Is It Cold of Me Not to Feel Sad Just Because Someone Else Does?

00:01 Yesterday I found a new YouTube show

00:06 called House of Feelings.

00:10 It's

00:11 basically a dating show.

00:13 All the cast members

00:17 are Asian,

00:20 though not all are from Asia.

00:24 Some

00:26 have Asian parents

00:29 but were born in the United States.

00:33 I watched...

00:36 I forget if it was episode three or four.

00:41 There was a segment with someone

00:46 who I think was a life coach

00:49 with a therapy background,

00:53 joining the show.

00:58 It seemed designed to create deep talks

01:01 or

01:04 help them heal from traumatic experiences.

01:10 That was the setup, I think.

01:15 During that process,

01:16 I noticed

01:18 I had almost no emotional reaction.

01:21 I watched the cast members

01:25 show their emotions—

01:26 crying, for example,

01:28 or recalling past trauma.

01:32 But I realized

01:34 those experiences didn't seem

01:37 to cause

01:38 an emotional response in me.

01:40 I wondered:

01:43 it's not that I have no trauma of my own.

01:46 So why, when I watched them

01:49 share their traumatic experiences,

01:51 wasn't I moved

01:54 by the emotions they showed?

01:56 Why didn't their emotions

01:58 make me feel emotional too?

02:00 On the show,

02:04 when the women saw other cast members

02:09 cry while speaking or sharing,

02:11 they cried with them.

02:13 But I didn't feel that way.

02:17 I wondered

02:19 if I'm too strict about showing emotion,

02:24 or simply too cold.

02:29 In the past,

02:30 I've also had moments with friends

02:33 when we shared our traumatic experiences.

02:35 In those moments,

02:37 when I tried to talk about

02:39 my own trauma,

02:40 I would feel sad or cry.

02:45 But

02:47 when it was someone else's turn to share,

02:52 I wasn't as emotionally immersed,

02:56 or affected by their experience.

03:01 I knew they were suffering

03:04 through what had happened.

03:06 I could see the emotions they expressed.

03:10 But

03:12 my emotions didn't follow theirs.

03:16 I find that so strange.

03:22 Maybe much of the time,

03:27 I don't show

03:31 my emotions in front of others.

03:34 One cast member, Hena, was like that.

03:39 When she recalled

03:42 one traumatic experience,

03:45 she couldn't speak.

03:47 She couldn't even think,

03:49 or explain

03:51 what had happened.

03:54 At that moment,

03:57 she looked deeply, deeply distressed.

04:03 But

04:06 her visible pain didn't

04:10 make me feel that pain with her.

04:12 I couldn't feel her pain as my own.

04:14 Although rationally, I told myself:

04:17 I know she's in pain right now.

04:19 I know she was also in pain

04:21 when she lived through it.

04:25 But I still can't figure out

04:30 why I seem

04:31 so cold.

04:36 And why, since childhood,

04:39 I've always kept my emotions

04:43 so well hidden.

04:47 I don't know when

04:50 it began,

04:51 but sharing emotions with others became

04:57 something I rarely initiate.

05:01 Maybe I feel

05:05 that showing emotion

05:07 doesn't help me very much.

05:11 Or perhaps I'm very good

05:13 at healing myself.

05:15 So whenever

05:18 I consider sharing,

05:21 I've already

05:22 comforted myself first.

05:28 Or

05:29 I may feel that if I bring

05:32 someone close to me

05:35 sadness,

05:38 pain,

05:40 or an experience like that,

05:42 I would also pull them

05:45 into the same situation as me.

05:48 But I don't want them to go through

05:51 the pain of those emotions with me.

05:53 So I choose not to say it.

05:56 I carry it myself.

05:59 At least for now,

06:01 I haven't felt that carrying

06:06 those emotions alone has harmed me,

06:10 or felt that anything was wrong with it.

06:14 But I've often heard people say

06:18 that if you hide things

06:19 or feelings hidden and unspoken,

06:22 letting them build up over time

06:24 hurts you.

06:33 But I don't know.

06:36 Maybe when I once felt

06:38 I needed to heal myself,

06:40 understand myself,

06:42 and then heal,

06:43 I would look for tools on my own.

06:48 By "tools," I mean

06:50 learning about psychology,

06:52 psychoanalysis, and related ideas.

06:57 So whenever an emotion felt wrong,

07:00 my mind would create another

07:04 explanation that let me

07:07 separate myself from that emotion,

07:10 or some kind of theory.

07:14 Then I would convince myself.

07:18 I would feel that everything

07:20 that made me sad

07:22 was actually worth forgiving,

07:25 or something I could let go of.

07:28 Though at certain moments,

07:30 when I remember it,

07:31 I still think,

07:32 wow, that really hurts.

07:34 Or late at night,

07:37 when I'm by myself,

07:39 completely alone,

07:40 and remember certain things,

07:42 I still can't help

07:44 crying and shedding tears.

07:48 But I feel that

07:49 after you finish crying,

07:51 tears over,

07:52 the next morning, well,

07:54 you're fine again.

07:56 Even if you cried that morning,

07:58 a few minutes later,

08:00 or by the afternoon,

08:02 you feel completely fine again.

08:05 I don't know

08:07 whether that's healthy

08:10 or what it is.

08:12 But I do know

08:15 I'm not good at holding others' emotions.

08:18 When someone

08:19 pours very heavy emotions onto me,

08:22 I can't persuade them...

08:27 I habitually

08:30 separate myself from an emotion

08:34 and split it into feeling and reason,

08:37 then use the rational part

08:38 to beat the emotional side,

08:40 so I can free myself

08:42 from the pain the emotion brings me.

08:44 That's what I usually do.

08:47 When I try to hold

08:49 someone else's emotions,

08:51 I have two choices. One is

08:54 to guide them out of the emotion.

08:58 The other is to stay with them,

09:00 immersed in that feeling,

09:04 without saying anything else.

09:08 But if what they need

09:13 while talking about

09:15 their emotions

09:17 is to pull me into them—

09:20 as if to say,

09:22 "I'm in an emotional whirlpool.

09:26 I'm pulling you in too,

09:28 and won't let you go"—

09:29 if that's how it is,

09:30 I firmly refuse.

09:31 And I don't think I would

09:33 become very close with that person.

09:37 There's another situation:

09:42 someone expresses an emotion

09:47 and wants me,

09:49 or wants me to join them in it.

09:54 Maybe they're criticizing someone,

09:57 or were hurt by someone,

09:59 and want me to criticize that person too.

10:02 Rationally, I also refuse to do that.

10:06 And in my life,

10:08 I rarely do it.

10:10 At least since college and graduation,

10:14 I've rarely done that.

10:15 Even if this person is

10:18 a very close friend,

10:19 I still feel

10:22 I only know what happened

10:24 from their point of view.

10:25 I can't know for certain

10:28 the other person's experience,

10:29 or why they acted as they did.

10:32 So I can't

10:34 judge someone I don't know

10:37 only from the version I've heard—

10:40 an innocent person I know nothing about.

10:43 This reminds me of something

10:45 two KOLs once discussed.

10:50 KOL 1 felt that

10:52 if a close friend

10:54 couldn't join her

10:58 in criticizing or blaming

11:00 someone who had hurt her,

11:03 then that friend

11:07 was emotionally cold.

11:10 But KOL 2 felt

11:14 she couldn't

11:15 judge another person

11:18 without knowing the full story.

11:20 Sometimes she even thought

11:21 some of KOL 1's actions were wrong.

11:26 I strongly agree with

11:30 some of KOL 2's actions,

11:33 or rather, her thinking.

11:35 But over time,

11:37 KOL 2 also felt

11:39 that since she favored KOL 1,

11:42 she should take KOL 1's side,

11:47 feel what she felt,

11:49 and stand with her against

11:51 the person who had hurt KOL 1.

11:55 After they spent a long time together,

11:57 little by little,

11:58 her thinking moved closer to KOL 1's.

12:00 I'm extremely wary

12:04 of that kind of emotional shift.

12:06 I don't think I would ever enter

12:09 that kind of state.

12:11 I mean,

12:14 most of the time,

12:15 my rational mind beats my emotional one.

12:21 And I also feel

12:24 that the rational part of my life

12:27 often rejects the emotional part.

12:31 Even when I'm sad,

12:34 I use my rational mind

12:37 to argue with my emotional mind,

12:40 then decide that my emotional mind

12:42 really isn't acting correctly.

12:44 So I return to the rational side.

12:48 But I don't know.

12:51 Everyone approaches different things

12:56 with different attitudes

12:58 and different thoughts.

13:02 So what I'm saying

13:04 is also very broad.

13:06 I can't say

13:09 that what I do is definitely okay,

13:12 or that it is pathological.

13:15 I can't draw a complete conclusion about

13:18 whether my current way

13:20 of facing life,

13:21 emotions,

13:23 and trauma

13:25 is healthy,

13:29 or how healthy it is.

13:32 I truly don't know.

13:35 But as people say,

13:37 everyone is human for the first time.

13:41 Even if I get some things wrong,

13:43 if at some point

13:44 in the future I realize,

13:46 "What you're doing is wrong,"

13:47 and I'm willing to treat myself

13:51 in another way,

13:53 maybe by then I'll have grown

13:56 far beyond who I am now.