I have formed the impression that PWP don't swing too far in either emotional direction. I know it is true for myself and many others on here. Dependable. Solid. We are society's Designated Drivers.

Now that the AA contingent has had their little guffaw...

The usual take is that we lack the capacity for strong emotion. But I think that it is just the opposite - we feel too much and are forced to repress the emotion from an early age.

Strong emotion means cortisol goes up and we are hypersensitive to cortisol. We dislike confrontation for example. We know what stress does to us. We are not thrill seekers. I suggest that we dampen our emotions to avoid cortisol. And I suspect that the sensitivity increases with age.

A similar hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli has been offered to explain autism. They retreat from overload.

In my own case, Mr. Cool is the name. With one exception - my wife. Just the opposite of me, the world tears her up so much that I hide the newspapers. Long before PD came along, we both realized that the only thing that got through my armor was her pain. Couldn't and can't handle it. Fries the circuits. Very much a stress response.

I once read a phrase about alcoholism that stuck with me - "The pain of being sentient." That was many years before PD, but the phrase stuck. I never gave in to the bottle - mainly because my dad provided a great example of its dangers. But anything else that didn't involve a needle was on the table for consideration.

There may be a gender difference here, but many of us have a record of abusing about anything we could catch. Does any of this resonate?