You don’t have to be hyper-rational or repressed to have a hard time talking about feelings, you could be emotionally intelligent and still have difficulty. Feelings are hard to talk about. There are simple reasons and deeper, more complex reasons. The simple ones first. Continue reading →
Tag Archives: Emotions
Metaphorical Feelings
As if understanding feelings wasn’t hard enough, we also have to understand feelings that aren’t really feelings: metaphorical feelings. Continue reading →
Frustration
The feeling that detects the impossible. A lot of feelings will draw your attention elsewhere where your attention doesn’t do you any good. The feeling of frustration is this way. When you’re feeling frustrated, your attention is on the object of your frustration when it should be on yourself. Continue reading →
Do You Really Have a Choice with Your Feelings?
If you say you got pisssed off, gripped by fear, sadness overcame you, lost hope, filled with gratitude, or overwhelmed by joy; the passive voice you use about your feelings reveals a misconception of how they work. Continue reading →
Why Love and Hate are Inseparable
No matter how much you love your loved one, you also hate him; no matter how much you depend on him, you can’t completely trust him. This, surprisingly, turns out to be a good thing; not a confusing, frustrating thing, as you might suppose. Continue reading →
Feeling words
If you’re ever struggling with a feeling, try to put it in words. Words will reduce the feeling to a manageable intensity. It’s a magic trick they do. But watch out; words will trick you, too. Continue reading →
What Drag Queens Can Teach You About Your Feelings
The most feminine people I know are men who dress up and call themselves drag queens. The fact they can do that so convincingly, calls into question the notion of femininity and masculinity. Continue reading →
Cabin Fever: How Compulsion Feels from the Inside
I used to live in a cabin, so I should be an expert on cabin fever. At age nineteen, I emigrated to western New York to live on a remote piece of land, a quarter mile from the nearest neighbor and built that cabin. They didn’t plow my dirt road, so I’d be snowed inContinue reading “Cabin Fever: How Compulsion Feels from the Inside”
Your Emotional Immune System
There are germs everywhere; but most of the time, you don’t get sick because of your physical immune system, consisting of everything from the tough hide of your skin, to the snotty mucus of your nose; the white cells of your blood, to your ability to sneeze and vomit all the bad stuff out ofContinue reading “Your Emotional Immune System”
A Bad Mood
A bad mood is when your feelings get stuck in a terrible place and you can’t change them, no matter what. You’ve been in the doldrums for weeks, sad and depressed, even though you have nothing to be sad and depressed about, except for being sad and depressed. How do you shake that feeling andContinue reading “A Bad Mood”
