In my practice as a psychiatrist and in my personal life, I've known many people whom I call "emotional gushers." Gushers are experts at knowing their emotions and were born to share them. No one has to wonder where they're at. Elated, bored, miserable, they tell you. What you see is what you get. They tend to be spontaneous, direct, authentic and trusted confidants. The gusher unloads stress by verbalizing it.
I, for one, know how freeing this can be. I am grateful to my treasured circle of friends, who deserve trophies for listening to my fears, hopes and quandaries over the years. However, some gushers get antsy when there's no one to tell. Also, they may resist making independent decisions, trusting their intuition or staying emotionally grounded without external input. I have a patient who's an aide in a convalescent home, a true friend to the elderly. Though he finds helping others gratifying, the setting can be arduous: understaffing and budget cuts compromise the care he gives to the dementia-afflicted or physically disabled, a brutal neglect he had difficulty stomaching. Each night, he depended on being able to vent his stress to his wife and could work himself into tremendous anxiety if she wasn't around. My patient didn't know how else to calm down and release stress until I taught him the techniques in this article. In addition to healthily venting, he learned to tap the power within to find inner peace.
In my book "Emotional Freedom" I describe the gusher as well as three other common emotional types, which include the Intellectual, the Empath and the Rock. It's important to know which type you are to be empowered emotionally. To determine if you're a gusher, take the following quiz.
Quiz: Am I A Gusher?
Ask yourself:
If you answer "yes" to one to three of these questions, you possess some gusher tendencies. Responding "yes" to more than three suggests that this is your emotional type.
Recognizing that you're a gusher enables you to become a better communicator by learning to balance self-sufficiency with emotional expression. Sometimes gushers are so hungry to share that they turn people off. At a party, in the market, they're all over you, compulsive emotional purgers. (The joke goes that such motormouths qualify for the Twelve-Step Program On-and-on-and-on-and-on!) Although it's liberating to voice feelings, a gusher must strike a balance between healthily emoting and drawing on the wisdom within. Consider the following profile summarizing a gusher's traits.
The Gusher's Upside
The Gusher's Downside.
Emotional Action Step: Tips For Gushers To Find Balance
Empower yourself with self-sufficiency. Experiment with centering your feelings before soliciting support. Here's how: First define the upset. Let's say your boss has made mince meat out of your self-worth yet again. Second, ask yourself, "How does this make me feel? Seething? Demoralized? Plotting murder?" Now let yourself experience those emotions uncut, not acting them out, an essential stage before transformation can happen. Third, work with your feelings using these techniques:
As a gusher, if you skip these steps and go straight to the phone, you'll cheat yourself out of the opportunity to build the emotional muscles necessary for more freedom and autonomy. Knowledge is power. The most important relationship you'll ever have is with yourself. If this is good, you'll be capable of gratifying relationships with others.
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Also, when we have big emotions, we often are ashamed of them, and that makes things worse. The more we can accept our emotions and not let the shame take over, the more effectively we can express them without driving those around us crazy.
We can support ourselves with self-soothing activities such as yoga (or other exercise), meditation, and massage. I have to keep self-soothing rituals at a high priority, a part of my daily hygiene as important as my shower or brushing my teeth.
Finally, when I am going through difficult life situations that trigger big emotions (such as grief over the death of a loved one), I get a therapist so that I don't have to rely as much on family and friends for support. When we demand more from others than they should have to give, we need to be considerate enough to use professionals to help.
C'mon in, put your head rags over there, you can use them for bandages later.
"Your need to share excessively may burn other people out"
Bingo!
The good part of THAT is........
It makes a nice juicy story to GUSH later about how insensitive the person is....that finally summons the courage to suggest that a little less verbiage might be in order...
And the cycle continues
TM
Once again, I'm with you. I don't know if there is such a thing as a human being who doesn't have to deal with emotional difficulties in life. I thought it rather disingenuous of a psychiatrist to not really offer answers but rather, I thought, criticize those with one particular difficulty. Hard to imagine any emotional gushers getting "aha moments" from the post.
In my experience, they tend to obsess over decisions, so that particular description (process hard issues quickly) hardly fits, either.
However, the 'Drama Queen' description fits perfectly.....
So, like some of the other commenters upthread said, a gusher can be a pain in the arse.
Nevertheless, I like gushers who keep their boundaries, because honesty is a treasure.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2011/05/absolutism-pabulum-for-insecure.html