do you ever feel like everybody's playing along

[ThrillingHuman]

There have been many times when I felt that an idea or an emotion is something that only really in fiction and irl people just play along like they feel it or it exists because of social convention.

The most vivid example would be romantic attraction and friendship. When I was a kid I thought that everybody pretended those existed and I had to play along with them. Frankly, to this day I don't really get it but I am more or less certain these exist.

The most recent revelation of what I imagined people acted like existed but really didn't but it ended up existing (yes, my english is amazing, how could you tell?) was the feeling of responsibility for one's work. All my life I lived and did tasks without this feeling and thought it was just flavour text and then I stopped for a moment to think about it and realised that it probably actually exists.

A mind-blowing revelation, I know.

Anyway, this ever happened to you? Do you ever feel lile everybody's just playing along?

 

[RepresentingPride]

I didn't really think about it. I'm more like someone separated from the other. I don't really understand them, even those somehow close to me.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

No

 

[Woolen_Monkey]

Hmm...
I just forget most things that are a threat to my mental stability

 

[owotrucked]

"[emotions] probably actually exists"

 

[Rhaps]

I always feel disconnected to everyone around me, ever since little. I never cried for someone else, or feel bad about it.

So I just go along with everyone else, they laugh, I laugh, so on and so forth. I get what you mean by some feelings are fake, because all I know from my birth I was faking it, until it becomes real.

Well, if the stimulations are strong enough, it might get me to break that barrier between me any everyone else. This is why I play dnd, because it is how I live my life, I feel related, I feel safe to be myself, trying on different masks as different people.

 

[RepresentingSilence]

"playing along" implies that people are both self aware enough and in control of themselves enough to "play along"

Also I think you may be experiencing what I call a fantasy vs reality clash (I'm sure there is a scientific term for it but I don't know it) basically what happens is we grow up consuming inordinate amounts of fairy tales watching cartoons and TV shows full of extreme expressions of emotion and so growing up we expect this behavior to be the norm and then learn it simply isn't and that people just don't act or relate the way they do in fiction

And thus the clash where you begin to question your own emotions and the emotions and actions of others and weather they're real or not

I see this happening with my teenage niece right now as she's often trying to read more into any given situation for some kind of drama and if she can't find it she tries to invent it herself basically trying to turn real life into a TV show so she can understand it better

 

[J_Chemist]

There's a lot of unpack with this and I'm not sure I want to open the box or not because I'll be here for like 10 minutes typing.

 

[owotrucked]

The thread:

I always feel disconnected to everyone around me, ever since little.

To be fair, empathy is different from straight up not feeling the underlying basis for social behaviors. Some people's emotions are strongly directed inward. In that case, empathy is generated through mirroring one's past experience and feelings. It might not be instinctual reflex and might require conscious effort. This is opposite from people who naturally takes in surrounding emotion through osmosis and don't feel deeply about their own.

This is worrying because empathy is the only real intrinsic thing that stops people from being terrible people (extrinsic law enforcement just sucks because detection is unreliable). That's why when a kid shoots a ball on a monkey's face, the remedy is to shoot a ball back into the kid's face.

Not experiencing large range of emotions and approaching socializing for strictly personal gain as a game/code/rituals is being average psychopath lol

 

[RepresentingSilence]

socializing for strictly personal gain as a game/code/rituals is being average psychopath lol

The typical teenage girl relationship

 

[MintiLime]

Ugh, I get this. I never had like… a dream job and in school they’d push everyone to have some aspirations and I just didn’t. And then sometimes people would so excited about things and I’d just be there like… okay, I guess.

and I knew I had emotions because I would cry for the characters in books I read and such, but in real life and love, I was just so not passionate.

Eventually I figured out that some of it was just me forcing things down to function. I had trained myself to get through pain and tough times without feeling. Numbing down one thing numbs everything else too. I was just so tired. When I gave myself time and space to relax, heal a bit, I felt better.

But anyways, I had to learn to accept myself as well. It turns out that just because I show my feelings differently (working, doing things, planning) doesn’t mean that my feelings are less valid or other people are faking it. Some people are wild and passionate like a storm, and some people are like deeply rooted trees staying steady but always extending roots below and branches above.

I personally express my emotions through actions. I will put in the work to make my loved ones feel cherished, planning events and picking out gifts and being there when they need me. In stories etc, nothing I can do will change anything, so I can feel without responsibility. But in real life, I can do and the doing takes precedence and I pour my effort and passion into that. And when I’m doing, I concentrate and by the time I’m done it “uses up” the excess energy of emotion.

It took a lot of work for me to understand that my version of feeling emotion is valid and so is everyone else’s.

 

[Lloyd]

Y'all need to find God.

 

[Ellieporter]

 

[MintiLime]

Y'all need to find God.

So do you, may your soul find peace.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

So do you, may your soul find peace.

yo, he's not dead

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

While I cannot say that I have felt the same way, I do find it comforting that people would choose to cooperate despite not having the same motivations.

May I ask, what have your desires been? What has been your motivation to do whatever you do?

 

[SsemouyOnan]

Yo, y'all good? Need a Kitkat?

 

[MintiLime]

yo, he's not dead

RIP it’s like he’s still with us… I can see his posts even now…

 

[Kalliel]

I read this a total of three times, and I still don't get what you're trying to say.
Ideas and emotions must have existed first, otherwise we couldn't define them in words, no?
Or am I tripping...

 

[Iamnotabot]

Tbh i'm too dense to even relise this was a thing, usually im just in my own bubble and everyone let me be.