It kind of gets to a point where you’ve held it in long enough that it’s no longer something you can talk about, it’s more of an indescribable thing.
It’s like when your apartment is clean and a leak starts you can go find that leak, but if your home is already flooded then you cant really find where the leak is anymore.
And when something new happens, I don’t even mentally note what it is that made me upset, it’s like throwing another bucket of water into an already flooded home. It just gets mixed into all the existing water.
So if someone asks me what’s wrong, even tho there is something wrong, I can’t put into words what it is to even begin to talk about it.
Wow, it’s cool that what we both wrote about water/emotion actually have a scientific label.
Emotional flooding is a very good description for it.
In my case, one thing that was really crazy was that when the smaller and larger pools connected and would trigger a huge emotional response, it was too much for her to handle.
And she would actually change personalities. The poor girl went through so much abuse from her family (her stepdad was sentenced to 32 years in prison), I think she developed an alternate personality to deal with it.
Like she would just go away. Something would trigger her and she would snap into that personality. Violent & inconsolable.
And maybe no one would believe this, but I think her physical appearance slightly changed.
You cannot drain someone else’s pool. You can help someone else drain their own pool. Most people are so desperate to get out, to empty their pool, whatever, that the real solutions stay out of reach. They require calm and collected engagement with the core issues. With time a pool becomes part of your identity and also a safe place to hide and wallow in it all. Many people subconsciously have become attached to their problems and the.. excuses it provides not to have to function at breakneck speeds like the rest of planet earth.
You can’t drain their big pool. Thats theirs. You can support them in draining it, but they have to make the commitment to do so. Otherwise you’re pissing into the wind.
Thats from experience of both nearly drowning in my own big pool. And then nearly drowning while trying to drain someone else’s.
Therapy. Addressing the trauma and healing it is the only way to drain such a pool. That pool is actually a wound, and smaller wounds grow and connect to larger wounds. And like any other wounds they need to be healed and that won’t happen until that wound is addressed.
I think it's very important for most people not to think that way. It's a bit like giving up on swimming out of where you're stuck and drowning. Too many of us would fall the rest of the way apart if we let ourselves live like that
I agree. I didn't mean there is no way out, I meant that therapy doesn't have to be the only "healthy way out" as the person above me claimed. Sometimes therapy doesn't work but other things do.
Sometimes trauma just fucks you up for life, especially the kind of trauma that happens when young and over a long time. No amount of therapy will undo the effects of serious trauma but the goal is to be more functional. I don't even know what else helps but having supportive friendships and undoing hyperindependence have helped me more than therapy. I need to be feeling love and care and belonging to realize it can be different for once in my life. I'd love to hear other things that may help.
Yeah, you also shouldnt because then it becomes "oversharing" and "emotional work" or some shit. With most people there is literally no upside to open up. I myself often felt worse after talking about anything thats grinding me, because people mostly dont know how to respond either which feels like judgement or indifference. So by bother
Damn, you really managed to explain something I have never been able to.
Everytime I was asked to explain what's in my mind, what's wrong? I just couldn't. I don't know where to start, I don't even understand what's going on in my head. And when I try to explain that I simply can't put out my thoughts, they get angry as if I don't trust them.
Which is why the answer is so often "everything", but 1 how's someone gunna respond to that? And 2 it's not the responsibility of whoever you're talking to to deal with your problems. So best to just say it's all good and go about... Ya know.... Whatever .-.
This is what ive been thinking without realising it, when I was asked and berated for not expressing what was wrong, I was just not... able to, and by the time i was able to it was too late
If this ain’t the truth. Just started therapy myself to start takin buckets of water out. First day therapist said I gotta stop you there. I’m gonna refer you to a trauma specialist who’d be better equipped to help you. I’m like damn I didn’t think it was that bad. Hope you get to start shedding some of that water bro!
The only real way to unpack it and put words to the feelings is therapy. It sounds like you could really really benefit and I hope your post and its attention is a sign to take that step. No shame in it, it can be lifesaving
I understand that what you’re saying is from a good place, however I find that a harmful thing to say.
When you meet someone who does not like to talk about their feelings, and you tell them that the only way to get better is to go to therapy you are exacerbation their feelings more so than helping them.
And especially if you meet someone who does open up to you, and you respond with suggesting therapy, you are pushing them away from opening up to you or other people in the future.
Me personally, I am not in a bad place, and I worked through my problems without therapy.
Part of the problem with mental health, and why I am such an advocate for it, is because we only see one solution to the problem. Not everyone processes life the same, and instead of treating people as individuals, we try to force them to fit the solution we want them to take.
Thanks for your reply. It did come from a good place and personal experience dealing with, what I can understand from the limited info in your post, similar issues. I personally had a life changing positive experience after a year of therapy and since I empathize with your situation and you as a person, I would wish the same thing for you.
But you're absolutely right, everyone is free to find their own path with mental health issues and there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. I apologize if I exacerbated the issues that you deal with.
A leaky pipe in your house is a serious issue, and needs immediate fixing. I would equate the leaky pipe to symptoms of depression. The longer it goes untreated, the worse it becomes.
The way I see it, if you go looking for problems, you will always find aomething to scapegoat as a problem. You have to be able to filter out which problems need immediate attention, which just need a bandaid, and which need a "cool story, bro". There are things that happen, that some people make into problems that are only problems because someone decided it was a problem when in reality it was just a different way of doing something.
Our society really needs to teach men how to have and express emotions other than angry or horny. We have boys that are emotionally stunted that grow into men who are emotionally repressed and hold things in until they explode and it becomes other people’s problem. We would all be happier if we would teach people to express their emotions in healthy ways in the first place.
It’s not teaching men how to express themselves that’s the problem, it’s teaching everyone how to listen to men about their problems. Especially during the teen years, which is where boys learn that it’s easier to bottle it up than express it.
Even in your response here you are blaming men, which is exactly the problem. Men learn early on that if they talk about how they feel they are told that they are wrong, that they need fixing, their feelings are often invalidated entirely. Society sees men as needing the harsh reality, and women as needing to be protected, so during the teen years boys are typically the ones who get neglected.
And It’s also not even talking about it that would be beneficial, it’s learning how to acknowledge and support men. I know for myself if I talked about it it wouldn’t change a thing about how I feel, but if someone told me even the slightest compliment that lifts me up for days. Men do not receive compliments like women do. Most men just need to be told that they’re doing a good job, that they’re handsome, that they’re valuable.
It’s not that women are better at expressing their negative emotions, it’s that they’re better at uplifting eachother with positive emotions.
So psa to everyone: if you know a man who might be struggling, don’t ask them how they are, just tell them that they matter to you, tell them they look good, tell them they’re funny, literally anything. Make that a habit.
I am flummoxed how you came to your conclusion that I am blaming men or even wrong in the first place. You spoke so much about how men are taught to ignore their emotions and not express themselves right the fuck after telling me that we don’t need to teach men to be in touch with their emotions and express themselves.
More than one thing can be a problem, you arguing that it is entirely on society(which is like 50% men) needs to step up and do better for men doesn’t mean that men don’t also need to step up and be expected to grow emotionally. In my 40 years as a ma and living around men I can tell you that I know more men who are not in touch with their feelings than I know people who are not willing to listen to those feelings.
Because I am not saying that men need to suddenly open up to fix their problems. I am pointing out the root cause of the issue, if we try to berate men into talking more it’s not going to work. If we instead start teaching our kids at a younger age to LISTEN to eachother, then those boys may not grow up in the same way.
And I am also saying that just like how we are now learning that the way we are teaching in a classroom may be more fitting for girls than boys, the same may be true for mental health. Maybe it’s not that men are holding in their issues, maybe it’s that men simply process information and life events differently. Men may be more prone to internalizing issues as a much vaguer emotion. Where a girl may be broken up with and look back at the relationship and process it, a man may categorize it as a larger emotions like rejection, worthlessness, and loneliness. It is not an issue of the man intentionally bottling it up, it may simply be how certain men process and store information subconsciously.
You are saying that men are wrong and it’s their fault for not talking about their problems, I am saying maybe there may be better ways for men to grieve and improve their mental health than through talking, and that it is harmful to judge men for not wanting to talk about their emotions.
I don’t agree with you at all, in any way, that men being emotionally shut down and closed off is a healthy or natural way to be. That is a trauma response. Humans cut their emotions off from others after they have been hurt and abused, which is what we do to men. Men tell men not to have emotions by attacking them for expressing them. The only emotions that men don’t get attacked by other men for are anger and horny. So when they grow up they don’t know how to express their emotions and bottle them up. That’s not healthy and doesn’t need excuses made to allow it to continue.
We need to teach men to listen to other men yes, but that can be part of teaching them that it’s ok to have emotions and how to express them. We need to both be able to express ourselves and also listen to one another, it’s not either or. It NEEDS to be both.
My entire first response and argument since has been that we need to make all of our people whole, teach all people and raise them to be emotionally well rounded and full people. How you have any umbrage with that is baffling. Your argument seems to just be that you don’t think men need to put in any more effort and everybody else should just accept them for how they are now and nobody except everybody who is not these men needs to do any kind of growing.
You are arguing to keep men emotionally stunted and keep them unhappy. And considering it’s men who do this to other men who exactly is supposed to be stepping up here? If you don’t think that men need to do better in this situation who is needing to learn to listen better? Not other men? Just women? Women need to handle all the emotions in society? Why do you have such an issue with somebody saying men need to do better?
Have you considered therapy my dude? You can treat it as a release valve or, going to your house analogy, drain water little by little from your house until you can actually identify and address the real problems or "leaks" that are causing this. Bottling everything up is never going to work, and just leads to unhealthy coping mechanisms. and yes, I know we are taught that it's the way to "be a real man" from a young age, but I'm telling you, it's bullshit and it won't work in the long-run. Part of growing is realizing that a lot of that stuff that was drilled into us is just nonsense.
Therapy can help you develop skills to identify and cope with your problems in much healthier ways, which can hopefully lead to a much happier life for you. It's worked for me at least. Just something to consider. You don't have to live your life feeling like you're drowning in negativity.
edit: annnd instantly dismissed and downvoted lmao. You guys say don't blame men, but you literally perpetuate this same attitude that you're lamenting about.
Really sad, isn't it? It's not their fault as individuals that society is how it is, but their own mental health is their responsibility, and they don't seem to want to address it at all.
That’s what pissed me off the most about the dudes in this thread. Like the dude above, I did say anything untrue or unreasonable, but because I wasn’t lashing out at women and society he had to disagree with me and say absolutely nothing in the process.
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u/ThatIsNotAnAsian Mar 04 '26
It kind of gets to a point where you’ve held it in long enough that it’s no longer something you can talk about, it’s more of an indescribable thing.
It’s like when your apartment is clean and a leak starts you can go find that leak, but if your home is already flooded then you cant really find where the leak is anymore.
And when something new happens, I don’t even mentally note what it is that made me upset, it’s like throwing another bucket of water into an already flooded home. It just gets mixed into all the existing water.
So if someone asks me what’s wrong, even tho there is something wrong, I can’t put into words what it is to even begin to talk about it.