How do you know the difference between other people's and your own feelings?

[Shazaam]

When one attempts to analyze Love, it cowers like a shy gentle child raised from the world's most delicious apples in a tender forest where it will remain a forever virgin.

If you want to feel love, then you have to live life and live love and live fully and not question or psychoanalyze so much or why ask why. Why is that man crooked & blind, but hopeful- that woman vain, shallow- and unhappy but really hot. Why ask why? Just let love come to you.

You forget how to love when you focus and zero in on one thing. But then you remember how to love when you remain connected.

[Animal]

It was good... A Joseph Campbell-esque paean to following one's bliss, which he called "joy." (Not that Joy.)

Put it back up, Baby... I liked it.

lol I was afraid of coming across as preachy. I feel like that sort of thing is all I ever post here anymore. I don't remember most of what I said but the gist of what I wanted to get across: A lot of our emotions aren't "ours" but the result of habitual reactions conditioned into us by our upbringing, the media, society, trauma, etc. We can find ourselves being controlled by conditioned reactions, unless we are willing to step back and see ourselves (meditation). Also, we often focus on our negative emotions because they feel the most urgent, but in the absence of an immediate threat, your happiness will tell you more about who you are than your fear or sadness or regret. Becoming intimate with your own joy will make it easier to figure out where "your" emotions end, and another's begin.

[redbaron]

I love your posts, Baby!

[pluie]

wow... me too. wonderful, Baby. haha. Beh beh

sorry. :x (my dorkiness is takign over... runnnnn!)

[Rubicon]

This might sound stupid, but I really struggle with knowing if the feelings I feel are really mine or if they are just other people's feelings.... For example, I have even experienced to not know if I'm madly in love with a guy, or if I just felt him being madly in love with me. :frown:

Somehow the feelings of others invade me totally, so I don't know what *I* feel. I never seem to know if I'm feeling things because I REALLY feel it, or because other people want me to feel it. And if you ask me "but can't you just look for what YOU want", I'll probably start to cry, cause I somehow never know what I want. I mostly haven't got a clue. I am so ... lost ... It's exhausting and it's confusing.

Does anyone else recognize this problem? If so, how do you find out what your true feelings and wishes are?

I have that problem sometimes too. The best way for me to know what I really feel is just letting time pass and getting away from any pressure to work out what I feel. Time and distance expose any fleeting feelings for what they are ime.

Being affected by a person's emotions doesn't necessarily mean that I have a connection with them. If someone's crying in front of me, I find it hard to keep it together .. no matter if I'm close to the person or what. It can be embarrassing. lol :/ I think I'm feeling a little bit of what they're feeling .. because if someone's crying insincere crocodile tears, I usually just feel repulsed. And a person who is shouting or something simply to get a reaction doesn't really affect me. Whereas a person who is tensed up or stressed makes me uncomfortable, even if they're keeping it together outwardly. So I don't think it's just about mirroring a person's outward expression.

[jewels]

Lol @ ESI's fear of revealing their inner....
My problem is more that if people I care about WANT me to feel a specific way, I might go ahead and feel that way.... Affectionate with my kids, loving with my husband, etc. Is that from me or is it projection/introjection? I FEEL it, no doubt, but where did it start?

I was in love with a guy for a long time, while I had another boyfriend...I analyzed and analyzed my feelings, and I am quite certain a lot of my own feelings came as a result of what THEY felt for me. I can, honestly, say that I cared about both, but I would probably not have felt like I did if they had not been so much in love with me.

This reminds me of Much Ado About Nothing and it makes me wonder if that could really happen to anyone. Maybe. People are reciprocal creatures. But I think there is a difference between loving someone and loving the feeling of them loving you/seeing yourself in their eyes...a big difference actually. But I don't really know, emotions are so hard to define sometimes that who knows...

[Animal]

Aw, thanks redbaron and pluie!

I miss being able to read he forum as often as I used to.