“first you feel an emotion, then your brain guesses a reason why you feel that emotion”
To explain why this is completely alien to me:
First, I rarely even notice emotions. To say I feel them would be stretching the concept of “feel” quite considerably. “Observe” would be closer to my relationship with my emotions. (Except in the case of -extremely- intense emotions, anyways; it’s kind of like a fire a hundred yards away; I can see it when it’s over there if I look in its direction, and only feel it when it’s really quite significant) Second, I don’t have any kind of… pointer, where I can automatically identify where an emotion came from; my brain isn’t performing such a function at all.
I also haven’t noticed in my relationships any indications that people do have any kind of intuitions about where their emotions come from. Indeed, it’s my experience that a lot of other people also don’t have any kind of direct knowledge of their own emotional state except in extreme situations, much less any intuitions about where that emotional state arises from. If we did have either of these things, I’d expect things like depression wouldn’t go unnoticed by so many people for so long.
“first you feel an emotion, then your brain guesses a reason why you feel that emotion”
To explain why this is completely alien to me:
First, I rarely even notice emotions. To say I feel them would be stretching the concept of “feel” quite considerably. “Observe” would be closer to my relationship with my emotions. (Except in the case of -extremely- intense emotions, anyways; it’s kind of like a fire a hundred yards away; I can see it when it’s over there if I look in its direction, and only feel it when it’s really quite significant) Second, I don’t have any kind of… pointer, where I can automatically identify where an emotion came from; my brain isn’t performing such a function at all.
I also haven’t noticed in my relationships any indications that people do have any kind of intuitions about where their emotions come from. Indeed, it’s my experience that a lot of other people also don’t have any kind of direct knowledge of their own emotional state except in extreme situations, much less any intuitions about where that emotional state arises from. If we did have either of these things, I’d expect things like depression wouldn’t go unnoticed by so many people for so long.
There’s a lot of variation in how aware people are of their emotions.
You might want to look into Alexithymia.
I wrote a poem about the phenomenon:
Vague feeling inside Whatever you interpret it as You will feel Is it depression? Anxiety? Happiness?
Self fulfiling prophecy CBT............
I’m not inside your brain or your friend’s brains, but that doesn’t sound typical to me.