Somewhat related, but recently I have been trying to get more in touch with my emotions, only to … not understand what they are telling me? I can often feel a vague sense of unease, or something hinting me at something, but I can’t for the life of me make out what my emotions want from me, until I accidentally clear whatever reason there was for me to be uneasy, and the feeling passes, until next time. There is just not enough feedback, or my emotional vocabulary is missing, it truly feels like your anecdote of trying to wiggle the ears for the first time.
While this is probably not so bad overall, as it means I am past the “Peak of Mount Stupid” and in the “Valley of Despair” of listening to my emotions, it feels irritating. I visualise my mind as a cockpit for my consciousness a lot recently, a bit like an X-Wing cockpit, and now I see a bunch of flickering lights and extra buttons to the sides, but I have no idea what they mean and none of them are labeled properly.
Is there anyone who has had this problem before, or is there any actually good taxonomies of emotions out there? I found most scientific work in this field to be sorely lacking, identifying only 5-7 emotions each, and there are more like 50 visibly distinct ones for all sorts of needs and lacks.
I’m curious if what your describing is similar to what I’m describing in this post. When I was started paying more attention to emotions I’d often feel these impenetrable clouds of grey that I couldn’t discern much content from.
https://naturalhazard.xyz/then_and_now
Thanks! Both your own article and the link were pretty good. Interestingly my situation resolved, I just kept my attention on the emotion, and one day something happened that made it crystal clear to me what the right course was. A long time friend and formely one of my closest friends treated me like shit, and suddenly I knew that the emotion was that she had to go, and I cut contact. Since then my feelings have returned to an unexciting baseline, with no current big blindspots. I think the right play is just to keep attention on it, keep it in your periphery, until the gears click and the reason the emotion lies dormant comes into focus.
Somewhat related, but recently I have been trying to get more in touch with my emotions, only to … not understand what they are telling me? I can often feel a vague sense of unease, or something hinting me at something, but I can’t for the life of me make out what my emotions want from me, until I accidentally clear whatever reason there was for me to be uneasy, and the feeling passes, until next time.
There is just not enough feedback, or my emotional vocabulary is missing, it truly feels like your anecdote of trying to wiggle the ears for the first time.
While this is probably not so bad overall, as it means I am past the “Peak of Mount Stupid” and in the “Valley of Despair” of listening to my emotions, it feels irritating. I visualise my mind as a cockpit for my consciousness a lot recently, a bit like an X-Wing cockpit, and now I see a bunch of flickering lights and extra buttons to the sides, but I have no idea what they mean and none of them are labeled properly.
Is there anyone who has had this problem before, or is there any actually good taxonomies of emotions out there? I found most scientific work in this field to be sorely lacking, identifying only 5-7 emotions each, and there are more like 50 visibly distinct ones for all sorts of needs and lacks.
This post is my current recommendation for practicing getting a felt sense for the range of emotions you can be experiencing.
https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/labelling-feelings
I’m curious if what your describing is similar to what I’m describing in this post. When I was started paying more attention to emotions I’d often feel these impenetrable clouds of grey that I couldn’t discern much content from. https://naturalhazard.xyz/then_and_now
Thanks! Both your own article and the link were pretty good.
Interestingly my situation resolved, I just kept my attention on the emotion, and one day something happened that made it crystal clear to me what the right course was. A long time friend and formely one of my closest friends treated me like shit, and suddenly I knew that the emotion was that she had to go, and I cut contact. Since then my feelings have returned to an unexciting baseline, with no current big blindspots.
I think the right play is just to keep attention on it, keep it in your periphery, until the gears click and the reason the emotion lies dormant comes into focus.