Identifying Unexpressed Emotions
What is Your Emotional Awareness About Your Past?
Written by Randi Fine, Narcissistic Abuse Expert
Narcissistic Abuse Awareness and Guidance with Randi Fine
To find out if you are having trouble identifying unexpressed emotions, please answer yes or no to the following twenty questions:
Do you have painful childhood memories that you have yet to deal with?
Do you often feel upset, unbalanced, uncomfortable, or even cut off from your emotions?
Do you have a habit of ignoring or burying your most uncomfortable feelings?
Do you always show a happy face to the world, even when you are suffering inside?
Are there triggers that suddenly bring out your anger or cause you to be defensive?
Do you suffer from unexplained insomnia, headaches, stomach problems, and fatigue?
Are you afraid to feel your emotions?
Are you afraid to excavate old emotions because of the “Pandora’s Box” that will open up?
Do you feel that showing emotions is a sign of weakness?
Do you suffer from addictions or co-dependency issues?
Do you have deep bouts of depression that cannot be explained?
Do you make excuses for the people or events that hurt you in the past?
Do you have resentments toward others for things they have done to you in the past?
Are you hypersensitive, rigid, irrational, and/or insecure?
Do you suspect that something traumatic happened to you in the past but cannot remember what it is?
Do you find it difficult to go with the flow of life?
Do you constantly stay busy so you won't have time to think about things that upset you?
Do you want to be happy but doubt that you ever can?
Were you abused as a child or young adult?
Do you wish you could change the past?
If you answered yes to five or more questions, it is likely that issues from the past are preventing you from living fully in the present. This test is for screening purposes only. It is not a formal diagnosis.
Randi Fine is an internationally renowned narcissistic abuse expert and coach, and the author of the groundbreaking book Close Encounters of the Worst Kind: The Narcissistic Abuse Survivor’s Guide to Healing and Recovery Second Edition, the most comprehensive, most well researched, and most up-to-date book on this subject. In addition to helping survivors recognize their abuse and heal from it, this book teaches mental health professionals how to recognize and properly treat the associated abuse syndrome. She is also the author of the official companion workbook Close Encounters of the Worst Kind: A Comprehensive Workbook for Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse. Randi Fine is the author of Cliffedge Road: A Memoir, the first and only book to characterize the life-long progression of complications caused by narcissistic child abuse.