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Teenage Numbness 2
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OnlineCounseling.org Teenage Numbness 2
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The Counseling Response
The first step is for you to see your doctor again to make sure that there isn't something going on in your body that could be causing your lack of emotions and possible depression. The next step is to be diagnosed, either by your doctor or by a psychologist/psychiatrist in a face to face environment. They can then take the proper steps to help you get healthy again. Your health is a matter of body, mind, and soul. If you have experienced a series of stressors even in your short life, it can create havoc in how your brain produces certain chemicals, whether it is too much of some and too many of others. Combine that with the lack of proper nutrition and exercise and being a teenager going through hormonal changes, and and you can start to see how your brain can get overwhelmed. There are some great websites that have information about teen exercise and nutrition. Find one that appeals to you personally. Look into summer camps that will give you a break from home and get you outside, meeting new people, getting exercise, and most importantly having fun. Check community centers, churches, and school to see what is happening in the summer. The library is an excellent resource for finding new things to try. If money is an issue find a part-time job or volunteer somewhere fun in the summer. Go grocery shopping with your mom and experiment with new foods and make sure that you ALWAYS have healthy snacks that you like around the house and with you at all times for in between meals. Put a big focus on fruits and vegetables. Play around with some new recipes, get friends involved in the new adventure of cooking. Look for new stimulation on a regular basis. Use your keen ability to learn and apply it to things that are fun, that you are curious about, even things that are a little bit scary like indoor rock climbing! Look for things that will make you laugh, like funny movies, laughing yoga, comedy shows, etc. Volunteer at a children's hospital or nursing home. This will help stimulate quite a bit of emotion for you. These suggestions are not a fix, but will help keep you going for now. Spend time outside in nature. Go to gardens, a river, a lake, hiking, camping, anything where you can spend time outdoors, whether it is on your own or with friends or family. Now I'd like to address what is happening in your mind, because this is where the source of your emotions come from. Whether or not you are aware of it, your brain has become overloaded from your emotions and has shut down, just as if it has overheated and now needs to cool down. In a human, the shutoff switch doesn't fully shut things off, because you create more "heat" or stress by simply being worried and anxious about the shut down. I am going to back up into the start of your life to help you understand what has been happening to reach this point. From the time you are born and start to become aware of your surroundings, you are on the highest learning curve of your life. Everything is new. As a child your primary method of learning is to watch the people around you and to mimic what you see and hear. This includes learning about relationships by watching your parents relationship with each other and by experiencing each of their relationships with you. Everything you have learned is in your subconscious. Your parents belief systems are now your belief systems. Everything you currently know about relationships you have picked up from your parents, good and bad. You have also learned how to communicate to others from your parents. This includes your communication with yourself. You can only be as honest with yourself as you have seen your parents be honest with themselves and each other. Your mother likely tries to hide her stress and as a result, you have learned how to internalize your own stress. From what you have described, your siblings have also learned to do this and it has caused health issues for them as well. You first have to understand what is happening before you can take steps to change it. You are just at the point in your life, where you would normally start to question everything you have learned and try to make sense of things in your own way. This will be an advantage for you. The disadvantage is that you haven't had much experience yet in going through the information available from so many sources to choose thoughts that are healthy for you. You are still susceptible to being influenced by whomever has the strongest voice. I'd like you to also understand that there is a middle ground to emotions. As you get older, you won't have as many highs and lows as you used to. You will be more comfortable with yourself and your emotions get into a balance that gives you peace of mind. This will also give you a sense of strength, as you will no longer be susceptible to being emotionally vulnerable to others. Being at peace with yourself without the emotional extremes is a wonderful space to live in. You are correct when you wonder if all the stressful incidences in your life build up emotionally inside of you. On the surface it may appear that different issues no longer have an impact on you, yet they survive in the subconscious. The depressed times that you went through before were the first signs that there was an excessive buildup of unexpressed emotion. Depression is sometimes described as anger turned inwards. Let's look at the reasons why you might be angry. Remember how your father treats your mother? That has a double impact on you. First, there is anger at him for treating your mother the way he did. Even now, deep inside of you, you know it isn't right that he blames her for anything. And second, you have anger at yourself for not being a good enough daughter, for stressing your mother, for not helping your father, and probably for other things. As you get older you will eventually learn that everyone is responsible for taking care of themselves. If a person doesn't like something, they can do one of two things. They can either blame somebody else for their unhappiness or they can look at the situation to see what different choices they can make in the future and learn from their mistakes. Your father has made all the choices that have led him to where he is now. The same is true for your mother. You may think: but it's not her fault she ended up a single mother! Yet you have to work backwards and see that her choices led to being with an addicted, abusive husband. Why did your mom choose an abusive partner? The simple answer is that she had low self esteem herself. She learned the value of a woman in a relationship by watching and learning from her mother. Is this starting to make sense to you? You have learned from your mother and father what your value is as a human being, as a woman, and as a woman in a relationship. Nobody is at fault, this type of thinking is subconsciously passed down through the generations. It takes someone who is willing to ask "why" to be able to do something about it. To tie all these pieces together, the various stresses, your low self esteem, the lack of understanding what is happening inside of you, along with not knowing how to express your emotions in a healthy way has led to an overload. In a sense, your brain has just gotten tired and wants a break from all the over stimulation that the suppressed emotions cause in your body. That is how you have gotten to the point of feeling emotionally numb. Now we get to the point of what do you do to make it safe for your body to feel emotions again. This is a multi step process that starts with the proper nutrition and exercise mentioned earlier. Please make the choice to involve your mother, siblings, friends, or any one else you can think of to help you get and stay on track. You may or may not require medical intervention, so make the appointment to see your doctor to make sure your body is functioning properly. There are things that you can do on your own to help you choose some different beliefs by exploring and learning what other people think and why. You said that part of your down feelings were around your faith. My answer to that is choose to learn more about your own spiritual feelings and use it to enhance your faith. Faith is something that is personal to you and finding positive new beliefs make your life much easier. It is normal to question your beliefs. The healthy response is allow yourself to be curious and look for answers in different areas. Go see or rent the movie The Secret. Go to the library and look through the self help/spiritual sections and let books find you! As you look through the titles, you will come across books that you will feel a strong desire to read. Two books I recommend right off the bat are The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer. They will give you much to think about and many new ideas that will help you shift how you think. Learn to create new meanings for what has happened in your life. Your thoughts of being a bad daughter are just not true. The thought that you shouldn't say what you really feel because it might hurt somebody is also not true. Have you ever thought why some people get hurt and others don't? Why some people get offended at something but another person doesn't? Each person has made a different choice as to how to interpret what has been said or done. Think to yourself: How does what I think make me feel? If I feel good, then I have chosen a healthy perspective on the subject. If it makes me feel bad then that is a red flag that I should find a different meaning other than the one I currently have. You can learn how to do this to some degree from books. It is easiest to learn this with professional help. Have your mother read this response. Ask her to help you get counseling. You will not only be able to find your emotions again, you will better understand your parents and your role in your family, leading to less stress all around. Above all, choose to trust that everything will work out for you. Fear is only an illusion that keeps you from finding solutions to your challenges.
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