{"id":187,"date":"2016-12-30T00:34:11","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T06:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/?p=187"},"modified":"2025-02-14T21:59:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T03:59:01","slug":"187","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"My first &#8220;feelings&#8221; post"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I just tonight realized that my web log is&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em>perfect<\/em> place for something I\u2019ve decided I\u2019m going to start doing: making notes&nbsp;<em>each time<\/em> I notice myself feeling an emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>One of the <i>very<\/i> common comments I get is, \u201cYou\u2019re over-thinking.\u201d I\u2019ve said before that\u2019s <i>not true<\/i>, but I think <i>strictly<\/i> it <i>is<\/i> true. The reason why it\u2019s simultaneously frustrating is that the <i>implied fix<\/i> is for me to think <i>less<\/i>. The problem is that the <i>reason<\/i> I\u2019m \u201cover-thinking\u201d is that it\u2019s an effort to compensate for <i>reduced feelings<\/i> (so, it\u2019s often the only way I\u2019m able to <i>fully process<\/i> something). I think that <i>most<\/i> American men \u201cover-think\u201d in an effort to \u201cdrown out\u201d feelings that they\u2019ve been conditioned to believe are <i>wrong<\/i>. For <i>those<\/i> men, thinking <i>less<\/i> is an appropriate instruction, because it allows feelings more room to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, I <i><strong>don\u2019t<\/strong><\/i> believe that feelings are \u201cbad\u201d. I\u2019m not thinking more in an effort to \u201cdrown out\u201d the feelings. I\u2019m doing it because if I didn\u2019t, I wouldn\u2019t be fully processing &lt;whatever it is>. So, for me, thinking less about something usually translates to <i>processing<\/i><em> it less<\/em>. While it\u2019s probably true that I need to \u201cthink less\u201d about many things, it&#8217;s because I need to <i>feel more<\/i> about those things. For me (unlike for most men), <i>thinking less<\/i> about something<i> doesn\u2019t<\/i> result in me <i>feeling more<\/i> about it. The focus should be on me <i>feeling more<\/i> instead of <i>thinking less<\/i>. \u201cThink less\u201d sounds a lot like the common anti-intellectual crap that <i>pisses me off<\/i> so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just tonight realized that my web log is&nbsp;the&nbsp;perfect place for something I\u2019ve decided I\u2019m going to start doing: making notes&nbsp;each time I notice myself feeling an emotion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}