How to Unsuppress Emotions | Healthy Gamer Webinar #6 

This mans is taking time and effort out of his days in order to help all of us live a better life and he drops all this knowledge straight up for free on RU-vid. Really admirable and i'm sure i'm not the only one thankful for Dr. K putting in so much effort for us gamers.

Dr. K DESTROYS bad habits with emotions and feelings!

I'm an alexithymic female gamer. I did not understand that my physical sensations were emotions. This was literally mind blowing. Thank you, Dr K, for doing this kinda stuff on RU-vid. It's so helpful.

1) Recognize you're feeling something - Physical Sensations - Umbrella terms 2) Diagnose that emotion - Use emotional chart to tell what you're feeling - Ask yourself what someone in your situation would feel 3) How do I deal with it? - Process them: 1) Awareness precedes control 2) Work on the body: yoga, exercise, meditative techniques 3) Work on the mind: Therapy, conversations with friends, coaching, discord, mens/womens group, etc

This helped me out a lot. When I was a child, I was extremely emotional. This worked extremely hard against me when I was growing up. Then, as a defense mechanism, I intentionally taught myself how to suppress my emotions and for more then a decade, I was proud of myself for it, though I never told anyone about it. Now I am 21 and I know this is harming me. More and more I find myself wanting to say something and being unable to say it because my body physically stops me from saying it as I try to say it. Even trying to rationalize with myself and trying to say it multiple times I still get stuck. It doesn't matter how mundane the issue is or if I put myself in the position of someone asking this to myself and find it is a normal reasonable question/expression, I still can’t express my issue or ask the question. If I do, it is after a long arduous internal battle. I hope that I can use the tools he provided to help me to improve this problem.

ive found that (as a guy) expressing my own vulnerability about not being able to find a girlfriend makes them feel vastly more comfortable about expressing their similar vulnerability. men's vulnerability even seems to be something thats becoming more and more accepted through popular culture (if memes are anything to go by)

It's incredible that whatever problems I have in my life, there's always a Dr. K video posted at least a day before or after. Witchcraft monkaS

"love is not a substitute for emotional competence" oof, ya got me hard

God dude that "breathe into the emotion" technique is exactly what I've been needing and trying to find for the past couple months. I've been seriously needing a way to directly deal with current emotions so I could get out of the cycle of building emotions over the span of months until they eventually reach the breaking point, but I hadn't found a method that really worked for me until now. That method finally allowed me to sit down and slowly drain out the tank of emotions I've been filling for the past few months. Thank you so much Dr. K

Breathed into where i was feeling emotion and immeditately broke down into tears. Powerful stuff 😂.

I'm not a gamer, and I'm not a guy (maybe that's obvious) but this and a couple of your other videos have genuinely helped me so much. I come from a dismissive and invalidating household (Africans amirite) and have spent the last 21 years of my life doing, saying and being what my demanding and manipulative parents (and pretty much everyone in my life) wanted. Covid made me realise that I wasn't really living and I decided to try and start living my life instead of surviving it. I started therapy a couple of weeks ago and I've been feeling really dismissed by CBT practises which is how I stumbled onto your therapy video. Then I found this one! I just wanted to say thank you for taking time out and sharing your knowledge! Shout out to Connor and the other Q&A volunteers wherever they are. Their questions made me feel seen as well!

Hey just wanted to say you’ve helped me figure a lot of things out and wanted to thank for all your help

I remember my firsts sessions with my therapist learning how to be a feeling human being,since she had to tell me what an emotion was and I swear, I was sooo anaware of that language (I'm a girl,so it can happen to anyone). At the moment I had the basic "words" to understand the language of emotions, I finally could "read" the tsunami that was going.

1:42 - rational mind vs emotional mind 4:32 - where the problem is 6:25 - not in control of emotion, but suppressing them 6:37 - we can turn up or down our emotions 7:42 - childhood and emotion supressing 8:41 - what is this "bad feeling" 9:56 - how do we supress emotions 10:09 - part of brain part govern feelings 16:34 - your body is psychosomatic. We have there physical sensations because emotions are gonna come out in some way 18:03 - men tend to feel a lot of emotions physically 20:35 - what to do about alexithymia 24:01 - 1) recognize you're feeling an emotion 24:06 - 2) try to diagnose the emotion 26:25 - what would someone in my situation feel? 27:58 - 3) how to deal with the emotion 28:46 - rational thought - emotions ± ego = action 29:59 - if rational/emotion and ego is aligned 31:29 - in control of your emotions

From childhood i was the crying type and i some way i learn to hide some deep staff. But from some time i cant stop myself from exploding from emotion for last 8 year it was horrible. I couldn't go with the flow of life. I was thinking that i m person that can't hide emotion very well but i find out that i hide many emotion in form of self aggressive thoughts. Thanks this series i m became little bit more concision about my inside .

It's such a decent thing you're doing for people by putting all this up for free. I've found that even when psychological/psychiatric help is available, you just tend to be put into a box of general depression and given very general treatments around making your mood better as if it's just about your mood. It's not - it's about things like alexithymia and feeling out of place and lonely, very real things, not just some "chemical imbalance." I've always thought that's like saying to someone who hasn't eaten in a month "you're hungry because your stomach's empty" and feeding them handfuls of sand to stop the sensation of feeling hungry rather than doing something about the malnutrition.

When he talked about diognosing the emotions and said 'What's that emotion?' My mind automatically went to 'Who's that Pokemon?' Which I think could be a good way for me to incentivise myself to do this as a sort of game. I think I'll go with 'Who's that Emotimon?'

AoE Healing just leveled the f*** up

This is really important and I'm so glad someone is talking about this. I used to be like this and it's a self destructive habit that stops you from making real connections

Doing God's work my man. After listening to many of yours videos and through dreams; finally paid attention to my Samskara. Now I feel like I'll get to live life again. Thanks so much.

OMG.... What's described in Seth's question is exactly how I've been feeling since I started my "healing journey".... I thought at some point that I was "ruining" my experience of life by trying too hard to understand things and making my life better. I didn't know how to verbalize the discomfort of beeing too aware... Your answer about the 2 types of empathy makes so much sense to me, THANK YOU! It's the difference between experiencing life with your mind vs experiencing life with a more meditative state while feeling the emotions in your body. This information just saved me from the feeling that I did something wrong by tring to better my life.... Thank you so much 😭🙏❤️

You know, I was actually praying for help with figuring out my own emotional state and what to do about it last night, and then your channel just showed up in my recommended. Thanks for what you do, God Bless.

Working on the body is great advice, just wanted to add: Yoga is one option out of a myriad of physical activities that can help. Let everyone do what rocks their particular boat. Some people don't connect to yoga or can't practice it - let them do what they do connect with and can do. All physical activity can be helpful. (I'm an MA physical therapist and circus artist)

57:30 "your body wants to return to a healthy state" - that got me tearful. Thank you.

I've been having this tightness in my chest like I'm feeling nervous (I don't know how to describe it, very ironic) for a really long time and I didn't really know how to deal with it. Simply breathing into it like he said really works! Why have I never thought of this before...

Who else is using their RU-vid-watching to suppress their emotions.

I’ve gotten to the point where I no longer give a shit. I express myself however the hell I please. If it’s something I’m feeling, I express it fully. Of course, if I wanna act cool and calm then I will, but that won’t stop me from letting everyone know how unbelievably happy or depressingly sad I am.

Basic life skills like communication and emotions is like the best material ever. I want more of this!

when you have a combination of being bullied and abusive parents that make you feel ashamed of what you are :) i don't think i've ever not supressed my emotions tbh

it's scary how correct it is, because i have 5 emotions(fear,hopelessness,sadness,regret,grief) that he listed inside of me that i don't know how to deal with in my circumstance. :(

Thank you so much for bringing awareness and tools to us Dr. K. I have learned a lot these past weeks about myself. I am going to see a therapist soon and work with her. My ego's gotten in the way of letting others help me in the past, so I see it as a step forward.

This might be Dr. K's most meaningful video to me out of everything he's done. Very clearly laid out so much of what I've been struggling with and then provides a clear case of what to do about it. Great stuff.

I appreciate how he writes in a way that's very fast, but reasonable easy to understand and readable. It's just the middle point between writing fast and being able to say "yeah, that's english". I had a professor that even if he was talking as he wrote, there was no way to recognize any of the symbols he created.

Thank you so much Dr.K! This was really helpful for my sensitivity and provides an amazing framework for navigating and working with emotions

Bro, Im on a spiritual path for like 20 years. I play CS as a self inquiry meditation on a daily basis. From Lao Ce through Krishnamurti to Mooji I'm infinitely thankful for all your pointings and guidance. The special position you are in, "behind the enemy lines", growing up as one, and so understanding, i bet through karmik battles and devotion, eventually, You my friend have the chance to impact millions of people unconsciously seeking exactly the very truth you radiate kindly. Im so grateful ! Thank You, thank you ! Namaste

Never thought about these implications. Thank you so much for sharing it with us!

Suppressed for so long I can barely feel happiness anymore. Mostly just numb.

Seen a lot this guys videos but this one hit the nail on the head. Thank you.

These Solo talks with added guests feel tailored to the viewer. More than the interviews, even though the interviews with Streamers are very interesting and helpful in their own right.

Thank you, that was so helpful. I realize I was so angry & self destructive as a teenager bc I had no one to listen to my feelings. I subsequently learned to ignore my feelings as well.. - Instead, I would empathize w. other peoples’ feelings through fiction ( books & movies ) - also through listening to songs on the radio & watching news reports on tv. > I finally have time to myself - to attend to my emotional work. 👍 > So glad I found Dr.K. channel ✨💚🧘🏼‍♀️🌻

Hi Dr. K, I've been going to countless therapists for 4 years already trying to find a solution to my anxiety. I'm so grateful that your videos popped up because I feel like for once I can actually understand my condition. it's legitimately so rare to be able to get this advice. I would have been searching for the rest of my life if I kept trying in-person! Heartfelt thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Hey, a girl with suppressed emotions checking in, just for statistics ^-^ XD Love your content man :) thank you a lot for sharing these on the internet

The water hose analogy really had me going, my mind instantly went to having a conflict with someone, getting triggered and then proceeding to whip out my water hose, slinging it around uncontrollably at full flow. Thank you for making my day, i needed that.

This was awesome man, glad there’s someone teaching this kind of stuff cause a lot of people myself included sometimes really just don’t know how to work through these things

So glad I found this gem.

0:50 Introduction to emotions 05:21 Why are emotions hard to deal with 09:39 How do we suppress emotions 20:31 What do we do about alexithymia 1) Recognize that you're feeling an emotion 2) Try to diagnose that feeling -"What would someone in my situation feel" 3) How do I deal with it -Process it. how? Awareness precedes control "diagnosis precedes treatment" -mental -accounts for 25%-40% (100%) 41:30 Q&A

this videos taught me a lot, thank you Dr K for all your work

Big respect to you Dr K ! Thank you

Real good work my boy. That was very informative. I definitely identify with that emotional shut off metaphor you mentioned. Definitely have been noticing a general emotional numbing as I get older

I love how much I'm learning with your channel, thank you for sharing with us your knowledge

This video is so wildly helpful. Thank you so much.

It would be so awesome if dr k shared these notes. It would be so helpful for me to print these out for a big picture view of these topics. I think this video has been one of the most helpful for me bc I have trouble nailing down exactly how I’m feeling sometimes. Seriously thanks so much dr k and the HG team!

Holy shit. That numb tongue analogy was so enlightening. Going through life with a general awareness of emotion and an understanding that feeling exists without truly realizing what the difference is between a general understanding and more defined understanding is so profound.

First of all, thanks for your videos!They are quite helping me to improve my life for something better and regain my mental energy back. What i do for now, is meditating and quitting video games for while and, talking about meditation: What types of meditation are there, and what are the best for which characteristic mental issue? (sry for my bad english)

around 32 ish everything always hits so hard all the time. everytime I have problems or questions in regards to saying things he says it, like "ok so how?". when talking about the awarness precedes control, I legit have to punch something I feel SO fucking energized because it feels like i'm learning the da vinci code for actually helping me with my dumbass life problems edit: finished watching the section, I'm still having trouble with diagnosing the pit in my stomach but I'm working hard on thinking about what it should be, and whenever I try to breathe into the emotion (the physical feeling) i legit feel like crying and I have no idea why

Thats why i only feel alive by being away from my family because i supress my emotions while being with them Thanks healthygamer you solved my life

I think I'm one of the rare people who are more emotionally empathic than cognitively empathic. I just come up with nothing when I ask myself how others would feel. The only way I would know how someone would feel is if the same thing happened and they expressed the same emotion every time, but I don't think that has anything to do with empathy, that's just recognizing patterns and habits.

Half way through this and watched the more recent video on alexithymia. God bless you man, I feel you are making me aware of things I was so unaware of. In my adolescence I became infatuated with poetry, particularly the English romantics. This became my personality for a while however once I entered a relationship I found myself unable to write, although poetry is not only about emotional expression it is a key component, no more so than in the romantics. The point I wish to make is when I was in a relationship, as a man I made this conscious and unconscious choice that there were certain things I wouldn't show, I thought I could just channel them into my poetry but that didn't work out. Every relationship is different but I felt my girlfriend didn't want to see the emotional part of me however bear in mind that I could leverage my love of poetry as an intellectual level pursuit which I guess held more currency for my masculinity. But after watching this its made me realise that perhaps the true reason I first became invested in poetry was not prestige and instead it was the ability to express my emotions and create for its own sake. I do consider myself more feminine in temperament than most men, at least I assume it to be this way, I try not to show it but watching your videos has already helped me with creativity and I'm hoping this can be another piece of the puzzle, I'm not sure how others feel but regarding my interest in poetry your teachings on how to feel your emotions and sit with them is a god send. After the relationship I spoke of and getting broken up with after being told things like I'm too sensitive I shut down even more. How can I put this, I am aware of gender politics but I feel that if the suppression of emotion inhibits me from writing poetry, I don't want to do it. Thanks again man.

Another fantasic episode, thank you Dr. K

This is video really is amazing, I've felt super emotionally dull for a number of years now and I was really unsure why until this video. I tried one of the meditation techniques for alexithymia and found i was surpressing an enormous amount of guilt for how much of an asshole I was to my brother and a few of my friends and just the thought of how I treated them and how someone doing that to me could have affected me literally put me on the verge of bawling within a minute. I hadn't thought about it much at all but it must be effecting me subconciously like crazy, I've taken the first steps of apologizing for how I acted yesterday to them, now I just have to process the emotion now. Really thank you for this lecture

This man talking on the internet knows more about my issues then my therapist!1

I tried to think of what someone else might feel in my situation, and as you said it was way easier than feeling what i feel. But i also tried something else: for quite a while I've been journaling because sometimes it makes me feel a lot better, and I thought "what if i center my journaling around what I've been feeling today (or what the underlying feeling behind anxiousness REASONABLY was)". I tried this and realised I could kind of express my emotions clearly-isch thinking back on my day. I've been practicing meditation a lot for a couple of years, but usually it does not help a lot with knowing what i feel, so I had this idea: What if my mental coping mechanisms stop me from experiencing the feelings as soon as they start coming up, then mindfulness might help a little but writing the feelings down in detail may be more helpful (if i make it a daily practice of it like meditation). I'll try at least, but the first try was kind of eye-opening, feels like a mindfulness practice aswell, or an aid to make the practice easier.

Finally, FINALLY! WAITED FOR SO LONG. Thanks Dr K.

Literally learned this from Tony Robbins and it helped a lot!

I have no idea why I'm still alexithymic. I fully understand what my emotions are, I'm not scared of showing them, but I just can't feel any of it. I haven't felt any kind of emotions in 7 years. No idea what to do

The dr K webinars are your best videos!

Thanks doc, this is a big problem that I've wanted to deal with but haven't had the tools to do so

5 Minutes in and i go get a notebook... This is going to be good

I don't believe my amygdala activity is going down when my 0-7 morgana is flaming my jungler for not ganking, then running it down mid

Thank you for keeping thing free

Hi i really enjoy ur content on youtube and twitch and start growing due to it. Thanks alot! Besides that i wanted to ask if u could put the document u wrote into the video description so the viewers can open it on their own and read it again.

Ur suppressing emotions does make the equation easier. If you distance yourself from love, then you just use rationality. However this doesn’t give you the drive to move forwards

Thank you for the life cheats Dr. K.

From which data do you learn in order to create something THIS ACCURATE ?

So much love for DrK💝Namaste🙏

Willpower is basically trying to force the water to not come out of the hose by pressing down at its open end. This includes not switching it off from its source.

I have a question. So I watched this video a few times and I feel like this is really important to me, but I have a very important question. I agree with and understand all the points, but how does one verify that the emotion you feel is the right one? For example, I have a bad feeling in my stomach and I have a few ideas based on the methods suggested, but sometimes I feel like it always returns and happens for different reasons, and even if I say for example "I am feeling guilty for x y z and for failing to meet expectations", how can I be certain that it's right? Because in my mind it's best that you know exactlty what emotino you are feeling and then you can focus all your energy on processing it. Thank you for readin.

Please make a poll on whether we prefer you taking notes in your videos or you just talking freely!

Just commenting for support :) Ty

Thank you - Dr. K 👍🧡🍊🧡🌺

As a recently blooming person, I would love to get some book recommendations, or at least any other youtube channels recommendations from you. I absolutely love your work and I am supporting it 100%, Im even trying to help other people i know that has some mental issues by sending them your stuff so they can see point of view of a person like you that specifies in this kind of stuff. For past few years I was in really bad mental state, would probably consider myself a doomer, but things have changed in last 6 months. A LOT. I think i have a big mess in my head, I feel good lately but there is alot of stuff for me to work on to become even better person. Your videos helps me alot, watching your work helps me to organize the mess i have inside of my head. I mean, as far as I noticed, i have alot of thoughts about some things and I can not, like, you know, catch it in the right way, to make it clear what my statement on particular thing is. And then, your vids are comeing out and it helps me alot to sort it in the right way. Shorter way - i think i really like psychology, being able to understand it or even help someone alittle bit feels great to me. Thats why I am asking for some recommendations. Keep up the good job :)

I'm very happy that I clicked on this video.

Hell yeah my cookies doing work recommending me this kind of content finally, if my ads point me to therapists I wouldn't even mind that at all

this explains my life right now. What are the meanings to emotions and feelings. Can very much relate to the feelings of suppression because I feel the emotion bubble, but what is scary is displaying it because due to cultural imbalances of a community you're in, it could be labeled as, "bad." And that has happened to me, what does one person know about me than what he knows about themself? Hate the internal struggle whether unconscious or conscious that appears when you feel the emotions. To process it is another thing because who but yourself can you help with it. hm..

This title scares me. That is probably a good indication that I need to listen to it.

Thanks Dr K very cool

38:03 by breathing in and focusing on breathing druring an emotionally triggering event. This opens up the blood vessels to keep the frontal cortex online. The constricting of the blood vessel turns off the frontal cortex. Giving you a temporary frontal lobotomy. This is beneficial when you need to have full body reaction within thousands of a second. An example of this is when you are driving down the road and suddenly aware that there is an obstacle in front of you and, you need to drive around it. Then when your frontal cortex comes back online. You don't remember how you drove around the obstacle.

23:24 hehe great webinar! very helpful :-)

Dr. K, what do you think about intuition? Could you make a video on it?

thank you!

My question is : is emotion something that we constantly have? Can we genuinely be in an emotionless state and not just being unaware of our emotions?

Something I've always been afraid to do is unsuppress my emotions. I feel like they're what got me in the messes I'm in today. I don't know how to tell if I'm ready or not, and freeing them prematurely would cause more damage than it already has.

listening to this while doing the dishes, at about 39 minutes in. Dropped a bowl which shattered and felt some anger creeping up like i was about to yell a standard "Fuck!". Instead remembered what he was talking about identifying the emotions you feel etc.. Managed to catch it fairly quick, identified the emotion I was feeling (slight anger, frustration) and felt it slowly go away. Like wtf i don't get how that worked lmao

Oh dang, this video has a jp shoutout what the heck LOL. Gold, thanks Dr. K

Best video! 😍

Great video really opened the mind again, but I also wonder about some things. Why is it for example that I feel all emotions with good roleplay Videogame or even Anime, but not that much IRL. I feel joy with my family and I feel joy when I play with friends and do stuff , but I dont feel sadness. My father had a life threatening operation and my mom had cancer but even during that time I didnt cry or feared the loss of them somehow.

So mentally I think I'm doing pretty well now but one of the things I struggle with atm is when I need to do some basic chores I have this physical response of being heavy & sticky, like I'm trying to get out of quicksand, it only happens when I need to do something I don't want to do and rationally I know that it's only gonna take 5 minutes and I'll feel better afterwards but I still have to spend like 30 minutes lying in bed to build up the effort to actually do it. Plz fix?

Thank you

I think it really depends on which emotions we’re talking about when it’s said that generally men can’t express emotions and women can.

37:00 meditation for processing an emotion