💡 **身体是感知情感的载体：** 作者通过亲身经历指出，情感并非仅仅存在于大脑的认知层面，而是以具体的身体感受形式存在，如胸腔的扩张、指尖的刺痛、皮肤的愉悦等。未能感知这些身体信号，即是处于一种“麻木”状态，这阻碍了情感信息的完整流动。

🛡️ **麻木的双刃剑：** 身体的麻木，虽然在短期内是一种防御机制，能够帮助个体规避痛苦、分散注意力，从而在特定环境下显得“局部最优”，但从长远来看，它极大地限制了个体对生活丰富性的体验，将本可以清晰感知的生活体验降级到模糊的“360p”状态，导致决策困难和幸福感的缺失，是“全局非最优”的。

📈 **从麻木到清晰的转化：** 通过努力稳定生活和有意识地“解麻木”，作者成功地将模糊的情感体验转化为具体的身体感受。例如，将“焦虑”描述为“胸腔下部的紧张”，将“快乐”描述为“手臂皮肤的愉悦感”，将“自信”描述为“胸部和肩膀的扩张感”。这种转化极大地提升了生活的质量和感知能力。

✨ **重获新生的体验：** 摆脱麻木后，作者的生活发生了翻天覆地的变化。决策变得轻松自然，不再需要长时间的思虑；同理心增强，能更容易地理解他人；能够坚定地表达自我，处理人际关系；过去的自卑感得以被感知和释放；直觉能力显著提升，对世界的感知更加敏锐，仿佛生活从“480p”升级到了“4K”。

Published on November 12, 2025 12:01 AM GMT

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:

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.