Hi TeaK,

That seems an accurate picture, though the time scale is a bit skewed, which it would be without my providing a lot more detail.

Seems to fit together.  I’ll have to work on assimilating that picture into my own and see where it takes me.

Funny you should bring up “… cut off from your emotions and gut feeling.  Without it, we cannot know what we want, what’s good for us, or even what’s right or wrong.  We can’t decide with our emotions being cut off.”  I recently ran across this idea.  Don’t remember what I was reading specifically (one of a pile of self-help books, dealing with emotions), and he cited case studies where specific areas of the brain had been damaged (pre-frontal cortex area, I think), and it left people almost emotionless.  They found these people incapable of making almost any kind of decision, having no feeling about any of the options.

That’s a pretty good fit for how things ‘feel’ for me much of the time.  I see something, a situation, say… and I think about it, and come up with a number of possible scenarios or reasons for it happening, or choices I could make… and there’s just no one that feels any more or less likely than any other.  There’s no ‘gut hunch’… though I DO get that when troubleshooting electro-mechanical machinery – – never had a step-by-step procedure for diagnosing.  Took in the ‘gestalt’ of what it was doing or not doing, and when it was occurring, and almost immediately, I’d know where to start looking, and it was always either dead-on, or very close to it.  I’d “intuit” my diagnosis, or follow a ‘feeling’ or ‘hunch.’  Very rarely did I have to start at the beginning, and plod my way point by point until I found something wrong.  It s the only area of my life where that happens.

Wonder if maybe this thing with my lady friend was a “jump-start” on getting back in touch with my feelings… Certainly feels like a dam bursting, or maybe like opening all the prison doors at once, with everything just rushing out and running wild.

I will think about what you’ve said, as it seems very close to my own subjective experience.  Not sure how to go about that ‘getting in touch,’ but I’m sure there are plenty of places where I can find some direction with that.

Thank you again for your insights and direction.  I do appreciate it a great deal.