Through my childhood, I was never emotional. Through my teenage years, I was never emotional. Growing into an adult, I also was never emotional. I always expected the best but prepared for the worst. I’m realizing now that my moods are tending to fluctuate throughout the day. I demand respect and without that, I have a short fuse. When I start the process of my mood swings, it’s hard to describe what I’m actually feeling because typically it is nothing. When I get stressed, I get flooded with emotions. I go from normal, to feeling too many emotions, to (the real plot twist) shutting them down. This is an exercise I’ve used for a few years although it ruins my relationships.

I get attached, then I push people away. I get angry quickly, but that drifts away quickly. I get overwhelmed and stressed at the most ridiculous things. Growing up preparing for the worst has caused me to have anxiety over everything I do never following through the way I’d like it to. I get burnt out. I get exhausted just from trying to maintain a consistent emotion but it doesn’t quite ruin me if I just turn the emotions off.

I know I’m not the only one who thinks feeling nothing is better than feeling everything. The problem here is that while I’m rummaging through my head, I’m impacting the people I love the most. They don't know what's going through my head, they don’t understand the hardships I put myself through just by waking up in the morning. I often forget I have such a support group of people who consistently prove they’re in my corner.

When people as why I’m being so quiet or never smile like I used to, I try my hardest to put into words that explain what my brain is going through. If you’re like me and you feel all emotions at once and then none at all, you're not alone. When you get overwhelmed or stressed, you’re not alone. Shutting off your emotions is an easy way to cope because you don’t need to feel the thoughts racing from one side of your brain to the other and experiencing the anxiety that follows. The problem here is: once you shut off your ability to feel the good and bad, you inversely shut off the world around you. You shut off the ability to feel the good emotions each friend, family member, or significant other can make you feel. You shut off your ability to express yourself.

Feeling emotions are normal. Expressing the way you feel is normal, natural, and healthy. It’s easy to compare this conundrum to one of an alcoholic. To drink away the pain, it dulls the emotions but when that temporary high disappears, the emotions flood back. Closing your emotions off dulls the pain but just delays the feelings you will feel later. You can listen to sad music or happy music and in the end, you’re still going to be your same emotional self.

I like to remind myself that being an individual is a gift and turning off your emotions is like turning off yourself. It’s hard to remind yourself of the positive thing while there is so much negative revolving around your screens, your work place, and your love life.

All emotions can be overwhelming and turning off your thoughts can put you into auto-pilot mode. The problem with auto-pilot is you don’t get to experience soaring through the clouds.