Thought vs feeling re: ideals

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elfsprin
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Thought vs feeling re: ideals

Post by elfsprin » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:35 pm

Are there concepts/practices/ideas you've discovered and been attracted to, which you've embraced intellectually long before your feelings caught up and got on board?
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

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elfsprin
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Re: Thought vs feeling re: ideals

Post by elfsprin » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:48 pm

For me, a great example is compersion.

What it is:

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/ ... f-jealousy

https://www.whatiscompersion.com/

I heard about compersion in the context of becoming non-monogamous, and was intellectually immediately on board with it. So, this would have been in like 2009/2010.

While no one ever eradicates jealousy from their lives, so I'm not making any kind of assertion that I don't feel it, I think my feelings have finally caught up with my brain on this one as of 2021, and I find myself feeling compersion more and more easily.

Adjacent anecdote: I've always intellectually believed that everyone should be regularly evaluating their relationships... as in, being in relationship should not be a one-and-done 'well I decided to choose this relationship once so now it's chosen forever and it is taboo to reevaluate it at any time.'

Whether monogamous or ENM, I've always had a lot of insecurity about relationships and the act of being vulnerable in them/engaging in them at all. This is largely due to trauma. Becoming ENM for me included a new emphasis on the intellectual belief that I want my partner(s) to feel autonomous and empowered to take a critical look at their relationship with me.

This past summer I was with my spouse eating on a patio and he said 'I was thinking about what it would be like if we broke up, and I feel like I'd be lost without you.'

I had an interesting reaction to that, many-faceted. One facet was that I initially felt fuzzy feelings in response to this expression of 'I would not like it if we broke up.' But I was thinking about it later, and suddenly realized 'oh but this means he was thinking about breaking up with me in some capacity....' and I had all the anxiety and insecurity come flooding in. But, It only lasted around 5 minutes. My brain realized 'this is a good thing... I want us to be regularly analyzing our relationship and considering whether it is still the right thing to choose each other.'

Miraculously, my feelings of anxiety and insecurity just went *completely away* at that thought. Usually it is much more of a struggle to get my feelings onboard with my thoughts.

I think this was a huge level-up in my personal growth, and that makes me happy.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

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HighlyIrregular
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Re: Thought vs feeling re: ideals

Post by HighlyIrregular » Wed Dec 01, 2021 4:13 pm

In cases where you suffer living the ideal, then get older and the ideal has less impact (like you don't have to study anymore because you no longer can "be anything you want") it's easy to feel better about the ideal (basically in retrospect).

I don't know. I care about getting exercise more now. I don't think I thought it mattered as much when I was a kid. I wasn't told specifics about bones developing or the importance of preventing fat cell growth back then. Maybe I feel differently now because I know more, and I don't watch TV.

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Madrigal
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Re: Thought vs feeling re: ideals

Post by Madrigal » Thu Dec 02, 2021 2:12 am

I think there is an element of 'fake it till you make it' in embracing most political ideologies, since there's usually a lot to align with them, and the personal sphere is often never aligned at all, kinda like the final frontier of political wokeness. I was never especially jealous but I was reading Simone de Beauvoir before I ever got into free love of the socialist variety, and it made intellectual sense to me. Of course it was kind of shocking to start putting it into practice, but those feelings fade. Anyway, I now prefer not to feel compersion at all, I feel more comfortable with the opposite of that.

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elfsprin
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Re: Thought vs feeling re: ideals

Post by elfsprin » Thu Dec 02, 2021 3:20 am

Madrigal wrote:
Thu Dec 02, 2021 2:12 am
I think there is an element of 'fake it till you make it' in embracing most political ideologies, since there's usually a lot to align with them, and the personal sphere is often never aligned at all, kinda like the final frontier of political wokeness. I was never especially jealous but I was reading Simone de Beauvoir before I ever got into free love of the socialist variety, and it made intellectual sense to me. Of course it was kind of shocking to start putting it into practice, but those feelings fade. Anyway, I now prefer not to feel compersion at all, I feel more comfortable with the opposite of that.
I think fake it til you make it is actually a pretty effective strategy in a lot of things. I have personally had it let me actually ‘make it’ in several contexts. Like I faked empathy until my pool of it could grow. It did grow but it’s certainly not infinite or huge, post-growth.

This feels different somehow. Like, it’s not a small pool of compersion that I’ve coaxed into being. It feels more like successfully resolving a lot of my trauma, and my emotional responses therefore coming into alignment with my ‘natural inclinations’ which are represented by my thinking parts.

The opposite of compersion is typically called jealousy. Are you just more comfortable with jealousy, or do you mean that you advocate for it as a positive thing, or would you use a word other than jealousy for anti-compersion?
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

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elfsprin
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Re: Thought vs feeling re: ideals

Post by elfsprin » Thu Dec 02, 2021 4:48 am

FYI I don’t think jealousy is inherently negative. I think uncritical reactions to it can be negative.

I tend to agree with what’s put forward here: https://www.multiamory.com/podcast/302- ... d-students
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

Yesterday
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Re: Thought vs feeling re: ideals

Post by Yesterday » Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:07 pm

Tone: Genuine (gonna start posting again when my meds first kick in so I've something substantive to share you plush teddies all stacked neatly in rows with eyes a glow).


Sure. I collect facial phenotypes among other people features i.e. sounds, rhythms, etc. I realized I was knackered and needed to acclimatize to people in order to digest them ahead of time for smooth interaction. Then when I meet someone new I'm able to iterate from the phenotypical model and ease into interaction from there. I can change my attitude in under 30 seconds to match someone else's. I end up gifting people with feel good fuzzies; sort of making a deposit so I can make clumsy withdraws qua rando social faux pas etc when/if I'm ever off my game. BTW, it ain't personality psychology per se. It's autism masking explained better than those frauds on YouTube (jk don't start hurling epithets toward me from your living spaces). Anyway, to each their own.

:lalala: :whistle:
ENTP

"Our truest selves exist within the observational incongruencies among general first impressions and further analyses of the finer details."
- from my Ph.D. thesis in psychobabble

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