Assignment Task:
Do you agree or disagree and Why?
When it comes to the concept of dissociation the emotion that I tend to repress is anger. I have experienced moments of feeling angry inside but showcase no outward expression of it, when it comes to anger I have a fear of others seeing me in another light, If you ask anyone that knows me they will tell you that I am easy going and carefree and so when I feel angry I don't want to express it because I don't want others to look at me in that light, I also experience anger strongly and as I have worked with therapists in the past another reason I tend to repress showing that emotion is because I grew up in a household where my father expressed it openly and I vowed to be different then he was so when I feel angry I tend to want to hide it or repress it because of that childhood trauma, at the end of the day I understand that it is not healthy to want to repress that emotion. On the opposite side of it the emotion that I express most freely is joy or happiness. I express it in not only my facial expressions but also in the tone in my voice, when I am truly happy or excited about something I feel like you can see more of it from my outward expressions then my internal expressions, I am also most comfortable vocalizing joy and understanding the root cause behind it, which is different from anger, a lot of times with anger I really have to sit down and figure out what is causing me to be angry and sometimes I'm not able to pinpoint it whereas with happiness I know exactly why I am feeling that emotion.
Personally, I can relate a lot to Dr. Mauss paradox on the pursuit of happiness, I have had moments in my life when I felt like I wanted to be happier and needed to focus on finding that happiness and very much like Dr. Mauss described when I solely focused on that pursuit, I realized I was more unhappy than I was before. When I stopped focusing on it and instead started focusing on living a live is pursuit of knowledge and experiences, I realized that happiness and joyous moments naturally occurred. To me living a happy life is not as important now as it was before as I understand that pursuit is unrealistic, my understanding of this paradox is that the more you seek out happiness and the more emphasis you put on it being a requirement of your life the less happy you will be, you will constantly be searching for it and will always be left looking for more