> in some sessions, I felt ancient grief/pain bubbling up in ways that were overwhelming, but always felt way better afterwards.
For me, the major reason I might have excessively compartmentalized things[0] was that whenever I let myself feel the grief/pain/uncertainty - and early on, I was trying to process them instead of avoiding them - it would be overwhelming, excruciating, and never made anything better. After a year or two of what felt like inexhaustible supply of the same painful emotions, of nothing really changing or looking like it was about to, I finally took the opposite course, and ended up more-less where you and 'munificent are.
Took almost a decade to get to that point, and it's what you and others describe in this subthread. Some kind of emotional detachment. The emotions are there, but mostly weak, and most of the time I feel like I'm just observing them, and occasionally fighting them when they get too strong, too close to me. "Severed connection" seems like a very good analogy. I'm still afraid of revisiting the past, because I can't afford becoming non-functional for a year or two, like it happened the first time around. There's this part of me, that source of motivation, somewhere - but it feels like it's on life support, in a coma, waking up every other year for a few moments.
Meanwhile, when someone asks me what I like, or what I'd like to do, I draw a blank. It's not anhedonia, but something else - something that shuts down my brain whenever this question gets asked (or I ask it myself).
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[0] - And developed what I feel is like instinctive fight-or-flight response around negative emotions: solve the problem or run away, but get rid of the emotion and do it NOW NOW NOW!
One of the many wise things my therapist said to me once: "The thing you're supposed to do with feelings is feel them."
It sounds so dumb, but for people like me who have spent their lives training themselves to compartmentalize and analyze their feelings, it was an essential reminder that I was denying myself the critical experience of actually sitting there and feeling them.
But you aren't supposed to put those feelings in the box forever, just until there's a better time to take them out and process them.
as for your second, that’s often, if not always, an unconscious action
I'm saying that mature people are able to compartmentalize at least some of them in their day to day life. Losing a child or some other insurmountable horror is excluded.
What I'm talking about is if you have a bad day at work, you don't yell at the poor cashier working the fast food drive through window when you're picking up dinner on the way home.
You know, actually, I think this is what it is too. I had a terrible therapist for ~7 years that always tried to get me to avoid/mitigate uncomfortable emotions but I always felt it was making the issue worse. When I broke away from therapy in favor of things like meditation/philosophy, in some sessions, I felt ancient grief/pain bubbling up in ways that were overwhelming, but always felt way better afterwards. This isn't easy to do though and is taxing in itself. Some people need substances to do it, or hypnosis. I do think it's something to do with this though.