I shake my head as I believe we are ignorant and stupid, and thus lost in confusion as to who we are and what the hell we are doing…! There are stigmas against those in need of [Human] therapy, but I have seen the fingers of those pointing hands direct back at the majority of the human[oid] population. We, do not appear to even know what reason is; what feelings and emotions are; and we are highly ignorant and vain to our own behaviors.
Hell, we do not even understand the difference between feelings and emotions… And, we are far more confused as to how to collaborate feelings and emotions on an individual level, let alone a social level. Where there are human[oids], where do you not see confusion…?
One of my favorite words is the word Anthropomorphic, which means giving human characteristics to non-human things. Does a teddy bear love as a child believes the teddy bear loves…? Does a car know your caress or care that it was given a name…? Does a dog feel guilt…? And I will even go so far as to ask, does a baby get angry…? I ask the question of the baby and anger to many, many people and it is virtually unanimous that people believe a baby does get angry. How does a baby get angry if it does not know what anger is…?
We as language labeling human[oids] can see what we perceive as anger from the baby, and thus say with our anthropomorphizing thought projections and communicative words, that the baby is angry. The baby however, is just exhibiting a reaction to a sensation: The baby is observed as angry, but the baby is not angry, because the baby does not know angry…
A Feeling is an awareness to a physical sensation. If I am cut, I am aware of the physical sharpness of the afferent neurons and label this sensation as a feeling of pain. Pain however, is a label: It is a word with a definition created by human cognition. When we start applying labels to sensations we change feelings to emotions. We often use the word emotion as being synonymous with feeling. But an emotion is not a feeling…!
An Emotion involves associative causation of a sensation. Take Anger… Cortisol, epinephrine; the chemical inducers of stress leading to the adrenalin of Anger. Anger is a defined label of an emotion involving a variety of physical sensation within a causal association of an event. It cannot be Anger until you are aware of the feelings and you associate the event instigating what you are feeling: What you are Angry about…
After understanding that there is a difference between feelings and emotion, we then need to understand how we share and communicate feelings and emotions. I rub and shake my puzzled head as I hear reference of the words Sympathy, Compassion, and Empathy. The words are considered synonymous, but they are different enough to drive significant confusion into the collaboration of human thoughts and emotions. Sympathy… “To feel together”… Is far too often used in place of Compassion… "To suffer together"… And then there is Empathy… “To feel within”… I cringe, when Empathy is used to implicate a cringe when someone gets a shot with a needle, or Empathy is some mystical connection of feelings shared between others. Perhaps I have been wrong for all these years and though my premise is open to change, I always understand Empathy as: The understanding of feelings and emotions…
Understanding is a meta-cognition concept within the virtue of Intelligence.
Human[oids] riot across the nation with shared aggression to harm others they do not know… Human[oids] rally within aggressive extremist actions, for the sake of suffered harm, to harm others they do not know… Human[oids] fight with ignorant aggression against the wings of their own icon to harm others they do not know… To not know is to not understand and in our human[oid] discussions I cynically chuckle as we anthropomorphize feelings and emotion of which we appear to have little understanding… Little actual Empathy…
Collaborative Topic: Do you Share…? Do you Suffer…? Do you… Understand…?
I encourage you to reply…
Thank you,
Ronald E. Crampton, MA, LAC, LPC
AV TREATMENT SERVICES, LLC
13791 East Rice Place, Suite 104
Aurora, CO 80015
(720) 250-8432
Email: recrampton@avtreatment.com
Website: http://avtreatment.com