Reply to S/O: Does talking about negative emotions help you?

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[quote=Anonymous]I was tempted to talk about my own thing in the thread where a poster was talking about her husband ignoring her to talk about his own thing. Which would have been bad manners on my part.

I am truly interested whether I'm an outlier or not when I said that I don't recall talking about my negative feelings ever resulting in my feeling better or some other improved outcome. One response said that this is not normal. Another said that identifying feelings and then talking about them strips them of their power. I totally agree that identifying them helps deprive them of their power. But I do that internally. For example, sometimes I'll feel some sort of free floating anxiety or negativity. If I focus on it, I'm usually able to identify the source and then -- even if I don't resolve the issue itself -- the negative feeling is no longer so pervasive.

But telling someone else about these things doesn't seem to help. Talking about being mad or sad or anxious usually doesn't have much effect at all. But if it has any effect, it would be to make me feel more mad, sad, or anxious.  And, often as not, expressing these feelings to someone else results in a negative response from them. In that case, they feel bad, I feel worse, and nothing productive has taken place.

Maybe the negative responses from other people is somewhat of a gender thing? Coming from men, anger is scary and sadness or anxiety are seen as signs of weakness?

Or maybe I'm just abnormal. Wouldn't be the first time! [/quote]

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