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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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Do you think or feel your emotions? It’s obvious a both/and situation.

That question in particular wasn't related to any "MBTI dichotomies" (although I suspect it might be correlated). It was just a way to get people to start thinking about the diversity of emotional experience.

And for what it's worth, a number of people in the reddit thread said they experienced them as thoughts only.

If you mainly feel with your thoughts you probably have alexithymia, a surprisingly common condition

That's the thing though, I don't think I have "emotional blindness". I've never felt unable to identify what emotion I was feeling; I do it easily and often! I'm practically trauma dumping in my group chat on a regular basis about every subjective impression I have, positive and negative. I just... don't get bodily sensations with them. Except for, as previously mentioned, anxiety.

(Although, since learning about this stuff, I may have suddenly become consciously aware of bodily sensations associated with other emotions on a couple of occasions, and... I'm not really into it. I think I'd rather nip this in the bud before it gets too far. I have quite enough on my hands to deal with as it is, best not to go throwing all new ingredients into the mix.)

I've never felt unable to identify what emotion I was feeling; I do it easily and often!

Then you must be wrong that you don’t get a physical sensation. You aren’t a machine that can reduce emotions to thoughts. Thoughts aren’t emotions, and according to a lot of neurophysiological literature, emotions are primary and thoughts are secondary processes. You are picking up on a cue somewhere in yourself, but maybe you don’t understand what physical sensations it is you’re picking up on. Now, are thoughts connected to emotions? Yes in the same way behaviours are. But you wouldn’t mistake crying for sadness, because someone could be pretending to cry, or crying from happiness or laughter. A negative thought can induce a sad feeling, and a sad feeling can induce a negative thought, but you must lack a certain psychological mindedness to therefore mistake thoughts for feelings