My sister and I were raised largely by our single mother, a passionate, fiery woman bordering on histrionic. I remember like it was yesterday how proudly she looked at my sister when she was crying or having a fit. My mother would later comment, multiple times, on how she admired my sister's ability to express her emotions in colorful ways, unimpeded by any constraints.

To my mother, my sister was "true" and "real". I was not. In my home, introversion was a crime. I was viewed as broken, and my lack of emotional display was something to correct. Throughout my life, different extroverts arrived at a similar opinion. Why aren't you crying? Why can't you be exactly like me? Are you a psychopath?. I am not. I experience the full range of emotions. I express them differently and at my leisure. But I feel them completely.

Sometimes, when I reveal that I do not cry, people assume that I am against emotion and against crying. I am not against crying or emotion. I understand that, to some, crying is important to emotional regulation. It can be uplifting and cathartic. Crying does not make someone weak -- much to the contrary. Men shouldn't be ashamed of crying, nor should they take any measures to avoid crying.

In the same way that no one should feel constrained in their crying, no one should feel oppressed into crying, or be made to feel ashamed of not crying. My emotional life is beautiful, deep, and intricate. I express it in a myriad of ways. The fact that I work through my emotions without the use of my lacrimal glands must not be viewed as a disease to correct. I have many problems. No crying is not one of them.

Hello tilderers, I have a dilemma I'm having that I'd like perspective on.

I often find myself doing things not because I want to, but because I have to. I feel obligated to. It is better if I do X than if I don't do X, so I should do X, even if I don't want to.

Though overall I don't consider "feeling obligated" a positive nor sustainable emotion to have.

These are often tied to social etiquette and maintaining a status quo at the sacrifice? of your own comfort.

Examples:

You're an introverted so tend to not desire social activity as much, but understand socializing is good for maintaining relationships so you accept invites regardless of whether you have true desire to be out for the person/occasion/event.

You should get a gift for Y because it's their birthday/Christmas because it's an expected, nice gesture but you don't really have a gift in mind or tendency of gift giving.

Z does something nice for you, pays for your dinner/got a gift/done a favor, but was not something you wanted Z to do or asked them to do. Yet now you feel indebted to give back.

General occasions where social and emotional reciprocation is expected and you're not entuned to reciprocate necessarily. And the general consequence of not reciprocating is weakening relationships/negativity from others etc.

Where is the line between doing whatever you feel/comfortable with (selfishness/self centered?) and doing things because you are socially obligated to (caring about what other people think/feel about you).

What is the resolution to negative feelings of obligation?

How can obligation turn to desire?

How does one perspective shift in this way?
You do this not because you have to, because you want to do this.

My thoughts on the show

An overarching theme of the show is that we aren’t very good at naming our emotions when we’re feeling them and that it’s important to learn the vocabulary for our emotions and call them by their right names.

Call stress stress, not overwhelm. (Are you “in the weeds” or “blown”?)

Call vulnerability vulnerability, not anxiety.

Call awe and wonder awe and wonder.

When we name what we’re feeling, we open up so much more agency and freedom to guide our lives in the direction we want them to go. Language is a portal.

I found this show moving and illuminating when I first watched it in 2022 and it was moving and illuminating all over again when I rewatched it over the past few days.

Awe and wonder are two of the emotions that stick out to me. These are not words I used regularly before watching the show. I use them now. I think I used to believe these emotions were nice to feel and a good part of life, but kind of like the icing on the cake. I have come to see them as necessary nutrients in the human emotional diet, more core and more central than I thought before.

Maybe we can’t feel awe and wonder very often, but maybe like the elephants who walk long distances to lick the salt off cave walls, it’s something we need in our diet and should go out of our way to feel.

I have a copy of Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart, which the TV series is based on, and it mentioned that, among other things, experiences of awe and wonder make people more willing to cooperate with each other. Doesn’t that sound like something we need in this world?

Where to watch

Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart is streaming on HBO Max in the U.S. and parts of Europe and Latin America, on Crave in Canada, on Binge in Australia, and on Sky in New Zealand.

HBO Max: https://www.max.com/shows/brene-brown-atlas-of-the-heart/dfad262e-b764-4b92-ae63-72886f8a0d81

Crave: https://www.crave.ca/en/tv-shows/brene-brown-atlas-of-the-heart

List of countries and streaming services where the show is available: https://brenebrown.com/find-the-series-outside-of-the-us/

JustWatch, a generally useful tool for this sort of thing: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajustwatch.com+Brené+Brown+Atlas+of+the+Heart

I'm a pretty introspective person. I grew up with an emotionally abusive parent, struggled with my mental health from teenagerhood, and been to more therapy than I can remember since the time of my parents' divorce when I was eight. My siblings and I have done a lot of deconstructing over the years to figure out what the heck happened to us (the abuse was pretty insidious and, of course, we normalized it) and how it affected us internally. I'm also most likely autistic and have always struggled to socialize correctly, which led to a LOT of observation and imitation that was both conscious and unconscious.

Despite all this practice at introspection though, in the past few years, I've come to realize I am wildly out of touch with my own emotions. I am tempted to blame much of this on the fact that I was always collecting social "scripts" to follow, so that I could react appropriately to jokes, or good/bad news, or whatever. If you're acting, you don't actually need to know how you feel. And if you feel something different from standard, it's irrelevant because it's "wrong" to feel that way, so you ignore it. So it took me a long time to realize that my display for other people was actually pretty disconnected from whether I was actually feeling anything. I don't feel it was dishonest, though, because I still would have wanted to show sympathy, excitement, etc. for the people I care about. It just takes me so long to process things that I wouldn't have been able to do it within the same conversation if I didn't have a ready script.

I know that some autistic people experience alexithymia/emotional blindness, but it doesn't look terribly well understood. I know I should probably get back on the therapy horse, for a number of reasons including this one, but I'm pretty leery. I never felt like it helped me much. (Although most of it, at the time, was to help me with "depression". Which I certainly had, but there was no understanding from either my end or theirs that the cause was likely rooted in ADHD/autism.) And I did try to start up again last year; I found a psychologist who specialized in ADHD and autism, and although she seemed understanding at first, I felt like I couldn't establish any clear communication and we just kept talking past each other. At this time, I super don't have the energy to keep trying new therapists, and waste weeks or months on each one before I figure out we won't click.

So I ask: have any of you folks ever dealt with emotional blindness? If so, how have you learned to identify your emotions? Do you keep a feelings journal, and how do you even know what to put in at first? Any advice is welcome!

The last time I cried was probably like 3 years ago. I have no idea why. I know that not being able to cry can be a result of depression, or some sort of trauma, or having to suppress your emotions for a long time - but I never experienced any of that. I just suddenly stopped being able to cry and it sucks because crying is a great emotional outlet and sometimes I really feel like I want to cry but just can't for some reason.

Has anyone else dealt with the same thing?

This might be a strange topic, and I'm not sure if others can relate, or if I am 100% strange here. Feel free to remove(?) this if it's not relevant.. This is just something I'd love to learn the experiences of others about and get some ideas, as I imagine everyone is so different.

So, I have a very annoying problem: I don't experience emotions very strongly (e.g. while some folks get moved by films or art, or maybe get worked up with joy or frustration in life, I seem to be far more emotionally neutral, even in very extreme situations.) This can be very useful (emotions can be misleading and lead to poor decisions), but also problematic and limiting (emotions can feel nice, help with creativity, it's a good way to express love to people, etc).

Occasionally, I do feel little bits of emotion, but they tend to go away very quickly. I really wish I felt more, but I don't know how.

I'm curious about the emotional experiences of others. Do you get naturally emotional? Could you cry from watching a movie? For those like myself who have underwhelming emotions - what does make you feel emotional? Do you have any tips or tricks for feeling more emotional, or, hanging on to emotions when you do get them? Has anyone ever been able to "overcome" this issue of not feeling emotions?

Thanks for any insight.

EDIT: If this is not the correct group for such a topic, please do let me know, and I will remove it.

It's something I've struggled for a long time to do in text conversations. People will often think I'm mad when talking in a way that I think is perfectly normal or that I'm a brick wall while discussing disagreements and well, that can't be fun. I often have to reassure certain people that it's not the case.

Sometimes I try to show how I'm feeling through emotions or more "fluffy" language but I feel like that's too excessive and feels kinda fake to me?

It's also something I've more recently struggled with because I'm trying to write personally on my blog and I'm not exactly sure how to convey my feelings other than stating it like a robot like "This makes me mad" or "That's depressing" or "It makes me feel great".

It feels off to me and maybe it's just a me problem but I think that's also because I write the same way I speak and so, it just sounds strange.

I don't know, this post is rambly and I've been wanting to write something like this in the last few days but I just have to push enter at some point.

After reading a thread on AskReddit requesting songs that made people cry, I thought about my favorite music and realized that most of the songs that made me cry were because they were uplifting in one way or another. So here I am today, asking you this: what songs move you to tears because of positive emotions? Here are a few of mine:

The Beatles - Let It Be. It's almost embarrassing to put this one first, but a simple three word phrase has never been filled with so much meaning. "Let it be" is practically my motto, and it's the philosophy which has most helped to steer me towards sanity. The music accompanying the lyrics just resonates with my heartstrings and it always makes me feel relieved after listening.

Yoko Kanno - Gotta Knock a Little Harder. People often describe music they like as being written for them. To me, this song feels like my very essence was put into sound. Its a song about breaking free of depression and loneliness. The thing I love about it is how honest it is; breaking through that door is brutally difficult. I love how there isn't an extra verse telling you how much better the narrator's life is after breaking through the door (or even that they made it through), instead implying it through choral swells and a little bit of the listener's imagination.

Arto Lindsay - Counting the Roses. This one may be cheating a little, because it's really the context of the song that makes me cry. It was written for a video game called D2, where a tragic character named Kimberly wrote the lyrics after a particularly terrible day. While the song is beautiful by itself, what affects me is the concept that it represents: even in an ugly, poisonous, depressing world, pure and beautiful things can still be found.

This is a tricky personal conundrum of mine. I'll try to articulate it clearly.

I believe in compassion, and I want to live in harmony with compassionate tendencies inside. But at the same time, in the act of extending compassion, there appears to be an in-built power gradient: the "giver" is somehow in an "advantaged" position, and the receiver a more disadvantaged one.

An example. I was once in a fast-food restaurant, waiting to order, and I saw the order-taker was obviously new and very nervous and skittish at her job. So after I placed my order I expressed how much I appreciate her service and that I thought she was doing a good job. It was truly what I wanted to say, and I thought she took this well, like, she looked more relaxed as she beamed.

But then there was a power gradient. I gave her something that she wouldn't/couldn't have given me. She was the more distressed one, and this power gradient emphasized that. I don't mean that bystanders were made more conscious of her distress. I mean, it had the potential to make me more conscious of my privilege and her her lack thereof.

And I'm aversive to power. I can be highly sceptical and critical of power. I don't feel easy to have power over someone else. I have had troubled relations with power figures in my life. I easily confuse the natural, benign activation of power with the reflexive, defensive, "shields-up" reaction that I often find myself in. To explain a bit, the latter is really a form of anxiety, perhaps a trauma from experiences of hypercompetition, isolation, and emotional neglect in the past.

In the end, I thirst after commonality, equality, brothersisterhood, close and meaningful contact with others as they are, as human beings, on level ground, side by side, sharing the common condition in our vulnerabilities... But there's this aspect of my character, i.e. the tendency to get tense and look for a "higher ground" and occupy there, just to be on the safe (more powerful!) side. There's this haughty, difficult-to-approach, high-brow me, that I feel get in the way.

I fee sad and somewhat confused about this. I think I'm partly venting, partly asking about your similar experiences. Please consider this topic fairly open-ended. If you have something to say about it, I'm eager to listen to you.

Thanks!

There is a tendency nowadays for public officials to characterise loneliness as a public health crisis. I agree that it's a pervasive condition. However, the human condition is not fully medicalizable. I believe we can speak about it just as who we are, according to our full experience, in our capacity as first-person narrator, as witness, as who are the closest to their own struggles.

But it can be really hard to be open, and hence vulnerable, to difficult emotions. In times of distress, our own internal communication can get jammed, and it natural that opening up to the external world may feel as if an insurmountable difficulty.

Nevertheless, the great force of nature, evolution, has given us the ability to listen and be listened to. Its greatest strength may be manifest at the time of greatest need.

Which is why I'd like to have this thread. This thread is for you, if you're feeling lonely at the time, or if you want to share your experience with loneliness, or if you would like to give support to our community members, or just to speak up, or just to listen.

Let us tune in to each other's expressions in caring consideration. We don't have to be perfect in self-expression or empathy -- this is not a contest. This is a fireside chat, a place to rest, reflect, and understand, before moving on.

Are you willing to join the conversation?