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juliaoceania -> RE: Control (5/4/2007 11:05:58 PM)
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quote:
So, with the backstory out of the way, my question is this (mainly directed at my fellow dominants, but I very much encourage anyone and everyone with a perspective on the subject to post here): do you feel that the control we so highly prize can be an emotional liability? Is the sacrifice of feelings, for lack of a better phrase, worth it? I'm sure that there are some dominants out there who are capable of the sort of feeling that I'm not, and I'd like to hear from you, as well.
For many years I was shut down emotionally. I lived in my head. I did not cry that much although I had a hot temper sometimes. My saving grace was my son, or I think I would have become totally in my head. Dealing with emotions was just too much for me. I intellectualized everything, which only got worse when I was in college. Right toward the end of college I began to have panic attacks which went great with my pre-existing phobia of driving. I relate this because it is related to pushing it down. The phobia started when my father passed away, and I shut down my crying response.
Now as I have aged, the pain of keeping in the pain increased, no longer was I numb, I was a basketcase there for a while, and then something happened... I cried. I thought either the crying would heal me or kill me. I could not stop crying... I would lay in bed and bawl, soulful bawling. My family worried, but I told them it was something I just had to do... I went to therapy (which did not help, but the crying sure did).
I felt stupid at times crying like this, because they were the tears I missed out on over two decades before, because I was told on a couple of occasions not to cry then. But a weird coincidence, I was reading Jane Fonda's autobiography and she spoke about losing her mother when she was a couple of years younger than I was... and she talked about not crying, not feeling, and she talked about how when she finally found her tears a couple of decades later she could not stop crying... and I did not feel alone[:)]
I do not think it is necessarily a dominant thing to be in complete control over one's emotions by pushing them down. I was a mere slip of a girl when I managed to do it, and I did it after a loss so devastating to me it colored the rest of my life. There are many healthy and unhealthy mechanisms to control oneself, but truthfully, if we push things down to the point where we do not feel anymore at all, no deep joy or love... what is the use of it all?
My idea of what makes my Daddy "dominant" is that he controls his emotions appropriately, he feels things, he just does not act upon his feelings all the time. He controls the feelings by acknowledging them. At least this is what I have noticed by observing him.
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