Just wondering about this.
I have a friend who sometimes just specifically craves a certain dish from a certain food chain. (Like wicked wings from KFC or something)
Or they suddenly feel like watching a specific show (Like Boston Legal)
How does that work?
I never seem to experience something similar to that.
Is it common to feel like that?
Regarding activities, I usually find I crave certain activities when I get burnt out on other activities and need a break from that activity while staying occupied. For instance, if I’m doing a lot of writing at work, I may crave a spatially stimulating activity at home. It is my mind signaling I’m doing too much of one activity and I need a different one to keep from wearing out.
How do you experience this craving?
Like what do you feel that makes you realise you want to do a spatially stimulating activity at home?
To me it’s amazing you can tell something like that!
It’s hard to describe as a physical sensation. Best I can do:
If I’m craving a hamburger, I get a very strong, vivid memory of the feel and taste of biting into a burger, and a strong belief that eating a burger would make me feel very satisfied right now. The same way that, when I’m thirsty, I instinctively know with certainty that drinking is what would make me feel better.
I am not able to do something like that…
I can remember things, but usually it’s kindof like a list of facts:
sometimes I can even visualise kinda in my head what a burger looks like, or what the place looks like. But very vague. I cannot remember things like feelings, emotions, taste, smell, those kind of things related to the thing I’m thinking of.
Drug addiction can be described this way as well.
It isn’t a conscious choice, but something where I’ll identify that I want to do a certain activity when I have free time or I find myself coalescing around a set of interests. I’ll make the choice or find that I’m changing what I picked based on different tasks at work.
I don’t think of the reasons when I make the choice, but I do recognize the trend after I’ve made the choice. It has also helped me recognize when to park certain hobbies that I’m working on because I know I’ll come back to them, but I know my mind needs something else and it is better to let my mind go for something different than to burn out completely on one hobby because I killed the joy I had in it.
I have this happen often that I would choose one thing and just keep working on it until I’m completely exhausted and cannot work on anything anymore. Then I usually drop it and never return to it.
It’s almost like other people have this compass to guide them what their priorities should be, but I don’t seem to have it.
The idea that humans only have five senses is crap and a lot of those senses are ways to help self regulate. And it turns out that, as people can have bad eyesight or the ability to smell things, people can also be bad at those self regulating senses.
So that’s like bad interoception then? But can that be improved?
Or is it just like bad eyesight that you’re stuck with that for life?
My understanding, and this is very basic and not well understood, is that the research is only really starting to probe this topic and some issues may be related to the neurospiciness of some people.
To use a machine related metaphor, I don’t know if they’ve figured out if the issue is with the sensor, the wiring from the sensor, or the control board not being wired to read the sensor. It could also be a mix of different reasons that just happens to show to in a set of people.
It is a long winded way of saying I don’t have an answer to your question.
Yeah, im surprised I can’t seem to find much information about this.
I think for me it seems more about the ‘control board’ though. Because there are moments, usually about a day or two per month, where I seem to be able to tell my needs. So then you would think the sensor is fine.
Usually on those days I write a lot. So that I have some pointers later for myself when I eventually forget again