“Wait, feelings are supposed to be IN THE BODY?”

Mentor: “…and how do you feel in your body about that?”

Old me: “Wait, feelings are supposed to be IN THE BODY?”

For the first few months after this exchange, I thought, “Maybe I’m just different and don’t have feelings in my body. Maybe that’s just a weird thing that happens to other people but not to me.”

Nope.

Turns out I was numb. Sure, I’d get butterflies in my stomach or “know” emotions in my head, but I didn’t notice things like “a feeling of expansiveness in my chest”, “tingling in my fingers”, “tension in my arms”, or “pleasure on my skin”.

Ok, I was numb. So what?

Well, the nervous system is a distributed system, so information must propagate somehow.

“Feelings in the body” seem like a very common way to experience this:

Illustrated: Where I DIDN’T feel emotional sensations in my body lol. (Maps of subjective feelings)

This information flows freely, unless there’s resistance. When there’s resistance to feelings, updates fail to permeate the entire system.¹ And there was a lot of resistance in my system…

The resistance: My own numbness was locally optimal, helping mitigate pain, distraction, and other risks. Put another way, given the state of my life and nervous system at the time, feeling my feelings locally made my life worse.

Now, was numbness globally optimal? No. Life was in 360p when it could’ve been in 4k.

• I’d brush my teeth too hard and only notice from the blood on the sink, not the pain.

• Other people made decisions in seconds by checking their gut. I made a decision by agonizing my way to a heady answer that still felt bad. Decision-making spiraled because every option felt equally gray.

• I thought I didn’t like animals! I missed the beauty around me—even though I found it incredibly cute when crushes would suddenly stop on a snowy street overwhelmed by what they were soaking in.

• Everything I did had to be “useful”. All of my desires needed reasons.

• I couldn’t tell the difference between “I’m feeling really jealous right now” and “Did I eat something bad?”

• I couldn’t experience deep pleasure.

• I had great trouble unlearning my insecurity.

Unfortunately, my numbness numbed itself. I went like this for many years until others pointed it out.

On the other hand, after increasing the stability of my life and unlearning my numbness, I journaled:

Wow.

There’s so much intricacy to the emotional ripples in my stomach alone. I found strange happinesses in the tip of my fingers (???). And self-loathing there, too! Love in the “cave of the heart” on the right side of my chest…

Soon I realized that feelings are better described as tuples (sensation, location) rather than emotion words:

• Not ‘anxious’ but (tension, lower chest)

• Not ‘happy’ but (pleasure, arm skin)

• Not ‘confident’ but (expansiveness, chest and shoulders)

My growth continued to unfold: Decision-making became so easy it feels like there isn’t even a “me” making the choice. I’m more empathetic and see others’ emotions without hesitation. I can tell people to fuck off without wavering. Insecurities can be noticed and released. I’m much more intuitive. I see more. I hear more.

4k feeling enables 4k being.

1. See also: Emotions like loss signals.