It’s strange. I’ve been in a state of shutdown and disconnect for most of my life. Only recently with lot’s of meditation, I’ve reached a point where I (sometimes) am aware of my own needs and emotions.

When I look at other people I’m amazed by the capacities they have.

• They can think about their needs and desire while having a conversation
• When sitting still and not doing anything, they automatically start thinking about a bunch of things they still want to do or things that happened in the past
• They can hold their preferences in their head in any circumstance
• At any given time they have an idea of their priorities or needs.
• They feel it automatically when they have a certain need, like water, food, connection, etc…

I suppose this is normal for most people? But for me it has been only a very recent experience, and most of the time I still can’t

An example of this is meditation. When I sit down to meditate and focus on my breathing, and do this for 1-2 hours, I don’t experience any thoughts about future plans or things that happened before.

However, with consistency, this seems to be happening occasionally for me now from time to time.

A few years ago just talking was already pretty hard for me. Nowadays I manage, but it’s mostly talking in a way that I’ve learned from patterns in how other people talk, and i’m not necessarily able to communicate my own state of mind to other people that easily.