LessWrong user Chris Lakin shares how he regained the ability to feel emotions in his body

In a highly upvoted LessWrong post titled 'Wait, feelings are supposed to be IN THE BODY?', Chris Lakin recounts his personal journey from emotional numbness to rich bodily awareness. For most of his life, Lakin could only experience emotions as abstract thoughts—'I know I’m anxious, but I don’t feel it anywhere.' He would get butterflies in his stomach but lacked finer sensations like tension in the arms, tingling in fingers, or expansiveness in the chest. He calls this 'living at 360p'—functional but missing depth. He initially assumed everyone experienced emotions the same way, until a mentor asked, 'How do you feel in your body about that?' The question sparked a multi-year exploration.

By deliberately paying attention to physical cues, Lakin gradually unlocked a new dimension of feeling. He now describes emotions as tuples: not 'anxious' but (tension, lower chest); not 'happy' but (pleasure, arm skin). The shift brought profound real-world benefits: decisions that were once agonizing became intuitive, empathy skyrocketed, and he could even set boundaries cleanly. Lakin notes that the unawareness was locally optimal—it protected him from pain—but globally suboptimal, numbing pleasure and connection. His story resonates with the LessWrong community, where many explore rationality, mental models, and neuroplasticity.