This woman is a gamer. When she promised her daughter that today she would bring food and feed her, she promised it sincerely, she had real feelings. But in the supermarket she saw slot machines, and her real feelings did not save her …
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Real feelings is a very vague concept, varying greatly in its content depending on who uses it and in what context. What a person considers true feelings depends largely on their personal values and preferences (see discussion →).
For those who care about reliability, real feelings are feelings and emotions that are reliable, not deceiving, that you can trust, that you can rely on↑. For those who care about aesthetics, real feelings cannot be ugly, for ethical people, real feelings cannot be immoral, for ecologists, real feelings cannot be artificially created↑. For those who love to experience, the most real feelings are those that will give them the maximum fullness of experiences.
We will quickly get the brightness of experiences from natural and impulsive emotions and feelings, reliability and grace from cultural and responsible feelings. However, are full and deep emotions always needed? If it’s full-blown horror and deep depression, then most people will prefer the lighter, more superficial forms.
It happens that in everyday life, real feelings are those that are understandable and natural in the current situation. The feeling of sadness and loss is understandable, natural, and may well be called real, while cheerful smiles and fun in the same situation do not inspire confidence and seem not real. In life, this is usually the case, but there may be exceptions to this rule↑. Sometimes natural, natural, genetically predetermined feelings are considered real feelings — in contrast to those instilled by culture and, in this sense, artificial↑. Perhaps, in the context of research work, such an opposition is possible, but it cannot be transferred to life.
The direct sexual and unrestrained attraction of Alexander Pushkin to Anna Kern is the most natural and, in this sense, real feeling, and his “I loved you” is obviously a cultural feeling, that is, not natural, but made and artificial. Does this mean that this feeling is not real?
If we analyze life’s needs, then more often women talk about real feelings, and from the context of statements, one can usually understand that for most women, real feelings are reliable, not deceiving, stable feelings that can be trusted.
As a rule, such reliable feelings are more characteristic of mature, responsible people, whose feelings are imbued with reason and are under its control. Another version of reliable feelings is feelings that arise in connection with the emergence of habits for a partner and with the development of attachment.
However, feelings by themselves can never be a guarantor of any reliability, only a reliable person can be a guarantor of reliability↑.
In the practice of psychotherapy, the concept of «real feelings» is used to solve other problems. If clients tend to unproductively fantasize and make up their feelings (usually negative) where they actually do not exist, the therapist can consider only basic emotions to be real — joy, pain, fear, anger, carefully questioning all other feelings. In addition to this, in psychotherapeutic practice, it is customary to consider a real feeling a feeling that is congruent, full-fledged, deep, capturing the whole body (Outside of psychotherapy, such a view ceases to be productive. The feeling invested by A.S. Pushkin in the poem “I loved you …” is obviously a composite , an alloy of gratitude and light sadness, especially since these elements themselves are of an artificial, cultural nature, but it seems that it is the highest feelings that create the real basis of humanity).
If this is fear, then fear is everywhere, both in the body, and in facial expressions, and in the internal picture with the text. Real resentment — lowered shoulders, trembling lips, an internal question: «Well, why is this happening to me?» and the image of a small, defenseless self. When there are different feelings at different levels, these feelings are not real. Moreover, the fewer levels a feeling occupies, the less real it is. When there is resentment in the inner text, in the body and in the picture, and with facial expressions we try to show joy, this joy is not real, and we ourselves usually feel it.
With this understanding, a real feeling is not always what we want to come to, but at least it is some kind of support, it is what makes it possible to move forward.