Emotional awareness poll

Discussion, in general

How often do you have difficulty determining what you feel and/or why?

Almost all the time
6
12%
Often every day
6
12%
About every day
7
14%
At least every week
4
8%
Rarely
21
41%
Never
7
14%
 
Total votes : 51

Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby Krashlia » Mon Aug 01, 2016 4:11 pm

I usually assume its something about my Ex (because something is friggin wrong with me seeing we were teens and it was roughly 5 years ago). Or its probably about how badly I wasted my time when the least I could've done was engage in some sort of creative project or industrious/"intellectual" activity (with which I could get revenge against (or possibly approval from) my ex, secure acknowledgement from others, whilst being rewarded in money and proving my own worth in the world). Yes, pathetic or incredible self-absorbed, I know. In a Separate but related matter to those two, I sense that some of my slight feeling of melancholy originate from feelings of mediocrity and the idea that I fail to actually do well by others (my ex being one of them, in terms of attitude) and those I call my friends.

(Shrugs) I dunno.

(The earnestness/role-play switch for hate week)

But this week, its definitely Imurdau. Cant tell you why I feel a strange twinge of negative emotions whenever he's around, I just know he has that effect on people.
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby Learned Nand » Mon Aug 01, 2016 9:14 pm

I didn't have a good answer to this poll. On the one hand, when I try to assess how I am feeling and why, I don't necessarily do a good job. On the other hand, I rarely bother to make the attempt, so it's rarely an issue. I selected the answer "rarely", but in a sense it's a misleading answer.
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby ghijkmnop » Fri Aug 19, 2016 8:28 pm

Redacted
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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Fri Mar 15, 2019 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby Piter Lauchy » Sun Oct 16, 2016 9:08 pm

This is going to sound like some new age hippie bullshit, but hear me out; it works.
It's possible to distance oneself from one's emotions in a way that one can observe (and subsequently analyse) them and choose whether to identify with them.

In order to do this one has to accept the idea that our mind (I'm counting emotions as part of the mind) and ourselves are different entities. A mind should be treated as a tool, something we can use when we need it and put away when we don't. However, most people's minds are on overdrive 24/7 and have absolute power over the person possessing that mind, without that person noticing. This is where being aware comes in.

Basically, for every thought or emotion, ask yourself "Does this originate from myself or from outside sources?"*
If it's from outside, dismiss it; it shouldn't have any impact on you. If it's yours, further analyse it. It's like fear: The more closely you look at something the less scary it becomes.

I've probably explained this pretty badly and the more scientifically inclined people (*cough*aviel*cough*) won't be convinced either way, but from personal experience I know that it works. It's a big part of Zen Buddhism if I'm not mistaken, and it helped me get out of depression and become a much better human being. I'm way calmer, take myself less seriously and just enjoy life a whole lot more than before. I haven't had a single bad day in around five years (I don't count "being unhappily in love" as "bad" because I've come to accept sadness as a good feeling), and I'm pretty sure I've experienced what Buddhists call enlightenment twice so far; they were moments of overwhelming joy that actually had me in tears. Once I even was very angry immediately before it; the other time it just came out of nowhere.

Anyway, that's why I picked "Never" up there in the poll.

Seriously, you guys. Check out Zen Buddhism. It has so many insights to offer.

*The mind is an outside source in that it's shaped and affected by outside factors, such as experiences and people. This is what most people call their personality.
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby Tesseracts » Fri Oct 19, 2018 7:17 pm

I'm bumping this thread in honor of the new NPC meme. Unlike most memes which have their root in funny jokes this one has it's roots in a strange interpretation of a poorly done scientific study. I'm not going to find the study because it doesn't matter, but basically they interviewed a few college students and found some of them do not have an inner monologue. /pol/ decided people without an inner monologue don't have a soul and are NPCs so they hate Trump. Logical right?

A lot of people can't imagine how someone can think at all without verbal thinking, but I do it all the time. My dogs also think without an inner monologue and I know this because they are terrible at verbal communication. It's not that uncommon for people to think in non-verbal ways, and even for people who have a constant inner monologue I believe most of our thought processes are subconscious and we are not aware of them in any obvious way. You think faster than you verbalize. My thoughts are frequently visual rather than verbal. As a child I was considered developmentally behind because I often struggled to find the words to match my thoughts. Yet there is nothing wrong with my ability to read, speak, or write. Einstein was a famous visual thinker so I can only conclude I am exactly like Einstein.

Internal monologue is very relevant to depression, anxiety, and mood in general because mental illness often causes a toxic cycle of negative thoughts. This is best illustrated in this episode of Bojack Horseman (minor spoilers).



I have severe depression but I honestly didn't realize it until rather recently because I took a depression test in a book. So that shows you what my level of awareness is like. I wasn't aware I had depression at all when I made this thread. I've been practicing cognitive behavioral therapy which involves keeping a record of my thoughts. This means I have to verbalize my thoughts, which doesn't come naturally to me. However I have found I am almost always verbalize the way I feel even if the feeling came out of nowhere. It helps to put my feelings into words, it helps me see that my thoughts may be irrational. Some people experience negative moods more like Bojack and don't need any help putting it into words, which may be a bad thing because you might experience your internal monologue as objective reality rather than an irrational mood swing.

Personally when I get a depressive episode I feel like there is more often a concrete negative thought that triggers it. Sometimes I do feel like Bojack. However when I get an anxiety attack it's frequently for no reason at all. Sometimes I don't even know I'm getting an anxiety attack, I just wonder why the fuck am I so dizzy? This is pretty typical of anxiety as far as I can tell.
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby IamNotCreepy » Fri Oct 19, 2018 7:45 pm

I'm surprised that this meme is getting such a reaction. I interpreted more as a joke, comparing people with mainstream views as being akin to video game NPCs, who serve only as background or exposition for the PCs.

I mean, this is just another in a long line of similar insults like "sheeple".
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby Tesseracts » Fri Oct 19, 2018 8:18 pm

IamNotCreepy wrote:I'm surprised that this meme is getting such a reaction. I interpreted more as a joke, comparing people with mainstream views as being akin to video game NPCs, who serve only as background or exposition for the PCs.

I mean, this is just another in a long line of similar insults like "sheeple".

Well it's different than sheeple because it's saying people of one particular political view are not human. The NPC meme could be used to refer to conformists in general like "sheeple" is, and it has been used like that, but it's not it's origin. It's annoying because I know people really think like this, they think people who see things differently than them are not human.
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby Malfeasinator » Fri Oct 19, 2018 10:56 pm

I've never had a Twitter or Instagram account. I've avoided 4chan like the plague. I'll probably never step foot in Texas, if I can at all help it.

These are the keys to a long life. That, and not eating ketchup.

Seriously, though, when does 4chan ever do any good for the world at large? Everything that comes out of that site makes the site itself just seem like a portal to a dimension of bad ideas, and paints the users of said site as cultists who work night and day to summon forth anything and everything that will make humanity suffer the greatest bad for the greatest number.

There's something really sick going on over there, but I'll be damned if I'm going to wade in and find out what it is.
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby Marcuse » Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:55 pm

Seriously, though, when does 4chan ever do any good for the world at large?


Zeal and Ardor.

ETA: the thing is though, that knowyourmeme page seems to be trying very hard to drum up controversy over the meme. There's a couple of things that stand out to me. The OP that proposed it, weird beliefs about souls notwithstanding, states that the reason he thinks that people are like NPCs is that they repeat the same things they have heard said about political issues, rather than considering themselves. It's a bit of a misunderstanding of it, because people generally do think if prompted and sometimes reconsider their assumed beliefs if they haven't questioned things. But the comparison between an NPC that only has so many lines of dialogue and someone who chooses not to take an interest in politics is pretty apt.

The second thing that stands out to me is the interest meter from google. It's been at zero or near-zero since 2004 until 2018. This suggests to me that the NPC meme hasn't been the massively popular source of capitalist erasure the page is trying to make it out as. Like a lot of memes, it's made out to be way more important than it actually is, and in the end the more seriously we take shit like this the harder it is to forget about.
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby Malfeasinator » Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:45 pm


It's just words on the internet. Society dehumanizes people all the time.

Everybody does it. I do it. You do it. The people you think are pieces of shit, they do it. Everybody wishes they had the Infinity Gauntlet. Your percentage might be higher or lower than Thanos's, but it's still good chunk.

Maybe it's the homeless? Maybe it's the people in prison? Maybe it's the mentally ill? Maybe it's people of a different color? The elderly, maybe?

Or maybe its people who believe different political systems would work better than the one you like? Maybe it's fans of rival sports teams? Maybe it's all the people who ever cut someone off in traffic?

Maybe it's those mean people who eat animals? Maybe it's the vegans?

You can act like you wouldn't snap a fraction of all people out of existence if you could got the chance, but we all know that everybody, and I mean everybody, would either go for it outright with no regrets, or they'd say "Oops, my finger slipped."
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Re: Emotional awareness poll

Postby jbobsully11 » Wed Sep 25, 2019 12:19 am

I just read an article on alexithymia and autism, and it reminded me of this thread. (Or possibly another one on here from a while ago, but this one will do.)

TL;DR - Difficulties in feeling or identifying emotions may not be entirely related to autism, but a co-morbidity.
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