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>but you'd be surprised how many people don't know their own feelings. Probably grew up in abusive-ish households where the parents didn't respect the child's
by burade 6y ago
>but you'd be surprised how many people don't know their own feelings.
Probably grew up in abusive-ish households where the parents didn't respect the child's emotions. I only found out I have severe anxiety when I was like 27 years old. It took me a year of having full blown panic attacks to realize what it was. I thought I was just being "weak", because that's what I was taught my whole life.
- patmorgan23 6y agoIt's not even that. It's that we don't teach people what a lot of that stuff feels like. You don't need to go through some big trauma to be ignorant of your own feelings.
- burade 6y agoSure, but in a healthy upbringing, it only takes 1 panic attack for a normal person to realize "oook, something's not right". Messed up people think "I'm being weak".
- Out_of_Characte 6y agoBeing conscious doesn't give you the understanding of your own psychology. We are mostly completely unaware of the causation of emotions or responses.
- javajosh 6y agoBeing a new father, I disagree. It's pretty clear most of the time what's happening with the kids: something happens they don't like, they cry. Something happens they do like, they laugh and smile. Pretty simple. Yes, as infants sometimes they cry without an apparent cause (although it always seemed to turn out to be a bubble of gas!), and certainly toddlers seem to melt at the slightest provocation. But the process is hardly random, in ourselves or in others. Of course, it gets trickier as you get older, accumulate experiences. Now the same event can carry a unique meaning for every unique individual that experiences it, and that meaning is sometimes very difficult to infer by simple observation.
- cgriswald 6y agoA tired, cranky kid will pretty clearly be unhappy, but he won't know it's because he's tired and he might even argue with you about it.
- javajosh 6y agoYes, but the irony is you're making the same mistake by calling them "messed up". Something is not right with them, too. It's almost like attacking people is the wrong thing to do, no matter what they do to deserve it! Most of the time what's wrong with them is simple. They are being lazy in their thinking, or they are ignorant of the importance of empathy and acknowledging people's experiences, and helping them through it, even if we don't approve of (or even understand) why they are having that experience. That's not an obvious lesson, and its not "written on the tin" of any baby I've seen! (Caveat: A very tricky case is when someone seems congenitally devoid of empathy or self-reflection (e.g. NPD, or generic sociopath). In that case you're better off not engaging them emotionally at all, and treat them as a rational actor responding to incentives. A variant, the rational actor who clearly understands the power of emotions, who can learn to simulate them, and has no scruples about doing so--this is the nightmare person because not only are they "manipulative", their existence makes life harder for the rest of us with real emotions, who sometimes get accused of being them. BTW I've read some really interesting stuff about successful psychopaths who are totally open about their qualities, good and bad, and have decided to integrate with society in a classically healthy way! So even here, there is hope.)