Map of where people feel emotions in the body

If a person has plenty of sympathetic arousal they will be feeling all those activated emotions. If the parasympathetic dominates they won't. So @shiningstar your level of sympathetic response can make you feel what someone without that level of sympathetic activation cannot feel.

Thank you for clarifying, I'm not very clear atm the struggle is real. I feel that life is richer without the numbing, I am trying to understand things I don't understand yet, and really wish it was easier to get through it all but it is what it is. I'm thankful for the process but it's a lot.

i agree - anything to protect my heart! and the more I do that, the emptier that space is, because it does not feel and therefore does not get "exercised". It's really like a muscle, the more emotions you feel and let in your heart, the stronger it becomes when the workout is over. the less you use it, the more the atrophy, and the thinner/weaker the muscle gets. The emotions are "kept in" because I'm not letting it all hang out for people to see, and that includes myself. The less I see/feel them, the emptier I became or so I thought. When I got "broken" it all came out; i was never really empty empty, it was just all hidden away somewhere else i couldn't see nor access. 

I also opened up to the wrong people in the past few years, those who have cognitive empathy but not emotional (this was discussed in another thread). I keep thinking it's my fault for not being normal, and that I didn't know how to do these things (sharing, activating, being vulnerable) automatically like everyone else seems to be doing. The truth is I opened myself up randomly to people, and those who took advantage of it were those who were unhealthy as well. it was a huge lesson in itself. These days, i try to give myself the space to feel things, and maybe share them with someone else. I no longer feel the need to open my guts up to others to form a connection with them, if anything, they need to earn my trust first before I truly do that. And it is not just for self-protection, it is also out of respect for someone else's well-being that I do not unleash potential triggers on them during my sharing. 

has that been your experience as well? What did happened after you opened up?

@inmourning what is this struggle you speak of? the struggle of having this somatic experience or the struggle of understanding all of it or the struggle of not deactivating so you can feel? i also wished things were easier to get through, but there is also joy in the process of discovering yourself all over again, and if it is not there, well, that's an opportunity to develop this part the way you want it. it IS a lot, for anybody, and it's a process that require patience and an easygoing attitude towards it, like having fun with finding out what your map is. that way, it's really more of a discovery process where you reacquaint yourself with yourself, and that is so much more enjoyable. I wish you luck in this. 

@inmourning
Okay that makes a lot of sence, that you've also got some trauma. Wether it's developmental trauma or chok  trauma, stress or all of the above

A lot of people are walking around with some kind of
trauma, that they just don't know about.

If you remember Peter Levines definition of trauma - then we can't just say to other people/to ourselves: "oh, that's nothing special" because we all react differently.

And you also know Diane's definition of desorganised

Anxiety starts in my stomachs and radiates out.