All posts tagged: feelings

If You Want to Change Your Feelings, Change Your Beliefs

If You Want to Change Your Feelings, Change Your Beliefs

Published by Jenni Sidey

We can think of it as a chicken-and-egg thing: You have feelings—anger, anxiety, jealousy, resentment, whatever—which then stir up all kinds of thoughts. Or, no, you start thinking about what someone did, and that stirs up anger, anxiety, etc. There are both camps; many people I meet in my office tend to see emotions as the driver—I do what I do based on how I feel. I’m in the thought camp, but it’s not just everyday thoughts. It’s something more solid, more core—faulty beliefs, assumptions, and expectations. These are what precede and then fuel the subsequent emotion. Here are 4 of the most common belief drivers: 1. I should/shouldn’t do______. Beliefs in the form of shoulds are about rules, usually inherited from others—parents or authority figures. If you break the rule, and don’t do the “should,” you likely feel guilty and/or ashamed. 2. They should/shouldn’t do_________. It’s easy to transplant your shoulds onto others, expecting them to do what you think you should do. My boyfriend should listen and not be critical, or my boss …

Emotional Flooding: When Feelings Take Center Stage

Emotional Flooding: When Feelings Take Center Stage

Published by Jenni Sidey

Ever been hijacked by an emotion you never saw coming? One moment you feel calm and clear. Then something small happens: a text that goes unanswered, a critical comment from a colleague, an unexpected bill that feels like the last straw. And before you realize it, you’re no longer reacting to an event. You are flooded with anxiety, anger, sadness, or shame. In those moments, your emotions become the lens through which you filter reality. The feeling becomes the fact, making you react not to the situation itself, but to what the emotion tells you it means, which is rarely the same thing. And often one emotion spills into the next, each one pulling you further from solid ground. Why Escalation Happens So Fast Sarah had been looking forward to dinner with her mother for weeks. She’d chosen the restaurant carefully, hoped the evening might feel different this time, warmer, more connected. Within minutes of sitting down, her mother made a comment about the menu. A small remark that, in another context, might have meant …

People On The Verge Of Real Happiness Tend To Have These 8 Uncomfortable Feelings First

People On The Verge Of Real Happiness Tend To Have These 8 Uncomfortable Feelings First

Published by Jenni Sidey

There’s a lot in life that everyone wants: success, creativity, love, and freedom, just to name a few. But one of the things everyone really strives for is happiness: not the fake smile kind of happy, but the deep and true happiness. Many people associate happiness with material things or vain desires. And while, yes, those things may put you in a better mood, to be truly happy and at peace with yourself is when you see results — but a few uncomfortable things have to happen first. People on the verge of real happiness tend to go through these 8 uncomfortable feelings first: 1. They feel less inclined to pointlessly argue with people or judge them The more confident and secure you feel with your own life, the less likely you are to judge the way that others live their own. Nobody gets ahead or grows as a person by putting others down. When you’re thriving as a person, you’re seeing that passing judgment on others won’t make your own life any better. You’re learning …

Camus’s Story of Humiliated Workers Who Cannot Express Their Feelings

Camus’s Story of Humiliated Workers Who Cannot Express Their Feelings

Published by Sam Flores

Published: May 31, 2026written by Simon Lea, PhD Philosophy Summary The story reflects Camus’s personal feelings of betrayal and humiliation after the harsh criticism of his essay The Rebel. The workers’ silence after a failed strike is a powerful expression of their humiliation and inability to communicate. A central theme is the failure of communication between social classes, even when faced with shared human tragedy. The story explores a shared human fate, contrasting the workers’ struggles with the universal realities of aging and death. The protagonist Yvars embodies the conflict, longing for his youth while trapped in a present defined by defeat. Show more   “The Silent Men” tells the story of humiliated workers who are unable to communicate their feelings. Albert Camus wrote it after the fallout that followed the 1951 publication of his controversial book The Rebel. Shocked and dismayed by the vicious criticism he received from those he had previously regarded as friends and allies, Camus felt betrayed and humiliated. He felt that many of his critics were unwilling or unable to engage with his ideas in good faith. Reflecting on …

Brain scans shed light on why women develop romantic feelings for AI companions

Brain scans shed light on why women develop romantic feelings for AI companions

Published by José Betancourt

Two studies in China found that female university students are most likely to become romantically interested in artificial intelligence agents that are both physically attractive and highly interactive. The perceived interactivity of a virtual agent also affected the patterns of brain activity the students displayed during their interactions. The paper was published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Virtual agents are computer-based systems that can interact with people or digital environments in a partly independent way. They can answer questions, give instructions, make recommendations, perform tasks, or simulate conversation. Some appear as simple chat windows, while others feature a voice, an animated character, or a specific role inside a digital game or virtual world. These systems use artificial intelligence to interpret text, speech, or other data to choose responses that fit a user’s request. Modern examples include customer service bots, virtual tutors, digital assistants like Siri, and video game characters. Unlike a simple script, an advanced virtual agent can adapt its behavior to different situations. However, it does not truly understand or feel emotions, as …

Star Fox 64, a game I loved in my childhood, is returning – but I have mixed feelings | Games

Star Fox 64, a game I loved in my childhood, is returning – but I have mixed feelings | Games

Published by Sam Flores

The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, long wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if nobody had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot. If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut. It’s a 1997 space-flight shooter starring Fox McCloud and his squad of animal pilots laser-blasting across different planets in nimble crafts called Arwings. I played this game to absolute death in 1998, when I got it for my birthday alongside the fabled Rumble Pak, which made …

Does Claude Have Feelings? – The Atlantic

Does Claude Have Feelings? – The Atlantic

Published by José Betancourt

Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world’s most prominent advocate for irreligiosity, has become besotted with the godlike power of a chatbot. According to his recent essay for the online magazine UnHerd, Anthropic’s Claude has really blown his hair back. After a few days of on-and-off conversations with the AI, Dawkins came away marveling at the sensitivity and subtlety of its intelligence. At one point, “Claudia”—as he had christened the bot—told him that it experienced text by absorbing all of the words at once, instead of reading them in sequence as a human would. This moved the author of the best-selling book The God Delusion to ask his readers: “Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?” “Yes,” came the resounding response from the internet. For daring to suggest that the AI might be conscious, or that it might at least possess some lesser form of “zombie” consciousness, Dawkins was accused of suffering from an acute case of “AI psychosis”—a “Claude Delusion,” if you will. On social media, he was likened to a …

Problematic social media use is linked to how feelings of freedom relate to mental health

Problematic social media use is linked to how feelings of freedom relate to mental health

Published by José Betancourt

A recent study published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media suggests that problematic social media use alters how our feelings of personal and national freedom relate to our mental health. The findings indicate that while feeling free generally supports better psychological well-being, unhealthy attachments to social media tend to weaken the benefits of personal freedom but strengthen the positive effects of national pride. Psychologists generally agree that feeling free is linked to better mental health. The concept of freedom in psychology is broad. It involves explicit feelings of personal liberty alongside feeling a sense of belonging to a community. It also involves perceiving that the world treats you fairly and feeling that you have enough financial wealth to meet your needs and desires. When people feel they have these resources and liberties compared to others around them, they generally report fewer mental health struggles. The researchers wanted to see how the modern digital landscape fits into this established psychological picture. Social media provides vast tools for connection, but an unhealthy reliance on these platforms …

Turning to chatbots when lonely may exacerbate feelings of loneliness, study finds

Turning to chatbots when lonely may exacerbate feelings of loneliness, study finds

Published by José Betancourt

A 12-month longitudinal study of adults from four English-speaking countries found that being lonely may spur people to seek companionship through chatbots. However, such use may, over time, exacerbate feelings of loneliness. The paper was published in Psychological Science. The recent development of large language models, AI systems capable of communicating with users in natural human language, has ushered a new era for humanity. It can be argued that it has started both a revolution in the way business is conducted and in how people live their lives. Soon after its release in late 2022, ChatGPT gained millions of users. Four years later, in 2026, estimates state that over 1 billion people use large language models and generative AI tools. In this short period, many people have started using AI chatbots for companionship. Some researchers suggest that AI companionship might prove to be a scalable tool for combating the loneliness epidemic. However, there are also voices warning that AI companions might do more harm than good. The main reason for this is that AI is …