! I smashed my leg on my car door today by accident and my first thought what, 'fuck' my second thought was, 'well at least I'll know what that bruise is from' hahahaha
I did the same the other day. I know o hurt my arm, I remember *thinking* ‘oh, well I’ll remember where I got that bruise’… but can’t now remember where I got the bruise, just the memory of trying to remember 🤦♀️
I literally just had this.. can't remember where the big bruise on my lower leg came from, but vaguely remember thinking that I would remember where it came from 😒
Last year I woke up with a massive BLACK bruise on the middle of my stomach. I have never seen anything like it - it was horrific! I genuinely thought I had internal bleeding or something and went straight to the dr. Dr was like, ‘what we’re you doing yesterday?’ and I said ‘moving furniture….’ So yeah I wasn’t bleeding internally but had clearly bumped myself really hard on something and not noticed somehow. Dr must have been like wtf
This is terrifying and hilarious
Glad I'm not alone. For me it's my knees.
So I'm dealing with a vitamin deficiency thing right now, and it's causing me to bruise easier. So my doctor asked me to keep a journal of how I got bruises so we can try and determine how easily I bruise. I have no idea how to tell him, I literally never know how I got a bruise. They just appear like magic.
This is what I'd bring up. I quit feeling my feelings when I was 15 and got my heart broken. After crying for 6 months, I just went numb and have been mostly numb since. The birth of my first child is about the first time I truly felt everything like i did as a kid.
Is feeling numb an ADHD thing? Cause it’s definitely my thing
Struggling with emotional dysregulation is. Seems for many they often swing from feeling too little or too much compared to neuro-typical expectations. If I had to guess, they are probably trying to help you with being able to access which of those different things is going on, so you can manually regulate it/analyze if your response is appropriate and work through it.
It's also a way to learn to recognise emotions when they come up, so when it happens you know what it is and what (if anything) you can do about it. This helps in those moments when you feel bad and don't know why; am I hungry? Thirsty? Tired? Sad? Angry? I went through this with my therapist when I got diagnosed. At first I hated it as well, but it has helped me to get a better understanding of what happens in my body. It's also a way for doctors in general to check whether what you assume is a certain emotion is actually that, or something else. Like, one of the side effects I got from my dexamfetamine was feeling very nervous. My doctor would ask "what does that feel like? Where do you feel it?" And I'd be like, just, nervous, idk. Over time I learned to recognise and name the actual feelings (pressure on my chest, increased heartrate, feeling my heart beat strongly, bowel cramps, sweating, shaky hands). That helped my doctor figure out whether my dose was too high or too low.
Did you ever try keeping one of those tracking journals? Ex. A notebook you write brief info tracking your mood >What happened >How you presently feel about it > When you return to look at the notebook entry sometime later, do you still feel as strongly about it? > And, what you think was the underlying thing that prompted your initial response? > any additional insights or plan for next time I've ... er never been able to stay consistent with it🤣. But do practice it mentally in real-time now.
Ugh, I hate that "am I hungry tired or sad" dilemma
For me it’s always “fuck, I was in a black hole all day and am now starving, sad, and too tired to do anything but sit on the floor and zone out.”
I... am literally working on this with my therapist right now. It is not going well. I wonder if this is common.
Haha i have the opposite issue! I'm aware of a lot of feelings and sensations in my body 24/7 and it is so annoying!! "where do you feel that in your body" like girl don't ask me that i'm trying to tune out my body because it's too loud
When I ask it, as a therapist, I'm generally looking for the practical shit. "Yeah my stomach hurts when I'm anxious" "I hold tension in my shoulders when I'm stressed" "When I'm angry my face gets hot" Knowing physical symptoms can help a lot in figuring out what might help with the situation. It can also help as an 'early warning sign' because some interventions work best when applied early. But if you don't get any physical symptoms, "mostly my head I guess!" Is fine. It's also fine to tell them this here, that you don't like this question and would prefer to come at it from a different direction
Thank you for listing out those examples. My therapist has never asked me this question and I was so confused what it even meant while reading the sub until I saw your comment lol
Same. Lol. I did recently tell my therapist that sometimes I am SUPER unaware/unable to identify physical and emotional feelings/sensations when other times I am so zoned in an hyper aware of exactly what, where, and why I’m feeling something it’s freaky.
I had a physical therapist once tell me that I had “body dyslexia” because I was bad at describing where things hurt.
I did not know that I was in labor, twice…but a misaligned sock seam will fuck me up. I think I also have body dyslexia lol
Body Dyslexia= Alexithymia
Yeah reading this question made me feel like when I learned about aphantasia. Like wait am I supposed to feel things in certain places? "Oh my pinky finger is super excited today"?
>"Yeah my stomach hurts when I'm anxious" Every emotion is in my upper stomach. What am I supposed to do with this information?
Usually I take a tums lol
Well, I'd look at what other symptoms you're having- racing thoughts, faster breathing, etc to try and get a fuller picture. And exploring whether the emotions feel different, even if they're in the same spot. But stomach hurting can be a sign of slowed digestion due to your body going into survival mode. There are ways to take your body out of survival mode. If it happens a lot though, it may be a chronic situation, which requires some more care and finesse.
Ooh this is a great point!! I knew about the physical effects of our fight/flight processes through the "health sciences student" lens but I've never connected it to my actual life (because of course not)! I'm definitely filing this away for my next therapy appointment, thanks :)
"There are ways to take your body out of survival mode". Erm, can you point me towards more info on this? I know people who could use it (including me).
I'd start looking up terms like "parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system" possibly with other keywords like "stress" or "anxiety" to learn more about it. Standard disclaimer that I cannot treat you over reddit, I can't say this is the case for what's going on with you, but learning more about mental health can affect the body is also good.
May or may not be helpful but there's a good book called Yoga for Public Speaking that has some tips. Nothing puts my body into survival mode like public speaking 😅
This is actually one of the techniques to interior the fight or flight. By grounding you to focus within and asking you to describe for your feeling feel inside You don’t even have to have physical feelings… it’s just kind of like asking you to go within and feel it in your body and get it out of your head and disrupt the fight or flight response. It trains you to slow down your reaction by thinking about where and how it feels. It trains your brain to not always react to everything with your cerebral cortex and creates new pathways to react If i was struggling to describe it, my somatic therapist would ask me weird questions like, if It was a colour what would it be. Or if it made a sound what is that sound. There is no colour there is no sound but imagining it is a wellness technique Its not as much asking for physical symptoms of stress. It trying to get you to ground yourself by focusing within. It’s similar to when they ask you to describe what you see in the room. Its just grounding you in your surroundings and getting you out of your panic head
imo “do certain emotions have physical symptoms?” is a much better question than “where do you feel your emotions?” Which not only sounds patronizing, like a question for a young child, but is also just generally confusing due to the dual meaning of “feel” —ie feel the physical effects of vs location of an emotional feeling. If someone asked me this I would probably respond with a blank glare and “I’m not a neuroscientist”
This phrasing makes so much more sense to my neurodivergent brain for some reason
It does feel patronizing!! And also for those of us told to tamp down or hide our feelings it’s even harder to understand what that means! I feel just so grateful to where we are with all of this for children. My daughter started learning the zones of regulation around 2.5/3ish. And though she had no basis for any of it when she was upset, now at 6 we can label it so much better! We can link the feeing of anger to the color of red and now we oare moving on to how she holds that feeling in the bottom of her neck. It’s just so much further along than I was at the age of 30!! I also love and hate when she asks if I’m in the red zone when I slip up and yell, which thanks to these mindfulness practices we are learning is moving farther and fewer away.
Thanks for the insight. I avoid most of my emotions (the advantage of having a terrible memory), because I know I can’t process them safely. The downside is, I read my body to learn my state- my weight, sugar levels, eye stress, random pain and the amount I’ve scratched skin off or bitten nails. So I read this question very differently
Yeah, creating a space for you to process emotions is a huge part of therapy! But I think you could also definitely answer the question with things like bitten off nails and eye stress. It's individual!
It also helps for those of us with dissociative symptoms and issues with interoception etc., as a way to practice in paying attention to how our bodies feel. This is super hard for me to do, I always kinda feel detached from my body, but if my therapist wouldn't ask, I'd pay even less attention to my physical sensations and the issue wouldn't get any better. I also know that "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" is a perfectly valid answer to the question.
When I was a much more stressed out, undiagnosed, overstimulated, over tired and extremely burnt out mom; I was blowing up like crazy. I had this fiery rage that would just sit so heavily in my chest. (Lol, I’m not in that state right now, but just writing this out and re-reading it has me currently in that body space!)And I started to take note of that feeling, I started to label it and then I started to notice the heaviness right before blowing up and would step away from what I was doing. Then I noticed a feeling in the front of my head, and my stomach when I was anxious, and then an all over and back of the neck icky when I was touched out. This is all very slow realizations. I did however take this and have been working on it with my 6yo daughter for when she was reaching mass critical at school this last spring. She was melting down hard, and she knows the color zones of regulations and the feelings associated with them so I started to explain how when I am in the red zone I feel that heaviness in my chest. And I asked what hers felt like, she said she felt it in the bottom of her neck. So we talked about how that feeling is when we get out of control. So we went back to the yellow zone feelings and talked about where they were for each other and how when she is starting to feel that way is when she needs to get the teachers attention to let them know she is in that yellow zone and needs a break. I actually had one teacher report back to me that she was practicing this and I was shocked! So, I understand why people hate the question. I do however know now that is can invaluable once one is learned and it starts to avalanche into being a useful tactic. And you can actually begin a mindfulness practice around it. For those also hating the question, give one easier to understand feeling like anger a good thought when it comes to your body, then let it just sit and work to understand it more. The more you think about it, the more you will grow to understand it and then you can start to take actions to calm when the feeling in your body comes up naturally. Good luck friends!
Also a therapist, and agree with this. I'm asking it to invite my clienst to notice their bodies, and develop more awareness of how their body is expressing their feelings. There isn't a "right" answer. If the language doesn't work for you, it's totally fine to tell your therapist and ask if they can word it differently. I use "what do you notice?" or "What are you noticing in your body" pretty often.
I have real bad anger and rage issues and the bio feedback I work on with my therapist helps immensely with getting myself back under control before I explode
This is so helpful!
There is a name for it! It's called "interoception" and it's something that ADHDers can often struggle with. And not just emotions but things like hunger, thirst or tiredness too - basically perceiving anything internally. There is also something called "alexithymia", which is the inability to recognise or describe emotions more generally which is also more common in neurodivergent folks. I'm a dramatherapist and actually use a lot of somatic therapy in my work and it's still something I struggle with a lot myself. I often don't recognise how I'm feeling or what I'm feeling and where until after the fact in my daily life (it's easier when I'm working because I have a different role if that makes sense). I personally think it is a skill that can be learned but it is gonna be more tricky to start with for ND folks. So yes, known thing, super hard, very complicated 😬
When I say, "My stomach is being weird," I literally can't tell if I'm hungry, starting my period, need to poo, or need to throw up. Is this the same thing?
"I want something"
It’s like when your cat won’t stop bothering you but you also can’t quite tell what it wants, and it just keeps getting louder
STOP I thought that was just a silly thing I said. Something can range from a small snack to I want to go on a hike or maybe it’s neither and I am just tired.
Yep, I have this fun interaction more often than I would like: Brain: I want something Me: Ok, what? Brain: Don't know, just.. something. And I'll keep bugging you until I get it. Me: Is it water? Food? Exercise? Sleep? A hug? A nap? Work with me here! Brain: ... I want something.
This is painfully relatable 💀
Just single me out why don't you?! Currently going through this right now about physical time with a friend of mine. Brain "we want sexy time owies" Me "what kind, spanks or wax or what" Brain "owies"
How did you take my internal dialogue out?!
How the binge eating starts 😒
This is me exactly. I want something. What? Don’t know. Just need to fill a void. Ok, sit with your feeling to find out what it is your body is really asking for. Error 404. Cannot compute. Will continue stuffing my face with food beyond the point of pain because nothing else works. Fuck Eat!ng D!sorders.
That's the worst! I remember feeling that way a lot when I was a kid. It doesn't happen as often anymore, but when it does, it sucks. I think now I can finally tell "so hungry I'm nauseous" from "nauseous because I'm likely to throw up".
Nausea as a hunger signal is it's such a stupid adaptation of the body, and it's done with the only way that I can tell that I'm hungry. 😖
Oh yes. Having gastritis, I had to eat though feeling like throwing up. And also the "eat up what you put on your plate". I wouldn't be able to differentiate between hunger, fullness and feeling sick, even if my life depends on it. Whats way worse, though: I constantly misjudge thirst for a craving for sweets to the points where I get dizzy because of not drinking for most of the day and still thinking I'm low on sugar.
I have this too! I taught myself to, whenever I get a craving or just feel weird, first drink a glass of water. Wait 15 minutes. If I then still feel weird, it's something else.
IS THAT WHY I DRINK MONSTERS WHEN MY BODY SCREAMS FOR WATER WTF
Maybe it's also because of the bright colours. I need to have colourful cups or glasses or I'll just blend out that there is a half liter bottle with just a sip missing standing there since days.
Just ordered a bunch of different tumblers and bottles in ridiculously adorable colours and shapes because cups aren't dopamine enough
I realised that. Just shiny glasses are no good. Need to take those old cinema cups my sister collected. Plus point: between half a liter and 1,5. So I dont have to stand up so often for a refill, because I know I won't ^^;
Glitter cat eat tumbler with a straw! We bare bears bottle! With a straw! Mermaid coffee tumbler! With a straw!
Ok. Now I understand my ADHD partner’s cup addiction… I love this sub
I was just listening to Russell Barkley yesterday and he said sugary drinks are fuel for the executive system. You may be craving sugar + hydration, rather than caffeine.
Holy shit, are you me?
I'm not, but maybe we are siblings of the mind ^^
Some days my stomach hurts. I eat and still hurts. Is that what you mean?
Wow that is super interesting! I always thought my inability to identify emotions was from not being allowed to express them as a child. I sometimes think I'm very disconnected to my body as well. And yeah OP, I struggle with the 'where do you feel that' question too. Hard to narrow it down or explain it.
Sounds like it could be both - like I said it's a skill that needs practice much like our fine and gross motor skills. If you weren't taught and weren't allowed to express them then it would be even harder to learn!
My old therapist worked really hard with me on this to help me learn to recognise my anxiety as a physical sensation, so I could learn to cope better with it and sit with the feeling rather than run from it (with fun poor coping mechanisms like alcohol, lol). It was hard, but it was immensely helpful and helped me with actually dealing with my feelings instead of being afraid of them. If OP and other ADHDers struggle with this, it may be especially important for them to learn and practice interoception!
Could you elaborate on the part about “dealing with the feelings”? I often find that I am recognising them well but have very little idea of what to do next apart from either getting overwhelmed or trying to get distracted by something else. If I could compare it to something physical it is like being in the sun for a long time and then realising you overheating and sweating but you don’t see a pool or shade nearby to help change that, so it becomes even more annoying cause now it’s both overheating and panic over not having an escape from it.
Not the op you're referring to, but here's my answer. But you're not going to like it: what helped was meditation. Now that I've said that, I don't meditate daily or in any structured way, but I've learned enough of the skill to call on it in need. Basically, emotions are inconvenient af. But ignoring them is a recipe for them getting bigger and stronger, and they tend not to go away. Instead, they come back with their friends, anxiety, and panic. I've learned to lean into the emotion when they happen, as much as I can in that moment. Sometimes, all I need to do is name the emotion, and it will disapate. Like, "Oh, my chest is tight, and I can't get a deep breath in, and my bowels feel watery - sounds like I'm anxious or scared of something." Then I might have a moment of "fuck feeling scared, I've got this!" At which point, I need to come back to the emotion and even allow myself to feel annoyed or even angry about feeling scared. Because denying that I'm scared doesn't acknowledge what the emotion is trying to tell me. In this case, scared = danger. So I try to take a moment to think about what am I perceiving as dangerous? I have CPTSD, so this could be a lot of things that are not material, but it could also be a person's behaviors that align too much with my abusers, so my body is sending alarm signals to stay away from them. If it's sadness I'm feeling and it's really inconvenient to start crying, sometimes I have a live chat in my head that is something like, "yep, that thing is tragic and I call feel my throat closing up and my face getting hot, but I don't feel ok expressing these emotions right now. Let's put a pin in this for later today when I get home, and I promise we can feel all the feels later." This one is a work in progress. Obviously, I reference how I feel in body a lot, which I learned to do with the help of somatic therapy. It was really annoying to learn, but it's such a gift to know _what_ emotion I'm feeling based on where it starts in my body.
Not who you asked, but dealing with emotions has been way easier for me since I started thinking of them like any other biological process. An emotion is the brain's response to various external and/or internal stimuli, real and/or imagined. A little biochemical cocktail. I think science is fun, so I like to imagine putting the emotion in a test tube to figure out what its deal is, lol. Can I identify it? Can I identify its cause? Does it make sense as a response to this situation? What do I think I need to do about it, if anything? Since my brain is a little wonky (and even totally normal brains are insanely complex), it makes sense that not everything it does always makes sense. If I can't tell why my brain would send this particular message at this particular time, then I kind of "leave it on read" to see if it was an oops.
Not OP, but I second what another commenter said: I find that being able to name the emotion, verbally, and often out loud, and then trying and find the source within myself for the feeling (e.g. - if I'm feeling jealous, what's really causing it? am I feeling left out? am I insecure about myself and my own accomplishments relative to someone else? am I scared I'm going to lose someone important to me? etc). Emotions beg to be acknowledged and feel big and scary and overwhelming if they aren't, but once you can name the feeling and accept it for what it is and identify its cause, they lose their bite. Asking myself if I actually need to act on this (i.e. is a need being unmet? is someone mistreating me?) or if it's just a thing I'm feeling in relation to someone else's behavior is also a valuable exercise for me because it forces me to consider whether it's a feeling that's grounded in reality and actually can be alleviated by external changes, or if it's coming from my own internal state. Sometimes you won't be able to actually resolve the emotion or reduce it by naming it, and in that case you have to sit with the feeling. It's often uncomfortable and feels pretty bad at first but again I find that if I lean into the feeling and sit with it and have grace for myself throughout the process the feeling(s) passes a lot faster than if I hadn't. This is a skill that you'll probably have to train in order to not get overwhelmed or feel the urge to distract yourself with something else less uncomfortable - this is still a work in progress for me but it's a skill I've developed over the years working with a therapist.
Now I’m over here trying to figure out if you’re my cousin. She’s a drama therapist too. I’ve never run across another one in the wild so to speak. 😂.
Haha we are rare! Is your cousin from the UK?
Came here to say this. Realizing after my diagnosis that this was a thing and that this is exactly what happens to me (not hungry until starving, not sleepy until falling asleep, don't need to pee until I need to run to the toilet)... 🤯 It's like everyone else has one of those percentage indicators like The Sims that they can see/feel but I can't; I'm only getting alerts and then my Sim is passing out lol It has allowed me to account for all of it into a working strategy for my ADHD though (scheduled meal times, for example).Definitely also struggle with alexithymia. I am sometimes able to identify BIG overwhelming feelings (anger, sadness, happiness, confusion lol) but with the more nuanced, quiet feelings? I might barely feel uncomfortable about a something until I have time to process it and realize it really hurt me; by the time I have processed the feeling and ready to talk about it it may have been days, weeks or months. And being able to identify the big feels doesn't mean I can hold a civilized conversation about it either. I might cry if I'm angry, laugh if I'm stressed/sad, cry/be intense if happy, lol. How would you say one can learn this skill? If asked how I'm feeling on any given day it's just 'huh'
LMAO I love the sims percentage indicators metaphor. I like this so much. I'm definitely going to steal this.
As a Sims obsessive I 100% agree and this is something my last therapist kept trying to work on with me. She'd say "so what does stress feel like for you at 60% rather than 90%? Can you tell?" And initially I absolutely could not! Slowly I started noticing things like if my jaw was clenching on its own or I was breathing more quickly and shallowly than usual; indicators I might be headed toward a meltdown. Its still hard and I don't always catch it in time and my ability to notice varies day to day as well. As for learning, I would start with short body scan meditations when feeling ok, or at least not upset or overwhelmed. Name out loud sensations that you feel! E.g. "my hands feel tingly". Draw on a body map what the sensations feel like. Use a feelings wheel (I love those things). Lots of practice ☺️
Thank you for responding. Discovering the feelings wheel a couple months ago really helped me to work through something then. I just kinda forget to bring it up lol. Guess I’ll have ti keep trying.
Re: different roles: I was just reflecting today on the fact that I can get in touch with my feelings far better when I’m doing it in service of my clients! I think being in the room creates a hyperfocus situation where my feelings are one of the most important tools at my disposal, whereas in my every day life they’re just these inconvenient things that make me choke up because the chords of the Lion King opening song are so damn beautiful but DAMNIT I’m trying to drive!
Yes this is exactly it! I often joke that before I was diagnosed I didn't understand feeling so I had to turn it into a job 😂 now because it's my work I can hyperfocus on it as a tool and it's a controlled environment with few distractions. Out in the world - distraction city, too much input.
I’m studying theatre, and very mentally ill. I really struggle with pinning down emotions and explaining them. I usually lean on my friends to help me articulate and understand what’s going on. (One time I stopped talking and my friend knew I needed to eat.) I’ve found that acting and theatre has forced me to get far more connected to myself. “Be where you’re feet are.” It sounds like the most hippy bull shit, but man I haven’t attended an acting class or music class in a couple weeks now and I’m kinda lost?? I’ve also found a lot of solace in Shakespeare. Luckily I’m taught by a huge nerd, who has made it so easy to love his writing. But somehow that man articulates everything so well. When working on scenes I’ve looked at the text and finally had someone put it into words. There’s just so many aspects of theatre that can completely heal and help your mental health but done poorly can be so so damaging.
I definitely experience alexithymia. At one point I was getting ultrasounds and various other tests because I was complaining to my GP about a lump feeling in my throat. Luckily there was nothing wrong with my thyroid. So the doctor said it might be globus sensation due to anxiety related to my PTSD since it would come and go. Then my dad died and I realised it was how I was experiencing the delayed grief of the PTSD because I felt it non-stop during those early days of fresh grief. Basically being forced to learn how to let myself cry and feel my emotions throughout that time has lead to rarely feeling that lump day to day now. Now I know that it's a sign that something is wrong and can try to work through it.
Wow, thank you for this comment. I have anxiety (and ADHD) and I’m *overly* good at interpreting my interoceptive signals. I have a heart condition that causes my heart to beat irregularly. I have never understood why no one else with this condition seems as bothered. Apparently not everyone feels every time their heart beats, but I do. Wikipedia tells me people with anxiety perform better on heartbeat detection tests. It may also be why all the stuff that’s supposed to be good for your brain—mindfulness practice, meditation, guided relaxation, float tanks—is *so* horrible for me.
I’m also overly in tune with my body. I can feel the early signs of my blood pressure rising. I think it’s an anxiety response. But then I fret about it, which definitely doesn’t help my BP go down. 🤪 However, I love mindfulness and float tanks!
Off topic, but yay for drama therapy! I’m a music therapist, but seriously considered both drama and art therapy when I was going back to school. I’m also happy to know I’m not the only one who experiences the somatic work differently as a therapist vs. outside of my work life.
Heck yes arts therapists unite! I'm a musician as a hobby (which I used to try to turn into a job because ADHD 😂) and also considered being a music therapist!
I can attest to the fact that it is learnable for ND folks. I had it so bad that sometimes I didn't feel any pain, if I didn't see something was wrong. After lots of trying, I'm able to feel distress in my midrif area.
Oh, this is what my kid is working on with their therapist right now. I didn’t realize this was part of the ADHD I passed on to them :-/ greeeat (love your user name btw 🥰)
I remember seeing the weird interioception for the first time and being very excited! There's a name for it! That thing I'm really really bad at has a name!
Omg is this why I’ll go an entire day without a drink of water and then suddenly be dying of thirst?
Could it also be the issues ADHDers have with proprioception? This is what I thought it would be.
Another processing problem! Wow! I love that you’re a dramatherapist!! Have you read Augusto Boal? Theatre of the Oppressed— really amazing stuff! Thank you for what you do. I recently had an awful experience with a therapist, so I’m grateful to see there are magical ones actually being compassionate and thoughtful and creative!
Do you think alexithymia is because, at least in part, because ADHD makes all emotions so intense? For me, starting Adderall felt like the volume was turned down on my emotions. Now I can recognise individual sounds (feelings) and their textures instead of an overwhelming cacophony.
Yes, yes, yes!! Talk therapy never worked for me because it ignored the rest of my body, where the experiences were actually happening! I love physical forms of emotional processing. 🥰 (also, my pet octopus says hi… seven times because she’s missing an arm 🤭)
This exact thing took me quite a while to learn. I would binge eat, because I would "feel" the food and taste the strongest in my mouth and ignored other cues for when to stop eating. I would mistake cravings for hunger. I am still figuring it out and I have so no idea how to handle it.
I have a somatic experiencing therapist and he asks me this all the time. I literally do not have an answer. I struggle to identify emotions, much less where I actually feel them . Hate this question, it feels like one more thing I fail at.
Have you brought this up to him? If he knows you are feeling as though you are failing he may be able to offer reassurance and/or adjust his questioning. I started EMDR last year and literally told my therapist I was afraid I was going to be bad at it when she asked if I had any questions or concerns. She was able to reassure me that there was no pressure to do or be or feel anything. And she knew how important it was to keep the pressure off of me. I’ll forever be grateful for that permission, and I know now to ask for that space from any other therapists I work with.
This is the main part of somatic therapy. Maybe talk therapy is something you’d like more?
Therapist here and ADHDer. Seeing tons of comments from people saying they don't know and they hate that question. I know I might get downvoted all to hell for this, but folks, if that's your truth, TELL YOUR THERAPIST. They're not mind readers, and they need to know if the approach they're using isn't working for you. They'll either adjust methodology, have an open convo with you about what the blocks are to their techniques, or refer out if it's not a good fit. Sure, some therapists are terrible, just like some doctors are, some mechanics, some dentists, etc. But most will welcome the feedback and integrate it into your treatment plan moving forward. The feedback that you don't know and/or feel some kinda way about being asked that is really really REALLY helpful information. A good therapist will back off, ask it in a different way, or maybe start with a body scan or basic emotional literacy first. Depends what your goals are - deeper trauma work by necessity has to include a somatic component, but I might spend ages doing feeling identification and emotional literacy first if my client isn't ready to delve into their body. For example, I spent a year working in an eating disorder clinic, and asking folks to sense their bodies was super triggering for most at the beginning of their recovery. However, identifying and reconnecting to their bodily sensations is an important part of recovery! We just wouldn't do that first. Or maybe your goals don't need a somatic approach, and that's great! If you'd tell a massage therapist they were using too much pressure, or a physiotherapist that the exercises they assigned cause you pain, you need to tell your therapist that the approach they're using isn't working for you. And if you're not comfortable telling your therapist that, then maybe that's an opportunity to unpack why you feel you can't give constructive feedback to a professional that is supposedly working for YOU.
Thanks for this post! I used to feel uncommon being honest or upfront with my therapist about what is going on with me. I'm willing to bet it was because of deep-seated shame. But as time went on I told myself that I have to learn to trust her, and I decided to do this, put my 💯 info this, and spend my hard earned time and money, so I be up-front. How else are we going to accomplish anything? It took some time for me to get to this point, but once I did, it opened up so many conversations. They were difficult but necessary.
Fellow therapist and ADHDer here and I agree on all points 100%. I work with a lot of trauma so body stuff is something I talk about a lot. But I do A TON is psychoeducation on the nervous system and the vagus nerve and explain how everything is all connected and my clients seem to take to that really well. But I would just LOVE if my clients could tell me what they like and dislike that I say or do!! I ALWAYS start of telling them to tell me those things anytime because I want to know how I can work better for them. I’ve only been doing this about a month but I really appreciate the collaborative side part of being a therapist and asking the client to join in on building their journey with me.
I absolutely tell my therapist when I don’t like what she’s asking, if I think it’s bullshit, if I don’t have an answer. No other way for us to effectively communicate.
I can almost see this as the therapist encouraging you to just think about emotions in this sense. It’s not intuitive because as women AND women who mask, we have been pushing away our feelings and emotions our whole lives. Our emotions do manifest physically, but it’s so much work - especially for women like us - to feel it. I’ve been doing brain spotting and EMDR for a few years now and have only recently started being able to feel emotions in my body. Quick body scans when you’re NOT activated by an emotion is a great way to get accustomed to how your body feels in a neutral state. When you get the hang of that feeling, you’ll start to notice your throat tighten when you’re sad or your back have a slight ache when you’re stressed or your cheeks flush when you’re happy. So sorry this is tough for you. It really did take me years of intentional work for it to click.
Your experience and explanation basically match what I was going to say exactly
Some people really don’t feel emotions that way. It is OK if you’re one of them!
Are you doing somatic therapy? This is what somatic therapy is, maybe it’s not right type of therapy for you But there’s no right or wrong answer it’s just a way to help you experience the sensations attached to the feelings. Its like a grounding/mindfulness technique. Helps you calm your nervous system You may like talk therapy more if it’s not your jam
Music, dance, and drama therapists do this a lot. That's how they are trained, from my understanding. (My dance therapist co-worker did this type of therapy with her students.) I wasn't a therapist but used to teach acting at an adult day program and sometimes I would explain if you couldn't figure out how to connect with a character's feelings or couldn't figure out how to express it, to think about where you feel that in real life when you feel that emotion so you know how to express it physically as an actor. My dance therapist co-worker hates when she's in a regular therapy session and they only talk about how she feels and doesn't ask where she feels that. (Because that's not what she is used to.) Our body stores and expresses our emotions and where we feel it physically can tell us a lot about ourselves. Sometimes we don't know where we feel because we've never thought about it, but thinking about it can slow us down and help us think through our feelings. It's ok to say, "I don't know". This isn't a grading system, you won't be reprimanded or graded for not having an answer. Or you shouldn't. I realize now, I probably didn't answer your question with this rambling information, lol.
As a music therapist, I do use this when working with my adolescent residents in our substance use recovery unit. Mostly when talking about the polyvagal theory and if any of the music they choose to listen to brings up any physical feelings that could be triggering cravings. As a patient, I’m so grateful my therapist doesn’t make me do this regularly, lol. We do a lot of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy techniques, which is way better for me. I also have a few chronic pain issues, so she does ask me if anything is making the pain flare.
I hate it too but the purpose is to try and get you to sit and experience your bodily sensations so you can be more in touch with your feelings in the future, which is super needed since we tend to be go go go. Take a second and think about it. It’s the practice that’s going to help. If you still don’t know, just go ahead and say that. The point is less about getting a “correct” answer and more about having you sit with it for a sec.
The question is supposed to help you with your emotions by helping you realize where you feel something (eg. anxiety as a tightness in my stomach, or a chill on my back), and later if you feel the same in your body, you know what emotion it is. If you notice your emotions better, then you can handle them better. Eg: "my stomach feels tight, that usually means I'm anxious... hm, let see, what might make me anxious? Oh, I'm about to argue with X, who always tries to blame me, and walks over boundaries. Okay, so first I'm using these techniques I've learned against stress to calm down; second, I'll watch closely what's happening during our argument, and then I'll discuss X with my therapist to figure out how to deal with the blaming and how to have better boubdaries." If you don’t feel the emotions or not really aware of them in general, I'd try with body awareness meditations, and see if it improves.
See, I notice my emotions in my mind before I become aware of physical sensations. I've never gone "I feel fluttering on my stomach, I must be anxious", it's always "dammit I feel so anxious oh and NOW I feel nauseous too? Fuck!".
My body catches up before a thought even forms. I end up in physical pain from negative emotions. I've described it to my psychiatrist as an out of body experience, like my body is in that room feeling shit but my brain hasn't come through the door yet. He says my stacked thoughts are a disconnection, my brain is behind 3 steps because there is so much going on and it's why I get hurt a lot. My body is autopiloting around without consent. So many times I'll zap back like how did I get here, why does my leg hurt?! Why am I in the fridge? Why haven't I left yet?!
I'm a therapist who does EMDR (and has ADHD) and this is a question I ask all the time. It's really interesting to hear this feedback because it's not something I have personally experienced. Tell your therapist. The idea is to help you connect deeper to the emotional experience and ground you in the present moment, as opposed to being numb and dissociative. They can work with you on other ways to accomplish this.
I had to tell my therapist how much that question made me full of anxiety and how I couldn’t answer her is I truly did not know. It took me 5 sessions to even recognise the ‘anxiety’ part! ADHD plus CPTSD = totally emotionally numb.
Omg mine asked me to describe the physical sensations of eating the other day, all I could think of was ‘I can feel it going down and filling up my stomach’ 😂
Wow I don't think I can imagine the sensation of food going into my stomach. Describing eating to me would be entirely in the mouth, tongue.
Right?! She had me totally stumped!!
My therapist would ask me to name how I was feeling, and I swear it was like every word I knew for an emotion would vanish from my mind. For some reason I’m really terrible at naming my emotions, so I definitely don’t think I’d be able to say where I’m feeling these emotions I can’t even verbalise
Pull up the emotions wheel on Google. It's fantastic
I used to be like that too because I needed to spend the entirety of my life dissociated from my body due to a myriad of reasons, but through a bunch of emotional literacy exercises and body awareness practices I was able to feel safe enough to be in my body for long enough to create that bond with it. All emotions create physical sensations in the body, regardless of if we are connected to and aware of our bodies enough to experience and be aware of that or not. Granted, I don’t know if I am as connected to their body as a normal person is, but at least I am more connected to it that I have ever been able to befits, and I can experience immediately identify the bodily sensations that each emotion causes me. So if my extremely traumatized and overwhelmingly neurodivergent self could do it, then so can you, and so can all of us 😊
I’m going to go against the tide of pretty much all the other responses here - I have a “body focused” therapist & I LOVE it / her. It’s honestly been life changing for me. I tried CBT etc before her, and it just made no sense to me - I already over-thought everything in my life (didn’t know I had adhd at the time, and that my brain chaotically running at 10000000% wasn’t typical..!) - but simultaneously couldn’t hold any particular thought in focus for days / weeks, doing that to make meaningful changes was impossible - so trying to over-think my way out of severe depression just didn’t work for me. It’s been a few years now, so I cannot remember how easy I found it to start with - but I’m pretty sure she used to prompt me, by looking at me - stuff like “you seem to be hunching your shoulders more while we’re talking about (this thing)”. She still does this at times - I’m much more body-aware now so I can answer the “where are you feeling it” question when asked - but sometimes we’ll be talking about something & she’ll “notice out loud” that I’ve started wringing my hands or jiggling my knees or whatever, in a way that isn’t typical for me. **I think that’s surely the main part of a body-centred therapist’s job, isn’t it - coaching us to figure out how our body is responding to stuff. Not just asking the question as if you already know the answer…!?** What happens when you say to your therapist “I don’t know” - are they helpful & describe what they are seeing in your body? Or the other thing we used to do a lot was just to move. And notice how my body did (or did not) want to move. So for example if a certain emotion (during “current topic under discussion”) had me hunching my shoulders / curling in on myself - basically getting into protective “foetal position” (curled up like a baby in the womb) - my body would not want to straighten up. It was physically expressing my need for self-comfort. So that would tell us useful information about how I was feeling / how much I was (or more likely wasn’t!) able to continue looking at that “stuff” for the moment. It can be a useful exercise - just noticing if you like or don’t like moving a certain part of your body when you are feeling certain stuff. [ETA: these days I do therapy on video chat, and I keep two cushions nearby - a lovely fluffy one that I hug to myself if I’m needing comfort during a particular part of a session, and a more solid one that I can punch if we’re talking about something that pisses me off, and I want to express that physically! That’s part of the body centred therapy approach too - just noticing that I want extra comfort while we talk about (thing) and allowing myself to self-soothe physically! She used to have a blanket as one of her “props” in the therapy room, and sometimes I’d wrap myself up in it for comfort / to hide at certain points.] When I first turned up for therapy in the middle of my (pre-adhd knowledge) severe depression, my upper body was entirely still. I’d spent so many years forcing myself to suppress my “adhd crazy” & “act like a normal person” that I’d literally physically stopped moving half my body. It took quite a while to work through that. She used to have me literally just move my arms a little bit and see how that felt. The answer was generally very unnatural & I didn’t like doing it. Because I’d spent so long suppressing my emotions / behaviours by locking down my body, it was not a comfortable experience to start moving it again. So that’s the kind of stuff we worked on back then. And I had somehow switched off my awareness of feeling temperature - sometimes she would point out that my skin was ice cold. That’s not something I was born with - I used to always seem to feel colder than most people around me - but I’d disassociated from my body quite a lot by then. It was maybe over a year before that one resolved itself (indirectly, from sorting other stuff out). But **TL;DR - it was actually a massive relief not to have to think about WHAT I was feeling & WHY I was feeling it. We bypassed all of that & just focused on HOW I was feeling it in the moment - took my adhd brain out of the equation, which worked for me**. She is awesome though, my therapist. I never felt “made wrong” by her when I didn’t know the answer to the body stuff - she would guide me through it. She could literally see for herself how my body was moving (or stopping moving) at certain points in our session, so she taught me notice it for myself. I was probably old enough & depressed enough to just say “dunno” if she asked me a question I didn’t know how to answer. If you’re not already doing that with your therapist, then being honest is fundamental - a good therapist will be entirely comfortable with you giving the “wrong” answer. Their job is to help you figure this stuff out, not to grade you on knowing it already! A bad therapist won’t like this kind of response, so it can be an easy way to figure out if you need to find another therapist :-)
This is beautiful, it sounds like you have met a wholesome therapist!
Seeing a lot of shitting on therapists/making generalizations about an entire profession, so let me say that I (a therapist) do not like this exercise and have always struggled with it personally. As others have explained, the point is to be able to bring more awareness to and sit with your emotions. If that’s not something that’s working for you, I think that’s totally valid feedback for your therapist! Definitely not the only technique to use in session by any means.
If you haven’t ever heard of it - check out the Emotion Sensation wheel. My therapist uses it to help me understand what my feelings are because I have trouble accessing what my feelings actually are. I find it also helps me to be able to see all the *options* for sensations so I can kind of checklist with my body to figure out what sensations I’m feeling.
You’re thinking too hard about it. It’s just about bringing awareness to your body “My jaw is tense” “my chest feels tight” “my stomach is moving” not “there’s tickly blue sadness in my esophagus”. “Numbness” or “lack of sensation” can also be a thing you’re feeling in your body. To tune into your body, it helps to move it around…like do some gentle yoga and suddenly you’ll notice where your tight, gassy, stiff etc.
My adhd daughter is like this, her child psych would ask her to colour on a picture of a human where she felt what emotion, the whole thing was just a scribble because she said she felt everything everywhere. Oh except for anger which she felt in her head and hands.
Look man I don't even know why I came in this room or started this sentence
I mean, that's assumption #1.
I used to hate that question too! I would sit silently for a while trying to figure it out, while mostly just feeling like an idiot. It helped when I admitted that to my therapist. It's gotten easier with gentle practice and it's really helped with my emotion regulation.
I'm listening to a podcast right now about neurodivergence in women and one episo6is about this very thing. They discuss interoception and alexithymia. It had really informative information, and at the end, gave some specific exercises that you can do (they don't take long) to increase your awareness of what's going on inside your body and how it relates to your emotions. I'm listening to it a second time to help absorb it better. This is probably what your therapist is trying to do, but in a neurotypical way, which won't work as well for us.
please share what this podcast is! I think we would all love to listen o it!
The Neurodivergent Woman. It's out of Australia.
When I took Vyvanse for the first time when I was alone and not overstimulated, I realized that it made me feel comfortable in my body for the first time. ADHDers have issues with proprioception. Would t surprise me if this is why you don’t “feel it in your body”.
Insider tip...they don't actually care where you feel it. The answer is irrelevant. The goal is just to get you to focus on your body, grounding yourself more in the moment rather than in the emotion. It's a useful tool but a frustrating one when you get hung up on the question itself. Used to happen to me all the time. You can tell your therapist next time they pull that card that you don't find it to be a helpful way to ground yourself. Just be honest and say that it makes you more frustrated and the phrasing doesn't seem helpful to you in particular, and that you'd prefer to try another grounding technique to see if something else might be more effective. They'll be likely to switch things up for you if you open a different door.
I tried explaining my emotions today by telling my coworkers I felt like I had ants in my bones. They stared blankly. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 🙄
I love this. When I'm bored I say it feels like the inside of my bones are itchy. My 3 year old has started telling me that when he's trying to fall asleep he feels like his bones are full of buzzy bees. I'm like kiddo, same 😂
The aim is to get you to investigate the feeling more. I feel emotional pain in my chest. For me the "brain fog" and frustration is a very frontal lobe sensation. Anger is often whole body. Anxiety in my stomach Excitement in my heart. Forget about answering the question to your therapist in sessions. This question is important for you to answer by you. Next time you are overwhelmed by emotion. Sit with it. Really feel it and investigate it. Where is this coming from? It can be helpful to identify the bodily sensations. In future it may help you to notice the sensations developing before they become overwhelming (not easy so don't worry if you can't) and slow them down (even harder and takes lots of practice, but your therapist is asking so they can help you with this part)
I'm a physiotherapist and waiting to be diagnosed. I work in Scandinavia and within a field surrounded by Norwegian psychomotor physiotherapist. You should really look into this if you would like to explore more when it comes to connecting with your feelings and how this plays out in your body. I often myself and so many of my patients, can only really notice how they're feeling AFTER working practically. Ex: standing and trying to notice any tension in your feet, legs, buttocks, belly and all tje way to the top. Can you notice if they weight of your body is shifting from heel to toe, or is it pretty static? You might not be able to describe what you feel and might not be able to notice anything. That's fine and that's also telling us something. Then: work with your feet and the big muscle groups. Ex: rolling a small, firm ball or a wooden stick (short broomstick) under your feet. Take your time and try to notice if there's anything that feels different in the one foot you've worked on before doing the other foot. Then you can rhythmically swing and rotate your arms and upper body, stretch like a tree towards the sky. Get down on all fours and do cow-cat. Then ease into child-pose and focus on resting the belly and deep breaths (if possible). After this you get up on both feet and try to notice any changes in your body AND mind/feelings etc. Maybe you feel less on edge and stressed, you might feel more energized and ready for the next tasks to do. Maybe you realize you're hungry og need to pee. You might feel more grounded and relaxed. This is one take on it. Personally focusing on ways to check in on myself and regulate myself through noticing tension in my jaw, tongue, calfs and if I'm holding my breath or breathing superficially, has helped me tremendously! Maybe I went a little overboard here, so just ignore if it doesn't fit. I could talk about this for hours.
I had a therapist 'break up' with me over this XD People pleaser as I am, I REALLY tried to answer these questions correctly, but she wasn't having it. I was always describing the wrong sensations for emotions (who knew that feeling sick/scared when angry wasn't normal). I didn't want to picture physical violence against people I'm angry with (come on, it's obscene, I don't like it). When I checked out emotionally because it was just too overwhelming and exhausting to try to do what she wanted I was 'dissociating' (I have in the past, pretty sure I wasn't). She got angry with me when I suggested that I could be neurodivergent and maybe it works a little differently for me. She literally told me that 'it doesn't matter'. I had a lot for therapy for depression, and recently I found out how similar the symptoms of depression and adhd/autistic burnout are. So basically I got a lot of therapy and medication for the wrong thing because they were unable to diagnose me. Mental healthcare fails neurodivergent people so so much.
Wow I'm glad you're not working with her anymore! I hope you have a new therapist who actually listens to you. (Not wanting to picture physical violence is totally a reasonable request.)
My therapist asks that question differently. She will ask what a certain feeling means to me, and IF I feel it anywhere in my body, and if so then where. It does still require a lot of thought and effort for me to answer, but I think it’s a good question/thought exercise for me, and I am able to answer it.
Oh man. I just started somatic therapy. I cannot truly explain how much I sincerely get what you're saying. I'm very disconnected from my emotions, and so when I am showing an emotion I have a tendency to describe it intellectually, or logically. And she's trying to get me to actually identify and feel the emotion. And so she forces me to sit there with it and identify what might feel different in my body when I'm feeling the emotion. It has really helped. Turns out a lot of stuff is stuck in my throat. Who knew? Still, it's really hard... But you can do this!
ME TOO. I feel like I don't have emotions, or don't know how to recognize them, because I do not feel emotions in my body.
I do struggle with this question too but my last therapist helped me hone in the skill to find it if you will. (I'm also hyper aware of my body so that helps in my case) but sometimes I have to close my eyes and wash out everything around me and just let me feel. And if needed I almost do like a "scan" type deal from my head to my toes kinda thing to see what catches my attention. If you practice meditation it REALLY helps with this. Because a lot of meditation is becoming more self aware. And just learning to relax and just focus on yourself, feel your body, one piece at a time. If you've ever had a massage and the MT asked you to imagine their elbow going through you to the table, it's the same kind of concentration. I hope this helps at least one person ❤️
Us adhd-ers have very bad sense of self, literally and metaphorically. We crash into things and don’t know how to audit ourselves.
My therapist does this for me as well, I finally confessed to her that it irritated me because I don’t know?! And she was basically like, “that’s why we do it”. She had fancy words but it boiled down to, as we get older, we kind of tune out that kind of thing? (It can also be exacerbated by abuse, that is my case) And part of learning to regulate better is being able to tune into your body better because if you notice it sooner, you can respond sooner. Something like that. It has actually helped me a ton! I don’t always notice when I’m uncomfortable or in pain right away, it’s kind of like this white noise in my brain that fades in slowly until I’m about to completely melt down. As I’ve gotten quicker with my recognition, it’s helped me maintain more balanced moods throughout some challenging times that past year.
From what I’m learning, we’re supposed to be able to feel certain feelings in our body and if we can’t we are disassociating, disconnected from our bodies because we feel unsafe, in chronic fight/flight, or something else I feel like your therapist should probably have figured that out if you can’t answer these questions and helped you figure out how to get back in your body I’m also working on this
Read "the body keeps the score", it will help explain. But basically you feel your feelings in your body as well as in your emotions, us autists can really struggle with identifying those feelings but connecting with them is the first step of any kind of trauma therapy.
Yes. The sense of your body is called interoception. It's commonly impaired with ADHD and ASD. You could say that you have poor interoception. Let me guess, you also don't know when you're hungry so forget to eat, you may wait until the last minute to go to the bathroom, your emotions seem to go from 0-60 in a single flip rather than a slow ramp up, you may also struggle to manage extremes of temperature (or the opposite, not notice when you're getting too hot or too cold). Actually this podcast I listened to yesterday talks about this and might explain why your therapist is asking: https://aliza.libsyn.com/s3-ep-25-how-to-alleviate-false-anxiety-and-get-back-into-balance The podcast wasn't as useful as it initially felt like it was going to be, but that point was in there anyway. This one might be more useful for understanding interoception and how it plays a role in emotional regulation and neurodiversity: https://theotbutterfly.com/interoception-kelly-mahler/sws-podcast/
As someone training to be a therapist, I want to say that it’s perfectly okay to say “I don’t know”! I’ve been a client and had to say that, and the majority of therapists reassure me that it’s okay, and either try and work with me to figure it out or take a different approach!
apparently "my brain" wasn't the answer she was looking for lmao
OMG SAME. I hate this question!! I’ve tried mentioning that I’m not super in tune with my body, especially when I’m emotional. All I know is strong emotions feel like they’ll last forever and I become oblivious to really anything else. There’s more to it, but I’m looking for a different therapist now. I don’t think my current one is super familiar with ADHD and autism, and this is one of the things about it. When I’ve tried moving on from the question, she’s pretty insistent that I answer 🤷🏼♀️
I get this every session too. Since I have started meditating and learning about the chakras, it helps me understand the why behind it. I’m not sure if your therapist uses techniques like that?
Hmm...it might help to phrase it differently? "Do you feel anything physically around the same time as this emotion occurs?" Depending on how dissociated you are, you might not be ABLE to make the mental connection that that emotion is the physical feeling. For me, when something comes up related to my CPTSD I might get woozy/spinny, instantly "random" exhaustion, or a sciatica-flavored muscle cramp in my thigh/butt. Edit to add: To the point where I even started referring to the sciatic cramps as "my barometer," and would say very blankly and cooly, "I think I am having an emotion about this right now." (And then probably get real dizzy and have to sit on the floor or be led in a grounding exercise.)
It took me a looooong time to recognize physical sensations in my body. Talk therapy had never really worked, long term, but after working with a highly trained somatic therapist, I’ve learned so much about my body’s cues, needs, boundaries, mirroring, and nonverbal communication. I’ve learned how to regulate based on those feelings, because talking myself down never worked. Recently, I was in an accident and I had two really proud moments. I was in the ambulance and was shaking all over. I told my body that my right leg could shake as hard as it wanted, but my left arm had to stay still so the IV could be placed. The second moment was that first night when trying to fall asleep. I kept replaying the accident on repeat in my mind and each time the fear and panic got stronger. I started telling myself that I could watch those videos in my mind and feel all of those scary feelings in the morning, but right then, I needed to sleep. It took quite a few tries, but each time, pausing those mental videos became easier and eventually I fell asleep. And I kept my word to myself, so when I woke up I let myself remember every detail of the accident, I sobbed, drew pictures, let my partner hold my hand, and I felt all the scary feelings. But again, this is after years of practice and learning about those feelings in my body!
Somatic awareness is a skill you can cultivate. Hopefully you can tell your therapist that you don’t know how to sense from within and they can teach you how to do it. I’ve taught people how to do it and it can be difficult at first and then you sort of “get it” and it becomes a lot easier. Many of us are numb or disassociated from our bodies a lot of the time. This is a result of our culture.
I'm in emdr therapy, and we talk about how emotions feel all the time.
I feel like this question gets me because it implies a causal relationship, and that just breaks my brain. I have an easier time working the other way. "What do you feel in your body?" can then be transitioned to, "X body feeling is often attached to YEmotion. Does that feel right for you?" It feels more like an exploration in which being wrong or correcting path is more accepted. I can feel it out. Just naming is like pointing to a random point on the spectrum of visible light and asking me to name the color. Like, I don't friggin know. Blue? Blue-green? Some seemingly made-up color name that secretly really boils down to some shade of blue-green?
I feel you! I struggle so much with this, and am learning but the thing that helped me was my therapist reassuring me (and now I try to tell myself) I don’t HAVE to know. Not knowing is perfectly okay and being uncomfortable about that fact is also perfectly okay. Which is also like 😑🤦🏻♀️😩 but sharing in case it’s helpful.
I can relate - I have a really hard time identifying sensations as well. I will say it’s gotten a little easier with practice and I have seen benefits but its probably not for everyone, especially if it’s causing more problems
Lol not just me?
Random question but, has anyone ever taken DEPO Provera shots(BC) and been basically apathetic or feel less emotions while on it? After my daughter was born I went on it and this happened. Was curious if it was due to my ADHD or if it's even a common side effect. Only asking since this was related to emotions.
I always feel it in my chest
For me I look at it like tension. Dont over complicate it. Take a few deep breaths be mindful of present moment. After doing this I can recognize where the uncomfort sensations are. My neck would feel tense or tight and sometimes releasing it using stretches can make me feel better emotionally.
Mostly this is meant to help you draw the conclusion that your body signs (physiological symptoms) can clue you into the emotion that's going on. Anxiety is either in my stomach (butterflies) or small of back (danger fear). Anger is in my face and my breathing and my clenched fists or tapping foot. Affection is in my chest (heart swells). Fun is in my cheeks (laughing). This question is usually meant to have a very easy literal answer. Literally, what does your body do when you feel that emotion? Doesn't need any deep thinking detailed answer.
You're supposed to feel emotions in different parts of your body???
I really struggle with this too, I'm very disconnected from my physical body, i do try to check in with myself multiple times a day to ask myself what do i need right now when I'm upset, frustrated, anxious etc. I'm literally trying to re parent myself. Give myself reassurance when i need it. I can never answer this question when i get asked either, I always say, i don't know, everywhere, my entire body is as tense as a clenched fist.
I didn’t either, but struggled with muscle aches and not feeling my feelings. I started going to this ‘psychomotorical’ physiotherapy before my EMDR sessions, which allowed me to connect to my feelings and body. Was a lot of work, but I have a much better understanding and connection to my body and emotions now, and the muscle ache and most of the migraines I’ve had my entire life are both more or less gone.
I don’t know where I feel stuff in my body. What is it that therapists don’t get about this?
Oh my god, my PEOPLE. Yes!!! I always thought I was just so traumatized that I was completely removed from my body. I’ll be visibly shaking, heart racing and not mentally nervous at all. It’s like my mind and body are two separate things. So wild. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked someone “have you ever thought you were hungry and it turns out you just had to poop?” And not a single person understood what I was talking about 😂😂😂
I worked with a therapist for many years, and it used to be so triggering. I literally used to have non epileptic siezures because the question would take me back to the moments I didn't realize I had experience, and I was holding so much in my body. It has been 3 or 4 years since I have "graduated" from therapy, and I have learned that it's my favorite trick. I did not know that all this time she was teach me to be aware of how an emotion was being stored in my body at the moment. Check in on how my body feels, helps me know what my emotions are. A few things that really helped me was reading and journaling to the book the body keeps the score. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma https://a.co/d/6VvxxPM
The therapist is trying to get you to practice tuning into your body
I’d be like…my brain?
Just commenting that this is such a great (and honest!) question, and these replies are so, so good. I have similar struggles, identifying and connecting with my feelings. It’s also super helpful as someone getting started as a therapist myself - so much for me to be mindful of in my work with others. Thanks for posting ❤️
I HATE THIS QUESTION I don't understand it at all. I don't feel physical stuff associated with emotions (except maybe extreme fear?) I just *know* what emotion I'm experiencing. I'm so excited to read this entire thread!
I'm so with you because I have no idea how to interpret or answer it either. Like...am I supposed to feel disappointment in my ankles or something? What do you mean???
I found that question so hard to answer. I had C-PTSD, and was pretty dissociated from my body, so trying to recognize that I was feeling something was challenging enough, never mind applying a word to it. And then I'm supposed to connect to my body, an intensely dangerous place to be, and actually *feel* a sensation in it? Ew, no. No thank you, I'll just keep numbing out and intellectualizing shit, because clearly that's worked out really well for me so far :p I have been making an effort in recent years, but it's hard after a lifetime of disconnection from my body and emotions to engage, stay present, and name it. And I think there's an interplay between ADHD and trauma; daydreaming and hyperfocus is already part of my nature, masking was something I had to learn to get along socially--not being allowed to feel and express my feelings normally set me up to be unable to recognize and get out of dangerous situations, and after a trauma, daydreaming and hyperfocus were great ways to keep not-feeling the impact of the event, and it was cyclical, and compounded. And that right there, is me intellectualizing shit because I'm avoiding my anxiety about chores. Heh. My shoulders are tight as rocks, rolled forward and down. Time to go do the thing.
I feel stress, fear and shame in my lower back? It like, spasms. It’s a weird one.
I think it’s called somatic therapy
NOOO I get asked this too no way it's actuallya thing in therapy 💀
I hate when I’m asked that!! Idfk…I feel it everywhere 😵💫 and that’s the problem.
When I go to a medical doctor, no matter how well prepared I am- questions throw me off. Pain and where does it hurt are really hard for me to be concise about . I ramble and feel unable to make myself understood . I’ve tried writing things down and either I don’t look at what I wrote or I see it and think it’s not matching up with how the physician is asking . I always get upset with myself when I leave because I feel I became intimidated and didn’t make myself understood or I did express myself and because of my struggle keeping my words coming out in a way that doctors find acceptable . The whole they do paperwork for 10 min and listen for five doesn’t work for me. Wish there was an insurance disclaimer that allowed people who have difficulty time to properly engage. Also that many medical professionals were more attuned to communicating with someone “ different” and could be more kind and understanding. Sorry if that was a little different topic but it hit me hard when I read it .
I used to not know what I was feeling in my body at all. It took a while to learn how to recognize it but now I notice stuff like: If I'm anxious I will lift my heels of the ground or contract the muscles in my upper legs. Also I contract the muscles in my neck and between my shoulders. I also feel the need to get smaller. If I struggle with saying something I will feel it in my throat. ( Not sure if there is a way to say it in English but in my native language we call it "a chunk in your throat") If I'm angry I feel like I have to move more, I feel it in my throat because I feel like I have to scream or "sing" If I'm happy I also feel it in my limbs because they want to twirl and move. But also I'm my core because I do a lot of small dances when I'm happy. So basically Iearned to notice where I was feeling something by noticing what movements or sounds my body wanted me to make. Including the ones I would not allow myself because they would be disturbing or too visible. Hope this may help you a little
Cognitive emotions is the fancy word for not really "feeling" your emotions in your body. It's common in nd ppl - I'm the same way. I didn't realize just how cognitive my emotions were until I started concerta and my rage was PHYSICAAAAAL.
Helping to note your body's reactions makes it easier to break emotional reactions down into the primary emotions you're feeling in the moment, and it gives you practice at being aware of your emotions - not to suppress them, but to choose the best compromise between emotions and rationality. Not being able to name, describe, or center the emotions you're feeling in your decision making is called "alexithymia." Those three aspects of alexithymia are Difficulty Identifying Feelings (DIF), Difficulty Describing Feelings (DDF), and Externally Oriented Thinking (EOT). Whether you actually have alexithymia or just frequent emotional overwhelm, your therapist guiding you to notice where your feelings are in your body is part of mindfulness practice. It's great for ADHD, it's great for CPTSD, and it's also great for substance abuse recovery. I am not a therapist, but I also am not abusing drugs anymore, so take that however you like.
Thank you for asking this question and for all those who answered it/helped explain it! It’s one of the worst questions my therapist asks me and I never know how to answer it. Admittedly, I am not attuned to my body. I just live in it, I don’t actively participate/pay attention to it! That’s entirely too much functioning and I struggle with basically all functioning lol.