How do we know when we have really felt something?

You know you have really felt something not because you can name it but because it leaves a residue — a shift in the body, a change in what you want, an alteration that outlasts the moment.

Feeling versus performing feeling

It is easy to perform an emotion and hard to know whether you actually had it. Naming, posting, narrating — these can be substitutes for feeling rather than evidence of it. The real thing tends to be quieter and harder to summarize.

The residue as the proof

Genuine feeling changes something. After it passes, you want different things, or the same things feel different, or your body carries the mark of it. If nothing shifted, you may have only had the idea of the feeling. The residue is the proof.

In essence

We know we have really felt something by its residue — the change it leaves in the body and in what we want — rather than by our ability to name it. Feeling that changes nothing may be only the performance of feeling.

Related questions

Can you feel something and not understand it? Yes, usually. Understanding often arrives long after, or never.

Is a strong reaction the same as deep feeling? Not necessarily. Intensity can be performance; depth is measured by what it changes.