Thank you Chu. Yes. I’ve always preferred to keep things inside. My upbringing was wrought with my father always verbally laying into me when I couldn’t meet his standards or expectations. The adaptive solution was to just shut down and hold it all in. I have a really hard time with this program controlling me.
I can easily identify with this set of circumstances. Only difference, it was my Mother. You have actually brought to the surface, a vital identifying element of information, from early childhood, that can be used as a tool to work with. Your relationship with your Father, his behavior and expectations, along with your own reactions, may be the core nucleus and main source of the emotional turmoil and manifest physical reactions - you are experiencing now?
As children, our World tends to be limited to black and white thinking. We're new at this game of life and we depend heavily on our Parent's or Caregivers, as a form of protection and guiding force. We generally take their instructions - seriously because we intuitively sense, they are our security. "So, we try to please and do - as told." In our young mind, we think "we are doing right" the way we were told or what we sense in our limited World is expected of us and when we suddenly experience negative feedback from an adult - our emotional response is - deep hurt and confusion. Depending on the circumstances and duration or a repeated pattern, the hurt can eventually turn into hurt and resentment - which can manifest into "a form of repressed anger" because we're unable to outwardly express our feelings, for one reason or another. Sometimes, there's a certain fear, that if "we speak out" and voice our opinion, we will only make matters worse for ourselves, so the repressed anger takes on shades of fear, further compromising our situation and we bury it deep within.
I can be reading a section a sentence or just a few words, and something about it will just hit me with a wave of emotions and I begin to cry.
I sense, the waves of emotions might be repressed anger and hurt ... and some subconscious element triggered the response?
I’ve also noticed a physiological response connected to these emotional reactions I seem to keep having. My breathing intensifies, my hands start to tingle and will escalate to a point to where I have to stand up and shake my hands out because they start to go numb from the intensity.
This might sound counter productive but your physiological response, although alarming, might be your bodies way of releasing bottled up inner tension - like a release valve? In this case - that reaction can be "a good thing" for over all emotional and physical health. Your age and hormones might be playing a vital function here, in getting rid of excess accumulated tension?
I think, if you took a few minutes and searched back in your mind, you might be able to identify moments when you were younger, when you experienced similar symptoms - of the hands tingling and an increase in heavy breathing when you were under extreme pressure ... and then buried your emotions?
It may also help to look back and review your Father's background and how it might have reflected on his treatment of you. He might have been running "a generational program" - acting out the way his father had treated him?
Both my Parent's were brought up in strict households. There was a list of do's and don'ts. Children were "seen but not heard" and their hands were kept busy - so they didn't have idle time - to get in trouble. My father was "head of household" and had final say in anything, etc. They were acting out a custom that had been past down through the generations. So, when you're dealing with Family, it helps to take in consideration - their backgrounds and possible motives, when trying to solve a problem.
When I was young, I learned to write everything down - exactly the way my Mother instructed me because she would complain, I wasn't listening when she told me to do something or the way she wanted it done. So, I would write down her exact words and follow her instructions - to the letter. According to her, I still wasn't doing what she asked! By the time I reached 10, I was a basket case. It would be many years later, I would discover "she didn't have enough marbles to work with"! That realization alone - RELEASED a lot of inner turmoil and stress. I no longer had to blame myself - for not meeting up to her expectations. As for the habit of writing down instructions - word for word - it became a handy tool when I entered the workforce. So, when you're trying to solve a problem, also take in consideration, the mental stability of the people you are dealing with.