I'm not qualified to give ya some arm chair jaded-philosopher/ shrink wannabe diagnosis.

So I'll stay away from that aside from remarking that my own personal experience involves having things go on like feeling as though my brain is on fire when i have to get angry. I mean, when my family has walked over boundaries as though they're 3 year olds stuck in the bodies of people with a slight Jon Stamos and Rebecca Romijin like age difference only they wound up having a kid, it gets harry.

I feel like my body releases energy when I'm in that state. Often, I try hard to dutifully hide the fact I'm pissed. My mother's commentary on "Changing my facial expression" or as she put it "change my face" when I was angry growing up play a role in my anger just getting worse, not better. Its why working and living at home is not going to work out.

Your desire to c ontinue to try to do the job, trapped in a mental time loop which makes you unable to stop sounds very much like my dad's tendencies. Unfortunately he tends to over work, expecting me to do the same with my own workloads. I have rejected this lately, setting off a firestorm of ragey behavior. The thing is, I ignore it because the pace he expected me to do all my clothes when I caught scabies was annoying. At the same time I was being threatened with having all my clothing thrown out.

The scabies have long since been killed. Or so I'm hoping. I randomly caught it because my uncle's nursing home wound up with an outbreak. My mother saw my dad's marks but then denied seeing them. My family's favorite defense mechanism of choice is denial.

My brain not only feels the brain stuck you're talking about, it feels like its eating itself from the inside out. I turn into an empathic zombie only in my own brain. If really angered, I get paralyzed. I freeze. I sit there trying to hide. My body grows hotter regardless of what I'm wearing. I actually have to go hide under a table or lock myself in a dark closet. The last time this happened, which was rare, I was actually not being made into a trash bin, so I was flashbacking to all the times I've been people's empathic trash dump anyway because it was unusual. I just felt the discomfort of someone else. Its like, hey this group has issues is what she was thinking. We were trying to sort it out. They'd experienced groups like mine before, which is good.

Bringing myself to the present in therapy two weeks ago when my mother was being childish in front of my therapist, ("oh the embarrassment"), while I asked her to leave & she wouldn't because she'd been told she had the first 20 minutes. I pay for therapy and I don't get my boundaries as I want. I'm kidding myself if I hold out hope of paying rent with the same goal. My rent check will still come with strings. If I don't get loved unconditionally as an adult at times its most sorely needed, why the hell am I going to return that along with a rent check that won't buy me respect or "shut up money" as my boyfriend dutifully called it.

Don't view yourself as having a malfunction. Did this tendency help you through school? Oh believe me, I have trouble breaking away from assignments I do in this manner, even if I'm doing the whole thing wrong, which has happened only my blood sugar was incredibly high so I was already compromised & not thinking clearly. Look at factors that lead to you not thinking clearly enough to switch gears. Believe me, I understand.

INTEReSTING PATTERN DAVID

and altho we have all done this at one time or other

i would not see this as related to empathy

it is a mental pattern which i am sure you would want to be shot of
mayhaps


thanks for the sharing tho


peace shan