Since she didn't seek out a diagnosis, her actual pathology is still up in the air and I personally don't think autism is a good fit. The fact of the matter is, empathy can be a hard thing to develop, and I think many people's upbringings can cause it to not fully develop even into adulthood.
I remember at one point sometime around the age of 20 I felt like there was something I was missing. I've always had a pretty good intuition and my intuition led me to explore a lot of really really sad anime. The exposure to so much tragedy seemed to kick-start my emotional processing system and I was able to interact with people a lot more authentically after that.
15 years later, I can now recognize the signs of an immature emotional processing center in others and I absolutely see them in her. It's a hard cross to bear, instead of just feeling things, you have to think your way into feeling them. Your 'range' is limited to a small spectrum.
It doesn't affect the ability to function, there's nothing 'really' wrong with you, your emotional system does work. It's just that everything's, well, blunted.
Once I got my emotional center processing again, I started to recognize feelings that I had had in the past, but didn't recognize. It's a strange thing thinking back to your childhood and realizing you were feeling things that you didn't understand that you were feeling. Not entirely sure how common it is, but I do run across immature emotional processing very often.
Now that I've had this opportunity to think about it more, it's like the cognitive part of your brain just isn't connected to the emotional part. So much of your emotions never really reach conscious awareness. If you see a lot of really ugly, senseless, or violent crap as a kid, I think you're prone to this kind of disconnection. Then by the time you're an adult, it almost ossifies. You can work on it, but you have to be motivated to somehow.
I had a very similar experience to yours within the last 18 months - in my late 20s.
Tragedy, for me, opened up an emotional view that was blunted for so long. Immediately my relationship with everyone around me, especially my family, changed -- for the better, that is.
I consider it to be a very beneficial and important part of my personal development over the last few years.
I anticipate that I won't be able to cry when my parents die. I really hope I'm wrong. Reason is that I think they have great lives and are fulfilled so in my eyes it doesn't matter if they are 60 or 80y/o when they die. They have a good time on earth. It's helpful that I know about their childhoods and don't have any open questions because I've talked with them a lot about who they are. I don't think I'll be regretful when they die and have the wish to ask them something.
It sounds like tragedy is the cause for this rapid improvement in emotional processing. Maybe it's the only emotional state that can break down this wall of emotionlessness. Sounds painful, but I can understand how it could help.
What about when one of your parents die, and the other has to live alone for the rest of his/her live? Could you cry over the sadness of the one left behind?
I will cry as a response to their crying. This is natural.
I just don't need it. I would mostly cry to be empathetic.
I don't think this is wrong. Many people do it to help out e.g. that friend who cried on the funeral of your mother? He is crying to communicate his compassion, not because he feels grief. If you would know how many people do this, you would be astonished by the emotional coldness that many have inside their heads (involuntarily).
> it's like the cognitive part of your brain just isn't connected to the emotional part
I have this problem. Most of the time I call it autism for convenience although I know it isn't accurate. Deficient/Immature emotional processing is a better phrase that is more accurate.
I think that development issues in the psyche can lead to delays in areas like emotional processing and theory of mind. Oftentimes I have to simulate emotions because I don't feel them in myself and others. The good thing is that I've become very good at analyzing people and their motivations using knowledge of psychology - it's all conscious. I can understand people better on a rational level because my explanations incorporate negative thoughts people may have about themselves without realizing them (negative unconscious thoughts - mostly fear and anxiety). But I have to allow myself explicitly to feel something because my emotional regulation is very high - I think this stems from fear.
There's a wish to control social situations to feel safe. Maybe individuals who have this problem had negative social experiences because their perceptions were off in such situations and they realized that their assessments were wrong which lead to a deficit in self-esteem. To an untrained eye, this may look like autistic behavior, but it's mostly based on anxiety and a deficit in emotional processing.
It's possible to overcome that, but I have to admit that it has positive effects: I don't get emotional easily, I can control social situations and I don't feel fear or embarrassment. Feeling is a choice and having empathy feels like a tool. Sounds sociopathic to me (autistic people also have sociopathic symptoms), so I don't really wish this to anybody.
> Oftentimes I have to simulate emotions because I don't feel them in myself and others.
But isn't that how empathy works?
Imho people on the spectrum are often way too aware of their conscious thoughts, at least in contrast to "neurotypical" people.
Which just adds to their general problem of figuring out signals in all that noise, leading to misconceptions like the above.
Heck, I'd even argue having to think about your emotions is a bit of an advantage because then you can actually reasonably justify having them, in contrast to "just feeling them", which is afaik also not considered "healthy".
Nobody would want to be around a person who tends to get angry because he's sometimes just feeling like getting angry.
I've read that book and disagree. I don't have a limited set of emotions, I just have a better emotional regulation system because emotions are blunted.
Emotions exist in me (I'm not a robot or a predator) and I can extract the information they contain to inform my decisions, but I'm mostly unaffected by them. I don't use this trait to destroy people - I think this is what only weak sociopaths do that are not content with themselves - I use it to be more successful and manage people properly (I'm an empathetic leader) and to be more assertive in negotiations.
I read the word psychopath with a negative connotation i.e. a ruthless person who doesn't feel remorse. I agree, I mostly don't feel remorse, but I'm not doing the things many people think sociopaths/psychopaths do (like attacking people on a psychological basis, destroy lives, ...). I'm a good person and I think many sociopaths are - it depends on the values and on the motivation to hold those values up (although I agree that they feel optional. I'm not bound to societal expectations).
If you read about Hannah Arendt you can see that "normal" people are capable of evil things. I think circumstances are in most cases more important than defining brain-damaged psychopaths as the root of all evil. People kill and feel joy in the right circumstances. Sociopaths are more open about the dark nature of human beings.
> I have killed animals (as a child). Whenever there was a stray animal in my alleyway (cats or dogs usually) I would pick it up and leave it in my trashcan by the side of the house until it got dark. Whenever my parents were asleep, I'd sneak out and take the animal out of the can to torture it. Sometimes I kicked it to death and other times I would suffocate it. This was my main source of entertainment since I didn't have many other things to do.
from [1]. Run if you see people like this, their moral compass is not aligned. Sociopathy is very likely a spectrum disorder like autism.
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> Sociopaths have the neural map of a neurotypical person in an fMRI machine, they are not lacking in, nor do they have differences in the brain that are apparent as psychopaths do, they have the grey matter necessary to experience what empathy is. Here is the massive difference from neurotypical responses, from sociopathic ones.
> When the sociopathy is formed, the person experiencing whatever the causative agent is tends to shut off their access to the emotions like affection, desire for attention, empathy, anything that would make them outwardly dependent and turn insularly. While the pathways are still there, they are no longer used.
> In that regard they probably had a heavier pruning to the bonding section of the brain.
That guy here [2] theorizes about the causes and neurological aspects of sociopathy. And I would like to clarify that my own self-diagnosis and your reference to "The Psychopath Code" is not a reliable source of information for a diagnosis.
There is however a standardized test for psychopathy (do it at [3]) for self-reports. Some of my business friends score very high on this test.
> And I would like to clarify that my own self-diagnosis and your reference to "The Psychopath Code" is not a reliable source of information for a diagnosis.
Fair enough.
> Sociopathy is very likely a spectrum disorder like autism.
I'd say we're starting to understand disorders in general are. At the very least they're not binary. Even something like sexual preference such as homosexuality isn't binary.
> I have killed animals (as a child). Whenever there was a stray animal in my alleyway (cats or dogs usually) I would pick it up and leave it in my trashcan by the side of the house until it got dark. Whenever my parents were asleep, I'd sneak out and take the animal out of the can to torture it. Sometimes I kicked it to death and other times I would suffocate it. This was my main source of entertainment since I didn't have many other things to do.
I killed ants as kid, cause they didn't follow my traffic signs. I used a catapult to throw stones on a cow because I thought it was funny. I've also been a vegetarian and vegan.
Most people are still omnivore. They can't watch a video of a cow getting slaughtered, but they'll happily eat the meat. Yet when some kind of animal which is commonly a pet such as a dog or cat is ill or gets killed they get super emotional. I don't understand that; and I dislike dogs (they smell, they poop on street, are noisy, and demand attention). I can imagine that dogs/cats on the street can be a nuisance. Especially if poop on your property or make noise at night. Been there. Had a couple of street cats for years on my premises at night.
> Your score from primary psychopathy has been calculated as 1.9. Primary psychopathy is the affective aspects of psychopathy; a lack of empathy for other people and tolerance for antisocial orientations.
> Your score from secondary psychopathy has been calculated as 3.3. Secondary psychopathy is the antisocial aspects of psychopathy; rule breaking and a lack of effort towards socially rewarded behavior.
Hardly surprising for someone with ASD. I'm actually sensitive, but IRL I tend to carefully hide that so I don't seem too vulnerable (become a victim of the narcisist/sociopath/psychopath). I have a moral compass. Its values are different from the status quo which might make it seem like I am amoral, but I know very well I have one.
Perhaps you'll enjoy The Mastermind [1] a series about Paul Calder Le Roux by Evan Ratliff.
One thing that's leaping out of me in the course of this discussion is just how different ASD is from Cluster B, they affect different parts of the brain for different reasons. Cluster B largely happens as a result of trauma, and individuals on the spectrum can absolutely be traumatized and so develop emotional deficiencies. But this by no means happens with everybody on that spectrum. ASD largely affects the sensory parts of the brain and so while it has often dramatic effects on empathy, it does that for different reasons than 'mere' trauma. People can feel emotions without being able to sense them in others. (empathy) Trauma affects your ability to feel them at all.
ASD is an element of Cluster B personality disorders.
> how different ASD is from Cluster B
is therefore like saying "how different a football is from balls". Did you mean "ASD is different from Borderline (problems with emotional regulation, panic attacks, ...), Histrionic (egocentric, seeking attention) and Narcissistic (egotistic, abusive, ...) personality disorders" in the sense that those result from trauma?
ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) is definitely not classed as a Cluster B personality disorder. You may be mistaking ASD for ASPD, Antisocial Personality Disorder, of which psychopathy is a variant. Sociopathy is not defined in the DSM-IV or DSM-5.
Yes, meant APD - wrong abbreviation. Sociopathy and psychopathy are not explicitly listed, but APD captures many of the symptoms (psychopaths are a subset of people with APD).
Now your comment makes a lot more sense. I agree. There was a time when people thought that the mother is responsible for autism in their child (through their behavior) which was a huge injustice. I also think that autism is fundamentally different to personality disorders (except psychopathy which is an extreme form of APD that has biological roots AFAIK).
Can't help but nitpick that you're still using APD to refer to ASPD. :-)
While all mental disorders have biological roots, as in they are all malfunctions of the brain which is biological, I believe psychopathy is trauma-driven just like the other Cluster B disorders, though I think there's likely a heritable component like many other disorders.
Firstly, it can't even be diagnosed until early adulthood because the empathic center takes that long to develop. Children who seem psychopathic can 'snap out of it' even in their late teens.
The brain pathways either get exercised or they don't, it's the failure of them to do so that causes psychopathy, this failure can have very deep roots completely shutting large parts of the limbic system or small parts. The extent of the trauma largely determines the extent of the disorder. Trauma can be 'blocked out' and the formative traumatic experience can be totally out of memory's reach as the brain tends to block such things because they cause further distress. Just because you don't remember a particular experience doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I do think that meditation, or the judicious use of psychedelics, particularly once the empathic center is reactivated, can allow one to 'hone in' on the specific blocked memory and provoke a catharsis, and give a lot more meaning and clarity to who you are and why you are that way.
What I do believe is that the psychopath - empath spectrum is a true spectrum in that everyone is on it, unlike the autism spectrum, where most people who think they're on it are really looking for some kind of framework to order their life around and so just about every sort of social maladaption gets lumped under that label. Autism describes a specific sort of brain misdevelopment, psychopathy / narcissism / cognitive empathy / poorly-developed empathy / neurotypical / sensitive is something everyone can find meaning in.
I think in 10 years or so the categories will be far clearer and emotional development will be far more well-understood.
> What I do believe is that the psychopath - empath spectrum is a true spectrum in that everyone is on it, unlike the autism spectrum, where most people who think they're on it are really looking for some kind of framework to order their life around and so just about every sort of social maladaption gets lumped under that label.
Most people, I don't know, I can't speak for them. But I know not by the professionals who diagnose ASD here in my region. Because other explanations than autism get carefully evaluated via their own knowledge on the matter (at least 4 eyes, including a clinical psychologist, though possibly more), heteroanamnesis, and statements by a family member/friend to verify.
> Autism describes a specific sort of brain misdevelopment, psychopathy / narcissism / cognitive empathy / poorly-developed empathy / neurotypical / sensitive is something everyone can find meaning in.
I like this video [1] explaining how someone with autism can get overstimulated.
The thing with autism is: not two autistics are alike. They all have different issues, and might have different issues on top of autism, such as depression, anxiety, or ADHD (though the latter can only be diagnosed in childhood). That's also why I found it so very interesting to meet other people with autism from my region. I also feel less lonely that way. I go every month to a group of "fellow sufferers" (for lack of a better word in English I can think of).
As a final word, I can recommend to be very careful with psychedelics. For me, cannabis specifically, has triggered a few psychoses. Although the most severe one was due to stress.
I wouldn't recommend psychedelics to people on the autism spectrum at all, sorry if it sounded like I was. Rather I think it's a tool that can help with emotional range improvement.
I'm starting to call it "cognitive empathy". Rather than having emotions and theory of mind operate in the limbic system where they belong, and not having the option of not having an empathic center, the mind starts to build its own version of the limbic system in the forebrain. This brings the functioning of that system into the cognitive purview.
It's definitely in the Cluster B 'spectrum' but in order to make sense of it I think the best approach is to understand where in early development mind started to get disordered, and just how 'off' you really are.
Autism Spectrum Disorder happens extremely early, while the mind is developing. Only the precisely correct form of early intervention will restore some degree of normalcy to the person.
Personality disorders are not quite as dramatic, and start to develop in childhood. Traumatic things happen to you that affect the way your brain develops and it deeply affects you all the way down to your basal ganglia. The amygdala has the ability to completely override the forebrain and cognitive processing, so when it malfunctions, or is disordered, it seriously affects your ability to function in society.
What I'm calling here 'cognitive empathy' is when the trauma doesn't really reach the point where it affects functioning. The person knows something is wrong but can't put a finger on it. What's happened is rather than trauma pushing all the way down into the reptile brain / basal ganglia, or so deep into the limbic system that it rewires or completely turning emotional processing off, (psychopathy) the person gets 'shadows' of emotional processing that they then need to 'shore up' with cognitive processing.
Those with personality disorders don't really have a choice other than to develop a 'mask'. Their emotional centers just don't function well enough, no amount of watching sad anime will cause any form of feeling to arise. Normal people are really sensitive to the subtleties of emotional response hitting your face, and so psychopaths simply can't have a 'normal' conversation with people unless they 'put on their masks'. The mask is a wholesale cognitive recreation of the limbic system, crafted over years of getting it wrong until they finally figure it out.
I think most people that describe having cognitive empathy aren't this badly damaged. Their limbic systems function, just not well. They can improve, often just by seeking out feeling wherever they can find it. So many people describe operating cognitively until one day in adulthood they managed to start processing, then all of a sudden it's like a new world opened up for them. It's their limbic system finally making connections with the forebrain. They have to keep working on it throughout their lives to increase the trickle into a working and healthy interconnection.
Really good empathy involves lots of back and forth communication between the forebrain and the limbic system. Empathy that's only cognitive needs to be controlled and extreme anxiety results when the control isn't maintained. Anxiety results when you get amygdala activation as a result of a feeling of lack of control. It overrides your forebrain and places in the forefront of the mind, "get back to safety." With good limbic system function then the person can better orient themselves in uncertain situations. A lot of this is due to empathy, the 'mirror neuron' system. You can look around, sense that no one is trying to judge you or anything, and start to relax. But if all that is happening cognitively, it won't happen fast enough to keep up with the amygdala's defense mechanisms.
> What I'm calling here 'cognitive empathy' is when the trauma doesn't really reach the point where it affects functioning. The person knows something is wrong but can't put a finger on it. What's happened is rather than trauma pushing all the way down into the reptile brain / basal ganglia, or so deep into the limbic system that it rewires or completely turning emotional processing off, (psychopathy) the person gets 'shadows' of emotional processing that they then need to 'shore up' with cognitive processing.
But this is the experience of many people with "high-functioning" ASD, even people who have received formal diagnoses. "Something" is off and affecting their relationships, but until they receive their diagnosis they can't understand what it is. It seems to me as though you are inventing your own idiosyncratic definitions for these ideas.
> I'm starting to call it "cognitive empathy". Rather than having emotions and theory of mind operate in the limbic system where they belong, and not having the option of not having an empathic center, the mind starts to build its own version of the limbic system in the forebrain. This brings the functioning of that system into the cognitive purview.
You describe the exact model I have created for my brain as well. It's exactly this. A separate thing that simulates the activity of the limbic system, but I'm still unsure if I'm not simply reusing the limbic system for that (would need a fMRI to test this hypothesis).
> What I'm calling here 'cognitive empathy' is when the trauma doesn't really reach the point where it affects functioning.
I can't remember being traumatized, but I know that I didn't seek affection as a kid (my sister told me that hugging me etc. didn't affect me, any type of punishment didn't affect me on an emotional level - there were some autistic tendencies).
I got my IQ tested (because I misbehaved in school and teachers thought either I'm stupid or highly gifted) and got many points (got downvoted the last time I wrote that number down here). If the numbers are correct I'm part of the top 1% with my intelligence. I guess I had to pay a price for that. Are there studies that show a correlation between highly gifted kids and problems with the linking of the limbic system?
- - -
> It's their limbic system finally making connections with the forebrain.
> Empathy that's only cognitive needs to be controlled and extreme anxiety results when the control isn't maintained.
> You can look around, sense that no one is trying to judge you or anything, and start to relax.
Very accurate observation, although I can easily recognize if I get judged or if people focus on me - I wasn't able to do this in the past (people told me), but I'm getting better and I'm now on a par with "normal" people (and I have the advantage that all this information is conscious so I can act on it faster and more rational). But I also think that this is based on my forebrain. The limbic system feels something (but retrieving this information is more demanding). Normally I maintain a feeling of apatheia in my limbic system (I can control this most of the time). Once I've set the emotion, it's hard for anything (myself included) to change it. I don't even care about death in that state which is a bit dangerous (had some very dangerous situations in the past because of that) - I'm completely content, very stoic and don't feel ego in that state.
> But if all that is happening cognitively, it won't happen fast enough to keep up with the amygdala's defense mechanisms.
Sometimes I feel that I'm actively suppressing defense mechanisms because my consciousness overrides the emotional response. I think it's a matter of training. It's hard to be faster, but most of the time you get the control back pretty fast. Using knowledge of cognitive biases, human tendencies, evolutionary psychology and rationalizations are extremely helpful to achieve that.
- - -
Sometimes I let it slip and I'm positive about being able to feel something - I can remember that I was grateful that I was able to cry when one of my ex-girlfriends left me: I didn't had to and I had to convince myself, but I felt like a human being doing that. I thought: "Very good, I'm crying. Like a normal person. I'm still human". I was able to stop crying in every second, everything was very controlled - I don't know if this is normal, but this fits to your statement: "They can improve, often just by seeking out feeling wherever they can find it."
I'm trying to do that. But I have to say: My best improvements came through improving my knowledge about psychology. I'm making better predictions about human behavior and slowly it's better than most people with their intuition. I'm slowly achieving above-average insight into human nature compared to my surroundings. I use feedback loops to ensure that my assumptions are correct (not always very nice: I ask people very intimate things, bypass their emotional defenses or analyze them thoroughly). But it's the only way to be sure that I'm actually improving and not falling for self-delusion.
> My best improvements came through improving my knowledge about psychology.
Studying psychology gives you more cognitive resources, allowing your brain to wrap itself better around certain concepts. I think it's easy for intellectual types to put too much emphasis on cognitive development and they need to be encouraged to actually develop their limbic system.
The cognitive wants to get better, constantly constantly better. The limbic wants harmony. I also have had the experience of being prideful of the capacity to be emotional. Over time I've been able to gradually cede the compulsion of the cognitive to allow the limbic to do its job. It makes life much, much, much simpler, to be able to turn off the need to constantly understand everything.
> The cognitive wants to get better, constantly constantly better. The limbic wants harmony. I also have had the experience of being prideful of the capacity to be emotional. Over time I've been able to gradually cede the compulsion of the cognitive to allow the limbic to do its job. It makes life much, much, much simpler, to be able to turn off the need to constantly understand everything.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record: mindfulness can aid with that.
The technique of choice for this is catharsis. This is why watching and reading tragic media is so useful to people. It's tailor made to engage the limbic system. Watching people deal with really awful situations primes the mind to release emotional energy and engages neural pathways that aren't often active.
Mindfulness is useful for when you have uncontrolled emotions flooding your forebrain and making it difficult for you to function. Forcing your mind to watch the processes as they're happening allows the forebrain to come up with novel ways to make sense of what the rest of the brain is doing.
You want to release, then integrate emotion. Catharsis, then mindfulness.
Ok. I will watch Hachiko and use the resulting sentimentality to train my limbic system and its connection with my neocortex. I will try to feel something.
I've heard that many people get tears while watching it, although many people don't score high on standardized psychopathy tests.
You may get results out of repetition. When I was a kid, I remember reading and rereading the same books over and over again, and really getting to know the characters and the storyline. You experience each new watching / reading in a different way, bypassing the cognitive mind a little bit by not giving it as much work to do. You'll get more limbic immersion this way.
Thanks, that's a great tip although it sounds extremely boring. I spend most of my time juggling with philosophical or abstract thoughts, planning the business and working on projects. Doing something which isn't intellectually rewarding sounds like a challenge.
If you're looking for emotional activation, both boredom and frustration are a good ones to use. :-) I like to let any and all negative emotions I feel free reign over my mind. It can become a kind of meditation.
I think of this phenomenon as an incomplete, next-level theory of mind. Theory of mind typically refers to the idea that, for young children (and people with developmental disabilities), some cannot conceive of another person not knowing what they know. Here's a classic example: Child 1 watches Child 2 put a toy in Box A; Child 2 leaves the room; another person moves the toy from Box A to Box B; Child 2 returns; when Child 1 is asked where Child 2 will look for the toy, Child 1 will often say Box B (where the toy actually is) because Child 1 doesn't process that Child 2 didn't see what Child 1 saw. Essentially, we are born acting as if everyone shares a singular mind, and it takes training and learning to understand that we don't and that there are consequences to this.
Part of getting older, for me and I'm sure many others, is learning that the boundaries of my perception and experience seem to form the totality of the universe for everybody's perception and experience. I think my feelings after the saddest event of my life is the saddest anybody could ever feel. But really, compare tragic experiences: losing a beloved pet, losing both parents in a single day (e.g. car accident), losing your child on a wilderness hike. It's a slow process of growing up and understanding the depths of emotion that so many others of the human race have already experienced, and that you have not. And until that's complete (hint, it never is, you just grow more and more aware of its vastness), you'll always struggle to fully connect with other people.
As a very different example, drawing on the parent post, if you've grown up in a violent world, it's just as difficult to imagine life from the point of view of someone who has not. Beyond ASD, think of kids who grow up in gang life, or on either side of an abusive relationship.
Same, and I've still to develop them - or keep them under wraps as they are now, seems to work fine for my career and such. It's I think a level of emotional maturity, or maybe even a fear of feeling - like, keeping them suppressed is doable, I can live with that, but what would happen if I stop suppressing them? I don't want to break down bawling at work for example, or get angry and start throwing shit. The emotional maturity there is to feel the feelings but be able to deal with them in a mature way. Like, you can be angry at your significant other, raise your voice if need be, but there has to be a lid on it, a reasoning. There's an area between suppressing / ignoring feelings and letting them control you.
Letting them control you is the amygdala overriding conscious forebrain processing. In healthy functioning people, their amygdala contributes an integral part of their conscious experience. Your limbic (emotional) center is constantly running in the background, coming up with reactions and those reactions sometimes trigger the amygdala to start the process of overriding consciousness. The first few times it happens, it can be rather scary, but this mostly happens in children as a normal part of development. The forebrain receives the override and the flood of energy and has to make a decision about what to do. If the events are traumatic enough, they'll cause the mind to develop certain emotional blocks, keeping the limbic system from being able to trigger amygdala overrides.
But the amygdala overrides are a crucial part of social experience, they 'alert' you when something's 'wrong'. Developing emotional maturity involves being able to sensitively process the overrides in a way that contributes to social harmony instead of, say, getting really mad and huffy and demanding.
This is very interesting. I only just posted the following in another thread. I empathise with your experience greatly. I feel you articulated it very well:
"Feelings are such a tricky thing.
I was raised to suppress them. Or, well, not even that. Feelings were so thoroughly suppressed in my family, that they never even featured. I must have learned that any expression of emotion gets me nowhere by the age of 0.5
In my 20s, throughout various failed relationships I began to re-examine what feelings are. Why did people (and, anecdotally, women) have so many feelings, of such strength and seemingly of such unpredictability?
It wasn't long until I decided to get therapy. To see what's lurking beneath.
Lo and behold, there were some feelings there. Lots of them surprisingly strong, yet hesitant to surface. It was a bizarre dichotomy to have to deal with. One that affects me to this day. It's like the stronger a feeling within me, the further it is hidden away, leading to this cat and mouse game of 'who am I?'.
Feelings offer a surprisingly absolute way to perceive the world. They are always there and they are always exactly what they are. So long as you allow yourself to feel them.
For the last decade I have been doing nothing but trying to feel more and more. This is still a lot less than most people. At the same time it makes me feel much more 'at home' in the world, it has made me able to connect with people better, it has reduced my stress and anxiety.
It has also lead to some other curious changes within me. I am feeling myself become more and more incompatible with the 'business world'. I know that's a very vague term, but I have found corporate culture and the striving for endless profits, no matter what the human cost, to be incredibly despiccable. Nauseating, icky. Misguided.
I wonder whether feelings and emotions provide a certain common ground for what a human being 'should be' or 'wants to be', which runs counter to capitalist incentive. After all, you want a herd of obedient workers, not uppity individuals causing trouble with their free spirited antics.
I should add that I am of German heritage and I feel there is an entire generation of people who have lived through historical events enabled almost entirely by the suppression and eradication of all feelings (apart from, ironically, hate and fear)."
> feeling myself become more and more incompatible with the 'business world'
This one hit me like a well thrown punch. I know it's a somewhat common sentiment, but in conjunction with being more "emotionally aware" I found it striking.
Since I became more in touch with my own feelings, the quality of my daily experience with work (and the people there) matters far more to me than mere compensation. This is something I think a lot of workers go through, and I think managers who are aware of it will be more effective than those who aren't. Knowing what motivates others and what they value can be extremely useful.
I remember at one point sometime around the age of 20 I felt like there was something I was missing. I've always had a pretty good intuition and my intuition led me to explore a lot of really really sad anime. The exposure to so much tragedy seemed to kick-start my emotional processing system and I was able to interact with people a lot more authentically after that.
15 years later, I can now recognize the signs of an immature emotional processing center in others and I absolutely see them in her. It's a hard cross to bear, instead of just feeling things, you have to think your way into feeling them. Your 'range' is limited to a small spectrum.
It doesn't affect the ability to function, there's nothing 'really' wrong with you, your emotional system does work. It's just that everything's, well, blunted.
Once I got my emotional center processing again, I started to recognize feelings that I had had in the past, but didn't recognize. It's a strange thing thinking back to your childhood and realizing you were feeling things that you didn't understand that you were feeling. Not entirely sure how common it is, but I do run across immature emotional processing very often.
Now that I've had this opportunity to think about it more, it's like the cognitive part of your brain just isn't connected to the emotional part. So much of your emotions never really reach conscious awareness. If you see a lot of really ugly, senseless, or violent crap as a kid, I think you're prone to this kind of disconnection. Then by the time you're an adult, it almost ossifies. You can work on it, but you have to be motivated to somehow.