Hi Aiden,
It's great to hear that things are looking up for you of late, bottle the good moments and take them with you as a reminder.
I may have mentioned in another thread that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, so therefore an inability to regulate emotions added to this the fact that people with BPD feel emotions about 20 times more powerful than others. So Emotions are heightened most of the time for me - good or bad. Feeling sadness, or anger can also be common symptoms of depression, and often they are unexplainable.
There are definitely things that I find useful, and one of them you have already accomplished, and that is being able to recognise that you feel a certain way but cannot rationalise the feeling. Once you recognise it then you can make the choice as to what you do with it. In terms of therapy CBT is a good one for this purpose as you basically work backwards to help minimise the actions based on emotions. What are you doing? What are you feeling? What are you thinking? What is the evidence for/against this thought? What could be a more balanced thought? How do you feel now?
Mindfulness is another helpful tool (you can google this) it comes under the Acceptance & Commitment Therapy banner which describes thoughts and feelings as not being facts. The idea is to then allow the feelings to be present without judgement. One thing we will never be able to do as long as we are human is stop emotions or thoughts, but learning not to get hooked on them, or overanalyse their presence is a useful skill.
You might also like to look at the following threads:
SELF HELP TIPS FOR MANAGING DEPRESSION - Under the Depression Section of the forums. (for when you feel sad)
TIPS FOR MANAGING URGES - Under the Treatments section on the forums. (for when you feel angry)
I also hope that you eventually managed to find the "finding joy in times of darkness" thread that Stitch started?
AGrace
PS - I wish you much happiness on the road with your new car:)
