Emotions, feelings, whatever.
I’m just curious … have you ever felt an emotion with such intensity that it threatened to take over your whole existence?
What did you do?
Oh, God, yes.
I had to channel it into something. I can think of four instances in my life.
When the sadness was so profound, I wrote great sweeping epics of things lost that could never be regained but I would make myself put a light at the end of the tunnel that wasn’t an oncoming train and eventually I would work myself out of it.
When the happiness threatened to burst out of me, I found a way to share it by doing volunteer work at hospitals or nursing homes.
Love so overwhelming that I could taste it had me painting again. Anything and everything.
Desire so intense that several times a day I just have to pause and get my equalibrim and, again, I write.
I was downright drunk on love with my ex-wife, and I do believe that was vice versa. I couldn’t see the full drunken nature of the intensity at the time, and mostly engaged in heavy thobbing of it. (Thob == to rationalize one’s beliefs. It’s a good word, plus it looks like an amusing typo at first glance.) Relationship simply didn’t survive the necessary transition into sobered-up love.
Depression does a good job (if not a good job) of taking over one’s life, and I’ve been there, too. As to what I did then, I mostly sunk into it, until a combination of friends, faith, and perhaps lucky brain chemistry brought me back out.
Intense anger lasts for much briefer periods of time, luckily. On the order of taken-over minutes or hours total, not counting the usual stress cycles afterward.
I view all of them as useful learning experiences. Then again, I view everything as containing lessons to be learned.
Fear. More specifically, nameless fear. I once experienced intense fear for no discernible reason for four days straight. Unable to eat, barely able to sleep. During these four days, I hallucinated consistently. Not in the way one does while using psychedelics, but more of a perspective. Plants, trees, nature in general looked washed out and dead. Inanimate objects seemed malevolent. Nothing overt, just menacing. Especially porcelain. People’s eyes appeared demonic. What was so frightening was not that this was happening, but rather that I was totally lucid, and knew that the way I was seeing things was unreal. I wasn’t taking any medication or anything like that. My one and only psychotic break. I must say, it instilled in me a respect for the power of the mind. And it was intense enough to take over my life at the time.
Oh, and as far as what I did about it - After two days, I could tell it was starting to subside, so I just rode it out. I didn’t think that there was anything else to do.
Man, I used to go through this all the time before I was diagnosed with depression and put on meds.
When the depression would hit, I would try to get myself out and around other people. Often I just couldn’t motivate myself, but I would try to get active. Mostly, however, I would succumb to it and just let it slip over me.
Then there’s my temper, which can flash quite easily, especially if I was already depressed. Most often, when I feel anger taking over, I get out and get away from whatever is upsetting me before I lash out at it. By the time I was 18, I had lost my temper enough times to know I needed to get away from people when I started feeling that way. Not only did people sometimes get hurt, the feelings of guilt afterwards were tremendous. Most often I would go to the batting cages. I’ve found hitting something with a bat to be very therapeutic when you’re pissed off. So after hitting some baseballs for a while, either the act of hitting gets the anger under control or I just tire myself out.
Oddly enough, I can’t remember any intense positive emotions, just very intense negative ones.
More than once…
When my nephew died I was so wrapped up in my grief I couldn’t see clearly. I went to work,put in my time in a haze and went home and cried in the shower. Then I would cry myself to sleep. I did this for about two months.
Right now I’m longing desperately for a man I can’t be with. Maybe someday we’ll be together,maybe never. I’m trying to find someone like him,w/o the things that keep me and number one apart. So far, they all come up short. I don’t want to wait around forever for things to work themselves out the way I want but…there’s no one else like him. I haven’t felt this comfortable with someone in years,we can’t be together, and it sucks.
I drive. I get in the car and go. There is something about that insular world that soothes my soul.
Unfortunately, this form of therapy was of no help after I saw my little dog get run over not 10 feet from me. After she died and I had to put down my other dog due to a recurrent cancer, I was an emotional trainwreck. I’d drive to work and envision a strange dog running under my wheels. This picture would just pop into my mind without warning. I guess this was a transferance of the guilt I feel for not having her on a leash. I’ve since been able to deal with all this, and driving therapy is back in my repertoire.
(BTW, I don’t do this when I’m angry. Instead, I’ll piss and moan for a minute or five.)
I don’t know that I’ve ever felt a happiness that I thought would take over. But I’ve felt sadness that I thought would. I couldn’t do anything except stay in bed and cry and shake - for two days. I don’t recommend that.
No. Mostly because over the years, I’ve accepted that I’m never going to have friends or love or ever be able to connect with anyone beyond sex, so I’m basically numb and keep my emotions deeply repressed.
Something tells me this thread isn’t headed for Threadspotting. Damn, we’re a happy bunch.
When I sit outside and look at the trees and grass and sky, I’m just so overcome with this sense of love and well-being. I may find that my body is moving from side to side in exact tempo with the tree branches the wind is moving. Sometimes I look at the birds flying, and I feel like I’ve left my body and am flying with them. What a rush! I think I go into a mild trance at times like this, and when I come back to myself, I’m smiling. 
It happens to me a couple of different ways. I’ve had several concussions, two of which were quite bad. One left me with sensory kinesthesia (your senses get all jumbled up) for a few hours.
A few months after that I got this spell.
For no reason at all (though I suspect it’s linked to the concussions,) I felt deeply and incredibly sad. I’ve gotten these a couple of times a year since, and they last anywhere from a few hours to a day or two.
It’s completely overpowering, and feels like grief. Intellectually I know that nothing’s wrong, and it’s just a brain fart or something, but that doesn’t change it. Unlike a real emotion, I can’t seem to distract myself from it. I used to fight them and try to work through them when they occured. Nowadays I usually drink about three beers and go to sleep.
The other one I get is something I describe as “the joyful scream of rage and pain.”
It’s also an overpowering emotion, but seems quite natural.
If things are working against me (I’m losing at tennis, a bad day at work, an argument) sometimes I’ll just dig in and decide to fight. It’s not that I intend to go down swinging, it’s more like the primitive alligator brain says “fuck this, I’m gonna win.” That’s when the emotion washes over me like a roar.
It happens sometimes when I’m running, and everything hurts and I want to stop. It happens sometimes when I work out. I’ve had it happen to me over a chess game, or just from hearing a powerful and moving song. Mostly though, it happens when I need it, which makes me pretty greatful for it. It’s almost masochist. Things hurt, or are veery bad, and I like it! I’m gonna punish the pain with excess and prevail and screw the cost.
I’m probably doing a poor job of describing the emotion. I think it must be a common one, but people look at me funny when I talk about it.
I think it’s what people are talking about when the say “he saw red.” Maybe it’s just an adrenaline fix, but damn it feels good, and it sure is powerful.
I’m generally an extremely happy person. Sometimes I feel incredible happiness, though, of great intensity. I’m sitting in my favorite chair on my sunporch, or reading a wonderful book, or driving on a beautiful day, or hiking, and the presense I feel - I don’t know how to describe it, except that I’m so happy and so content and delighted to be in my body, living in that specific moment, that I want to cry. If I’m alone, I sometimes will cry, but more often I sing out loud or write or pick up my paints and surrender to the feeling while it lasts.
I also get rushes of extremely intense love. At work, I’ll see a dad with his son, and feel such love for them, even though they are strangers. I’ll see a happy couple or a lovely view from a hike and feel completely encompassed by love and gratitude. Sometimes I can’t breathe for the intensity of the emotion. At times like these, I let the emotion take over my existence. I experiance it purely, or try to, and I’ve found that this allows it to spread. I smile, I laugh, I’m so happy and full of love that it catches on to others around me.
I did love someone once, and it overtook me. I couldn’t concentrate in school, I thought only of him, wanted only him. It was incredible intense longing, and the only way I could deal with it, capture my life back, was to express the longing. It worked, although not in the way I wanted, but at least I was free from the frenzied state of wanting someone so terribly.
Two-day backpacking trip. Twenty-four miles total.
End of the trail. Exhausted, sweaty, filthy.
Hungry.
Finally reached the car. Jumped in. Hightailed it to the nearest Burger King. Double Whopper with cheese, large fries, Coke.
My. God. Every freakin’ cell in my body rejoiced. Jeez, Louise, I could actually feel the fat, salt, carbs and sugar doing their lovely jobs.
Not an emotion, you say? The sheer physiological relief I got from cramming that food down my gullet gave rise to a feeling of happiness so intense that I cried.
God, I love whoppers.
On several occasions I have been so depressed that when in private, I would simply lie down and cry for several hours. Oddly, I continued to behave perfectly normally in public, I only reacted when I was by myself. The first few times that this happened was in elementary and middle school, and I don’t remember it very well. The most recent time was the start of freshman year in college, when I felt that I was unable to fit in. After a couple weeks, though, I started to make new friends, and the depression went away.
Yes.
I can honestly say that I am literally quick to “Rush to the gun . . .”
Especially when my family is involved. Just ask my sister when she was attacked. . .
Tripler
IRL, I sometimes really do want blood.
Yeah, a few times.
Well, it was different for each emotion. I’ve been so incredibly depressed that I didn’t know what to do. But in most cases, I write, or draw, or make films…something cathartic. It’s easier to deal with something when it’s away from you. It’s easier to criticize a character than yourself, at times.
As far as the other extreme, goes…well, that’s new. I’ve been like that about something recently. It’s the exact same thing, except I use writing, drawing, songs, and the like to express my happiness and joy, rather than to analyze it.
Loathing. For myself and everyone else. I don’t know what triggered it off exactly but I was feeling - lost. I kept thinking about ending it all, hurting whoever was in front of me, and myself. I don’t remember what I did - I was a little delirious. I do recall crawling into the bathroom and crying hot tears all night, telling myself that it was the safest place for me (no sharp objects, no open windows) and that everything would be better in the morning.
At moments like these, I fear not so much for my own safety, but that of others who live with me.
Not a very nice thought.
Yes. I just lost my best friend here. (Here being the SDMB)
I could put into words how I feel, but I’d have to include “death”