Fear of other people's emotions

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I was just thinking about life, and I got to thinking about this strange issue I have always had, and I wanted to see what you all thought about it.

Ever since I was a kid, I have had a strong fear of eliciting any sort of strong emotional reaction from people. For example, when I was kid, I hated making my parents angry. However, I also hated surprising them, shocking them, or receiving praise from them.

Does this sound like it is related to social anxiety (e.g. a fear of receiving other people's attention), or is it related to emotional dysregulation, or a mix of both? Does anyone else experience anything like this?

I do - strong emotional reactions from others, whether good or bad, stress me out.

I find other people's (obvious, intense) emotional states destabilizing for me.

This isn't a hard & fast rule, just a tendency:
I easily pick up on other people's expressions of anger or fear (and I feel negative as a consequence),
but I don't necessarily feel touched by other peoples' positive emotions, like it fails to permeate/translate to me.

I stopped worrying about other people's emotional states when I realized that they didn't give a damn about mine.

I got my alexithymia to keep me warm.

Sounds a lot like me. I'm always afraid to make people feel strong emotions. I also feel kind of... embarassed when I see that someone is very upset or very happy, even if I'm not the reason.

I'm also afraid to show too much of my own emotions.

Maybe that's because I feel everything too intensely and it often gets overwhelming, and I don't want to cause the same to other people.

Last edited by Astera on 10 Aug 2013, 3:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Same here and I know why: Most of the time, I cannot decide how to respond to emotions. Or my acting fails.

When things get emotional, people tend to expect more reciprocity. That's where I fail, a natural/appropriate respond never comes into my mind. I know my weakness, so I tend to avoid any ''emotional situation''. For example when I receive a gift from someone, I feel anxious. Yeah anxious, because I need to act properly. To fend off these ''emotional encounters'', I have well-structured-memorized sentences in reserves. OK, no problem in this. OTOH, if the ''acting'' part fails, regardless of my sentence arsenal people think that I don't care. I've heard ''you are insensitive/emotionless'' many times from many people, including my mom.

Agreed! They don't.

I feel that way sometimes too. I'm usually hesitant about bringing up certain things to my parents, most of which are not really bad news.

I've always had a very intense fear of other peoples anger and loud voices that come along with their anger. I've also had a fear of my mum's logical way of dealing with my emotions. It wouldn't be that difficult for her to emotional support like she gives to my sister. I just know that I'm going to keep emotional things a secret from her from now on.

I can never take other peoples emotions seriously. I always think they're exaggerating because to me that's what it looks like.

For me, it's the difference between a firm, louder tone and yelling. I cannot distinguish them and it has gotten me in trouble at work a few times. Someone is firm with me and I say they are yelling at me and then I get made fun of or told that I am exaggerating.

It has been this way for me for as long as I can remember.

What I also cannot handle is having a stream of questions thrown at me, being put on the spot to answer them. I need to deliberate all of my answers and they are normally very short.

It's about sensory overload. I cannot process the emotions if they are heightened and I cannot process the words if there are too many of them.

I am also like this. I feel very intense emotions about some things, but I don't show them to other people. I get very expressive when I talk to myself when I am alone, but I can't express them to other people.

In my case, I think it is caused by a nature and nurture. Growing up in a family where emotions were considered a sign of stupidity didn't help, but neither did being hyper-sensitive and having a brain that becomes giddily excited about strange topics.

Well, I have developed some kind of emotions-phobia as well... It can get really awkward.
Still, I'd like to be different...