12-21-2015, 05:20 AM
(12-19-2015, 01:56 PM)Diana Wrote: I just wanted to add something about that feeling of isolation. I do something I call hooking into the joy of others. An example is when I am talking to someone who loves football. I don't know anything about football nor do I enjoy watching it at all. But if I am talking to someone who loves it, I hook into their love of it. I encourage them to tell me about it and I feel their happiness. I don't do this because I am humoring them, I do do it because of so many things. I respect their loves; I want to share their joy; I want to jump over my own dislike of something to experience a feeling of love for it; and so on.
In doing this, the feeling of isolation changes. It does not become a feeling a "fitting in," but it becomes a feeling of connection and acceptance.
I have noticed some people doing that and always thought that was unreachable for me. How do you trigger that on purpose? I always find when someone talks to me about a subject I really have no interest in, I feel like the other person is trying to make a rock become more fluid by watering it and I only feel like a wet rock, but a rock nevertheless. I may at best appear like I'm trying to relate what the other person says to things I know or I will try to learn something out of it. But I feel like although I can respect and encourage their love for it I cannot share it nor their joy about it, which may make them think I just don't care about them while I simply am unable to hook onto their joy. A good exemple is sports. I used to watch hockey some years ago while now I really am unable to find interest in it. But everybody talks about it and I will try to appear like I know stuff but even though I know stuff I don't even care about the stuff I know. When they talk to me about it I'm like: yeah that guy used to be good. How is his season so far? But then I feel completely helpless trying to appear interested. How do you trigger emotional interest on subjects you know you have not in the first place? I find the line between being interested in the human being talking and the subject being talked about so slim I have no power over my reaction to it.