Can any of you turn off your emotions?

No, and nor should you. That said, you need to find appropriate ways to deal with the painful ones. That is traditionally done in a support group or with a therapist whom you trust.

These are safe havens where you can rage, vent, throw things, weep, shriek, laugh and let it all hang out.

And there you can learn tricks to put some feelings that you might not want to display in public on hold, or in storage or in overnight-parking for the interval.

I am a female, I am a breast cancer survivor and I have spent very useful time with both a cancer support group and a therapist. Best money I ever spent.

@gailcalled I apologize. What I meant by “Cancer” is the horoscope. They tend to be more emotional I’ve read? But thank you for your response. I appreciate it =)

Speechless.

No, but I do know how to deal with them in some situations. For example, when I’ve had little sleep I can easily get annoyed and be angry at people. I’ve learned to not act on my anger at those moments and just say nothing. I might not be the most pleasant company around those times, but at least I’m not shouting at and insulting people.

I shouldn’t say I “shut them off” (that can cause problems of its own) but I’m usually very good at compartmentalizing them when the need arises. I do it in large part by being able to recognize triggered emotions before they overwhelm me, that gives me an opportunity to disassociate myself from them and think more critically about my response rather than just reacting. However I believe it is important not to deny emotions, but rather embrace and experience them fully and allow them to pass.

I learned how to do all of that through practice. Start small, with little things. It doesn’t have to be a negative emotion either, learning how to compartmentalize, embrace, and let go of positive emotions is helpful too and sometimes a good place to start. Practice with every opportunity and do a little introspective digging, the more you understand yourself the easier it becomes. Meditation can go a long way too.

No one can turn off their emotions.

What you can do, with a lot of work, is not display them quite so publicly.

You need to feel your emotions to allow them to pass through you and out. Attempting to “not feel’ them simply backs them up in your body leading to emotional explosions later on.

Yes, I can turn off my emotions at least in the heat of a moment. The problem with this particular skill is that when I employ it, it tends to lead people to think of me as a cold, heartless bitch. This kind of thinking tends to escalate bad situations, not the road to healthy relationships. In all honesty your best bet is to learn to deal with your emotions in a healthy way so you are not so inclined to flip the switch to turn them off.

Yes, it is sometimes necessary to shut off your emotions when you are an EMS worker. You cannot give the patients the best care if you let your emotions get in the way.

Especially when you have to hurt them to help them.

We cannot turn off our emotions nor are we meant to, that is part of our radar of life. However these emotions can become damaged with abuse.

On the other hand, we can learn with lots of practice to ride higher than our emotions. The basic training for this, it seems to me, is that when we are in a placid, not stressed place, we imagine ourselves provoked over this and that (whatever the hot buttons are) and then we interject a fact/truth that is higher than the emotional whap and we can over a period of time have ourselves preconditioned to think a certain thought when we are in real time that will override the emotion. A real victory is when we don’t register the emotion on the outside that we are feeling on the inside.

I’m actually very skilled at this, I don’t recommend it, it makes everything suck more. For me to do this, I have to look at the entire universe in a very cold way, and as it actually works, I can only conclude that the cold view is true to me, and I don’t like it.

I can’t turn them off but I can suppress them when I need to. I was very down all last week and had to teach a class on Friday. I wasn’t sure if I could do it but when I started, “teacher me” kicked in and I was able to relax and teach well.

:|

Nope. Can’t do it.
I can distract myself from it for short periods of time if I really need to, but in the end those feelings need to be dealt with.
The only way I have read or heard of people being able to do that is if they ignore them in a cold hearted kind of way. But then again, those are they type of people that have no emotions so I would have to redact that.

Being human, I don’t think that’s possible.

I mean this in the nicest possible way & certainly with no hostility. Having just read the second post from @gailcalled, i’m laughing long & loud. Genuinely one of the funniest moments on here in a while. Just thought i’d share that :¬)

It is not possible for me to turn off emotion as I’m quite an emotional driven person…

Just ask Keanu.

@ucme: And perfectly spelled, punctuated, edited and presented.

@gailcalled Well it’s only the one word, but yeah, you could say that.

Your feelings are your feelings and probably impossible to “turn off.” what you can do, is choose how. You will react to them.
It takes practice. Anticipate the feeling. (I’m sure that there are a few that are giving you problems.) acknowledge the feeling, and then respond (dint react) to the feeling.
Maybe the response is to take a deep breath and walk away. Maybe the response is to say, “I’m feeling to emotional right now to respond appropriately, so I’ll get back to you. ”
The key is, to realize your triggers and have a planned response rather than spew your emotion all over everyone.

You can have an ECO switch installed (emotional cut-off), but I don’t advise it. The ECO is used on the planet Vulcan only in the most serious of circumstances when children simply cannot be taught to take the loss of an aggie in stride.

Absent the ECO, you can also practice zen meditation, which accomplishes much the same thing only without the operation and the danger of infection.

I usually just go crying to my best friend, and she’s always there to listen.
I, too, teach (I’m a teaching assistant) and I’ve had to go in feeling crappy. But teaching always makes me feel good and takes my mind off of things. In a worst case scenario, burying yourself in work is a good way both to take your mind off of emotions rather than dwelling on them AND getting things done.

I’ve heard of forms of meditation that dissociate you from your feelings, but I’m not necessarily sure that is the best idea. People have gone to Zen Buddhist retreats wanting to cure themselves of overly strong emotions, and come back depressed or dissociated.

I can’t . I suggest you go for a walk when you are feeling overwhemed emotionally.

For a brief period I can, such as when someone needs help and for me to get all upset would just make matters worse. It’s partly a matter of experience. Over time, we all learn to do it to a certain extent.

One example of an early lesson is when someone gets startled or surprised. Our first instinct is to run away, but we learn very quickly to just hold our ground, and laugh about it. My two year grandson used to run and cry when the washing machine buzzed while he was in the garage, but now he just looks at the machine and laughs. He is learning to control his emotions.

I can hide some of my emotions but that often as I want. I can mimic emotions though. So when someone tells me something that has to put a smile on my face and fill me with joy I can look indifferent. When I hear really sad news I can act the same.

Turn off, no, I can suppress them, I can sometimes bypass them and I can hide them but I can’t really turn them off. Being able to not feel isn’t something anyone should really strive for either, emotional balance is a much better goal. I’m not saying that you should just let what you’re feeling at any given time be what dictates your course of action, thought and reason should be the deciding factors in your decision making but you should at least let what you’re feeling breath instead of just burying it down and pretending you’re not feeling.

I can suppress them. No one can turn off their emotions.

But I do sometimes control and hide my emotion then until one point I exploded…

I’m too open with my feelings. It annoys people. That’s why I have one loyal friend who will never get annoyed or exasperated with my tirades.

Yes, very easily. I developed this technique over centures of hard work. Be well, and prosper.

Yours,

Spock.

Turning off usually means suppressing them like mad. I’ve been through too many traumatic situations and through those situations I gained the ability to not react until much later.

This helped me in the short term but not the long term. I’ve been through years of therapy to learn how to let those emotions out without blinking out of existence that’s how it feels anyway.

The best thing you can do is learn coping mechanisms to deal with your emotions when they start peaking. Take a deep breathe (or three) and/or walk away to calm down. Buy yourself a punching bag and have at ‘er. Scream into a pillow. Go for a run.

I can’t shut mine off either. It’s not a good thing, I know that much. In order to get past a feeling, you need to feel the feeling through. That’s the only healthy way to get it out. Otherwise, I agree with some people above who said you’ll just be suppressing stuff and before you know it, you will have a dance with something called “The Garbage Bag Effect.” This is when you carry around all the things you never completely processed and they all fall out and you won’t know til your standing in its wake. I am like you…I wish I didn’t have to feel at all. At almost 32, I should know better, but I would rather have never had something than to have lost it. Right now I am going through something terribly painful and I wish not to feel it, but no matter what I do to distract myself, I cannot make it stop or fade. I haven’t slept in weeks, I felt like I was gonna blink at work and end up looking up at people from the floor at work. I’m sure not eating isn’t helping either. Take better care of yourself than some of us do. Learn to love and to comfort yourself.

I wonder if you didn’t process it would that happen. I mean the garbage bag effect? Does that often lead to nervous breakdowns?

I can’t ‘turn off’ my emotions, but I find that when I’m directly confronted with an issue, I usually don’t process it very internally. I understand and I react, but the actual emotional impact doesn’t usually go very deep until I actually have a minute to focus on it.
It’s not necessarily always a good thing though. I feel like a lot of my reactions are kind of shallow because I don’t actually feel the impact of a lot of situations until later.
I’m also a female Cancer by the way

@martianspringtime I think I can somewhat relate. I mean, in some situations. I’m a Pisces though so I’m the most emotional sign.. but I’m also on the cusp with Aquarius, which is one of the most emotionally detached.

In some situations I can. What I end up doing is stuffing them down and then they come out later on usually when I’m alone and can go off. It’s something I’ve trained myself to do.I feel things deeply and am sensitive which for me is both a curse and a blessing.

@emeraldisles I am the same…

You don’t really need to shut off your feelings but you need to learn that you don’t always have to, nor should you always, act on your feelings.

It’s better to learn how to avoid getting into situations that may be harmful for you, that you may be tempted to enter because you have strong feelings.

If you can learn to say no to friends who want you to do something dangerous, like driving while drunk, or getting high on drugs because everyone’s doing it and you want to fit in, you will be doing yourself a valuable service in the long run.

If you can learn to spot the red flags, with regards to romantic relationships, and then walk away from those people before they harm you, you will be doing yourself a huge mental favor down the line. It’s very hard, especially with people whom you find physically attractive, or with people who have given you compliments or told you what you want to hear.

If you can learn to keep calm under pressure, whether it be at work, or when you are driving in terrible traffic, you will do yourself and others a valuable favor, by being reasonable. If you can learn to control what you say and how you say it, you can avoid making comments that you’ll regret later and you’ll avoid inadvertently hurting people’s feelings by simply blurting out things based upon your emotional state at any given moment. You’ll also be less likely to be involved in a car accident if you can learn to drive safely and competently even though you are tempted, by emotions, to run other people off the road or to flip them off or to tailgate them or to flash your lights at them.

So in the long run, it’s better not to turn off your emotions but to be able to learn to control your behavior with regards to the temptations that your emotions will inevitably throw into your path. If you can learn to do the right thing, despite the urge to do the wrong thing or the expedient thing, you will be doing yourself and society a huge favor.

im a fan of horoscopes myself. But do realise that humans are emotional beings in general. Its not a question of ‘turning of’ your emotions, its more a question of self control. But that comes through experience and maturity. The more you open up, the more you invite people in to your problems, and usually people have nothing nice to say about that :)
Just be who you are…with self control :)!
Hope this helps.

What really sucks is not being capable of doing that, but being in the presence of someone doing it to you

@spykenij My best friend often complains that her BF shuts down and shuts her out.

@thesparrow – The only way I ever dealt with someone who shut down was to stop talking to her. That was then, but this is now. Did it once to my first girlfriend and she broke in less than 3 hours. Communication is vital and it’s the key.

I haven’t heard of girls shutting down, but then again I often employ ridiculously biased gender suppositions on people.

@thesparrow I can shut off my emotions and turn into a completely heartless bitch. I am actually sometimes surprised at how incredibly nasty I can be in those moments. If my feelings are hurt badly enough I will retreat, regroup, and come out swinging and looking for blood. Thankfully it doesn’t happen very often and DH and I get better and better at handling our conflicts before it gets anywhere near that point.

Whos DH?

@thesparrow DH = darling husband.