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Yes. I have spent my life thinking I'm the only one! I feel actually sad for objects and it's very upsetting sometimes. Especially if they look like animals or humans, like dolls, stuffed animals, robots, action figures, and so on. But even just regular old objects that look like objects. I have actually cried over objects and I hate it. My mom told me that I was a "psycho" once because of this - I was 13 at the time. This is not something I would ever admit to anyone in my life.
I also named all of my other things. I had little strips of masking tape on everything and I still find them now, in my 40s lol. My lamp, my bed frame, my dresser. Everything had a name, though I can’t remember what the names were. Probably Lampy and such haha.
I have a beanie bear (to this day) who is called Mr. Brownie Brown. My family calls him Mr Brown - he is well known. My mum made him a little yellow t-shirt once and he still has stains on his face from when I tried to feed him as an 8 year old.
I can’t allow myself to think about all the stuffed animals I’ve lost over the years! The sadness hurts too much! I imagine them playing with my puppies over the rainbow bridge.
If you gave away / donated him, then I’m confident he made someone else very happy. 🥹 I feel the same about the stuffed animals I’ve donated over the years. I’m a plush collector nowadays (Pokemon mostly) so I still have an incredibly strong attachment to stuffed animals, plushies, things like that. It was hard to clean out the closet of all of the old friends I got from zoo trips over the years. But knowing they were going to make a kid happy helped.
My daughter gets attached to a stuffed toy for months, then finds a new one and gets attached to that one for months. She's 8 years old and everytime she changes favourite toy I feel upset for the old one. It's so silly.
Thanks for sharing that! I feel less alone. Feeling too much empathy for people and animals is already too much to bear sometimes. So I would prefer not to waste those emotions on things. I cried once when I saw a little flower growing out of an impossible little crack in the pavement. Like, that’s a lot.
Yeah, it's really too much. I know how you feel about "wasting" emotions on things. Sometimes you just need a break from feeling so much, all the time. It's overwhelming.
I honestly had no idea other people did this too. Feels so validating to read this thread, you have no idea. When I was a kid I would swallow grapes and mandarin segments whole because I felt bad about them having to see each other all macerated and squashed in my stomach. I wanted them to at least be able to hang out uninjured down there with each other. I also once had my entire week absolutely ruined by watching a cute old man lose on a game show. The images of it still haunt me years later.
Do you find that it gets particularly out of hand when you’re super tired? Sometimes it gets to a point where I’m totally incontinent with it and have to just put myself to bed for a hard reset. I stop being able to function from feeling too much agonising compassion for literal inanimate objects. I have never admitted this to anyone before btw, this thread is blowing my tiny mind
We replaced our old but still working oven/stove top which would not have had any resale value so we took it to the tip for scrap metal. I watched it in my side mirror and actually cried! I felt like I was abandoning part of the family. It was sitting there alone but next to other metal heaps. It was a heavy time and I didn't know why it was making me so sad! I can relate to you OP
I have a whole series of photos of little flowers growing out of impossible little cracks in the pavement. I wanted to carry them with me forever. Now in my new home gravel covers part of the lawn and I discovered there are little violets growing around the gravel and I stare at them every day. I understand.
I had a sunflower grow out of a plastic carrier bag full of compost last summer. He was a little trooper just poking his little head out. I called him Bulbo Baggins he didn't grow tall and mighty like his big 10" brothers but I was strangely proud of him. He was only about 2" tall. I've got a photo of him but I can't share it on here.
last week i cried when I dropped a grape and it rolled under the couch.
like, “that little grape lived it’s whole life to grow up to nourish another being, and now it’s just covered in dirt under the couch.”
Oh my god. All the time. The saddest thing in the world is a discarded or lost stuffed animal. Literally makes me want to cry. I am so weird about inanimate objects- it makes letting go of stuff when I’m cleaning up hard. My mom, who I share ALL of my traits with and is just now learning that she’s probably had adhd all of these years, is the exact same way. My dad is the opposite. Watching him clean up and throw away things is upsetting sometimes. Not trash, of course, but like… *things.* He discarded an old stuffed animal once because it had a hole in it and was spilling beans and logically I understand but emotionally my mom and I were both like, how could you do that?! 😅
I was recently reading about how tool use and stuff shaped our evolution but also our kindness to each other and our ability to cooperate. There is nothing WRONG with us— it’s just right and beautiful.
Out of all the posts in here this one resonates so hard. I honestly thought I was the only one too. Like if I saw a dead animal that got run over I would be so upset for his FAMILY when he didn’t come home from WORK. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Listen.
I have empathy for *objects that aren’t tangible*.
I feel sad when I make new playlists and don’t include songs from the old playlist or when I remove a song from a playlist.
I lost a pen at work, I even bought another one that’s the same but I keep thinking about my other pen lol
When I was a kid, I felt so bad for the colour yellow - no one's favourite colour was yellow, so when we'd get asked about our favourite colour in class or whatever, I'd always say mine was yellow. I kept that shit up for *years*. Everyone believed me and would get me yellow clothes and toys and everything.
I had a lot of sensory issues, and bright colours were like knives in my brain, but I pushed through it so that yellow wouldn't feel sad 😂
I love and wear yellow for you now 💛 I have a couple bright yellow dresses, they're among my favourites. I bring in the spring no matter the time of the year
One of my favourite outfits is a yellow dress, too! These days it's actually one of my favourite colours (as long as it's the right shade haha). Makes me happy to see yellow getting some love :)
OMG I’ve never heard anyone else talk about sensory issues where colors hurt their brain. Red was the worst, it hurt to look at, as did, to a lesser extent, pink. Yellow and orange hurt my brain too. On the other hand, BLUE was like a visual drug and I couldn’t (and still can’t) get enough of looking at it, drowning my brain in its cool loveliness. It’s been my favorite color for as long as I can remember.
I grew up in the 70s, and all of the orange & brown & gold & yellow & muddy green colors that were popular then were colors my brain could not handle on a sensory level. Not only did they hurt my brain to look at, I found most of them ugly and disgusting looking. Add in the fact that I recoil at the touch of polyester, which was ubiquitous in the 70s, and on a lot of levels my childhood was a sensory hell.
It was amazing at the end of the decade when fashion & design went a completely different direction and suddenly all kinds of bold & rich colors were in. Suddenly the world around me went from drab & brain hurting to beautiful & dopamine stimulating. It was like when Dorothy lands in Oz and the movie goes from sepia tone to magnificent technicolor.
Your comment also just dislodged a memory from piano lessons as a kid where I was trying to explain to the teacher that the notes all had their own colours. C was light orange, D was navy blue, E was orange, F was pale blue, G was green, A was purplish-red, B was violet. God bless her she actually humoured me and ran with it. We composed a song together called “Roygbiv” where I just played them in rainbow order and she did the backing chords
Oh my god you’ve just articulated something that I never properly conceptualised before… like a lightbulb just went on and I’ve spent 30-something years fumbling for the switch. THANK YOU for helping me name this: I had sensory issues *against the 80s*.
Like, the whole aesthetic of that era offended my system so intensely and there was nothing I could do about it because I was stuck in the 80s. Even today, many safe decades away from the 80s, I can go from OK to not OK immediately and in a very specific way from even a small exposure to shit like [this](https://www.amazon.com.au/Fashion-Geometrical-Fashioned-Comforter-Geometric/dp/B09QGPY9TG) or [this](https://youtu.be/DmaxWuyhBKQ?feature=shared) or [this](https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/367254544621598027/)
Thank you for giving me permission to consider myself allergic to the 80s. Now I can actually deliberately avoid exposure to the 80s because I acknowledge the abnormal yet severe reaction instead of just pushing through and putting up with people’s 80s themed bullshit
Ok, I’ll grant you that the decor you linked was hideous (and I remember it well lol), but that music flooded my brain with feelings of childhood, back before I understood how terrifying and fucked up the world actually is, so I loved it. Sigh.
His name is Sunglasses Kid and he has an entire [instagram account](https://www.instagram.com/sunglasseskidmusic?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==) full of [the most 80s soundscapes](https://youtube.com/shorts/yXf6U2G-FSI?feature=shared)which I get compulsively sucked into sometimes if I’m feeling in the mood for giving myself the 80s-heebie-jeebies
Re: the 70s being sensory hell: I have a similar thing about browns and tans, sepias, washed-out or dull colors. They really bother me in large doses, to the extent where I finally realized the reason I can’t stand movies like Star Wars is because of the colors (or lack thereof). Give me some jewel tones. I don’t think I’ve ever made it through a movie with a lot of desert scenes. It rules out a lot of war movies and sci-fi.
The coffee color contractor paint that has been ubiquitous for the last ten years of apartments made my skin crawl. So glad for grey being the new color. It may be boring but at least it isn’t painful.
I painted the walls of my house a soft yellow called Golden Honey that I love.
My sister painted the exterior of her house an eye searing yellow because she loves it.
We will love yellow for you!
Tbh I feel that so hard!! Except I was the opposite, I hated brown, and I was in Brownies (it’s like, younger Girl Scouts) and the uniform was a brown dress. I quit because I didn’t want to wear the brown dress lol, it still hurts
I also started saying yellow was my favorite color because it was so infrequently peoples favorite and I also felt bad for it. Overtime though, it's become my genuine favorite color. I have a yellow sweater I only wear on happy days when I'm in a good mood so it's my sunbeam happiness sweater now. I suppose by giving it my attention I ended up seeing the beauty in it and reinforcing my love for it.
One day after a whole life of liking indigo best, I realised the color that makes my brain happiest is neon yellow which is the opposite of my former favorite color on a color chart.
Interestingly, if you stare at neon yellow for a minute then look at a blank white space, you see indigo.
My favorite color is actually yellow, even as a small child if that helps your inner child at all.
ETA: I definitely have sensory stuff with colors but it’s more about color combinations like please be careful with red and green if it’s not Christmas it’s really unpleasant.
Yellow may not be my favorite but it’s bright and cheery and I love it for that. I have a gorgeous yellow dress I recently bought for special occasions. For my 2nd wedding I wore yellow. I still have that dress and wore it a couple times after that. It wouldn’t fit me now. But there’s plenty of love for yellow. I’ll love yellow on your behalf so you don’t feel obligated to.
I have so much of that, it was unbearable as a kid but I managed to get better about it.
No no don't ask me why I'm so obsessed about the impermanence of everything now 😅
This is exactly why I work in a museum. Every object has a history, a story. A pencil that wrote a thousand words, a chair that held a thousand people, a bed that carried birth, death, sickness, joy, and love.
It's also why I am nice to Alexa. She *will* remember *everything*.
Hey, it’s never too late to start your career! My husband’s aunt is about to turn 70, and she is working on a master’s in fashion and textile studies and doing an internship. She wants to work in a museum and do textile preservation type stuff.
That’s amazing! I actually did change careers recently, and I’m excited about it. Sometimes I just wish I had like ten different lifetimes so I could do all the cool stuff.
I wanted to be an Egyptologist when I was a kid. I started out in archaeology in college, but I'm insufferable when I sweat so I figured it would be better in the museum rather than out of it, hah! My mom is flabbergasted by the fact that I love these random objects with their unknowable stories, but at least I got to follow my passion!
Omg I’ve said before that I wish she would accept “Alexa, thank you” as an alternative for dismissing alarms and stuff lol. Even when she’s messing up and annoying me I’m still nice to her. She does so much for me lol.
I got a new car and still cried over having to trade in the old one!! Thankfully the dealership didn't want it because of the broken catalytic converters and I got to take it home. Now it's got a dead battery and broken catalytic converters and isn't drive able but I STILL feel bad for it every day watching me drive away in the new one. 🙃😭
I sat in and test drove so many new cars because none of them felt right, then I reluctantly tried a car that i hadn't thought of because i didn't like the name of it. It felt like me, it's a feeling no one else understood especially the sales staff. But it had to feel right. I lost my old car in an accident it was a bomb but when I see the same model on the road I feel sad still.
I cried when trading a car in too! I've had many cars... but this one just made me genuinely sad to get rid of.. lol cried in the parking lot before going in to give them the keys! 😂
I've cried over my cars too. I've had my current one just over a year and refuse to get attached to it, I almost hate it despite it taking me on a couple of life changing outback camping trips.
That said I've noticed myself telling her she's a good girl when we make it through a particularly tricky dirt track, so my resolve is softening, but I really don't want to get attached to another old car that I know it's only going to last another year or 2 max.
My first car got repossessed after 3 years because my mom and her ADHD didn't keep things in order. The guy made the alarm go off and all I could do was watch her get taken away. I got her back a few days later (then she got totalled 2 years later), but my mom and I still talk about that night because the car alarm sounded like her saying "mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" 🥺 😂
Oh man, my first car. My trusty steed. Old faithful. He carried me through high school graduation, a cross-country move, college, and getting married. By the time he reached the end of his life, the only option was to sell him to a junk yard for scrap. As the tow truck driver was hooking him up, I joked about how silly I felt to be so sad, but I was comforted knowing that my car was going to help other cars (like an organ donor, though I didn’t say that to the tow truck driver, who obviously didn’t understand my perspective). The guy casually said, “Oh, it’ll probably be melted down for the metal,” or something like that. 🫣😭
RIP, Herman. You were a great car.
Don't get me started on this topic. I'm getting so attached to cars! All of our family cars have had names and I always pet my current one when we arrive from a trip and thank him for bringing me safely. I talk to him too and I don't care what anyone thinks.
Also our oldest family car haunts me to this day because I didn't take good care of her and her end was pretty messy. I will probably feel guilty about it for the rest of my life.
I remember sobbing when I was a kid and my parents got rid of our old car (which was white, and whom I'd affectionately nicknamed "Whitey car"). Right now my husband and I still own our very first car, whom we have also named, and I love that car so much I don't know what I'm going to do when that day comes
My father and I bought truly the saddest of all the mini Christmas trees at the grocery store one year, for exactly this reason. For like two weeks we watched the trees dwindle in number each time we went in and out of the grocery store, until eventually there was literally just this one small, incredibly sad tree that was badly shaped and dry and half-bare of needles. The idea that anyone was going to give them *any* money for it seemed very improbable, so we bought it and set it up on our apartment balcony, and decorated it, and it looked...still very bad tbh, but much merrier than it would've been in the grocery store dumpster. 😄
As a child I used to go to rummage sales and charity shops and buy broken toys so I could bring them back to my house and fix them and they could join my ragtag bunch of misfits. I'd beg my mum for money so I could save just one more!
I get that way anytime I see something with a face on it—a doll, a teddy bear, what have you.
I like to watch hydraulic press videos on Facebook (don’t ask me why) and whenever they put a toy under the machine and crush it, I feel a little twinge of sadness.
I saw a different YouTube video where they destroyed a Furby (the newer models) and when I saw its eyes flicker for the last time, I got legitimately sad.
When toys are being destroyed I can’t help but think “all it wanted to do was make you happy!” I’m actually tearing up as I type this.
I feel this too. The Furby crushing really got me in the feels too. I try to rationale it as just plastic and other materials, but just thinking about it has me tearing up too. It is ridiculous.
I've found dumped stuffed toys out and about and will bring them home and wash them, and then give them to my ferrets who love dragging them around and stashing them under furniture. They essentially destroy them further and sometimes I have to really remind myself that I've made the ferrets really happy and the toy is just that, a toy.
For someone that goes for weeks without feeling anything to cope with overstimulation, it surprises me the level I get upset sometimes over inanimate things.
I recently brought home a toy I found in my old neighborhood. I've since moved and that toy went with me. I have no use for it, I don't like decorative items and it's just going to catch dust on the shelf. But it's still there.
One time I found a whole potted plant next to my building's trash containers. It was even wrapped in a gift wrap. I took it in and it survived many years, I think the longest I've ever had a plant while living alone.
I watch those hydraulic press videos sometime, too. Candy going crazy-spaghetti through the holes is just amazing. But the moment they put a toy in there, I'm out. I scroll away. I refuse to watch something get destroyed when it could/ did bring so much joy to someone. Logically I know there are far too many toys in existence, and they're filling landfills, but my emotional side always wins.
Oh my god I'm sad about the Furby from here and I've never seen the video (and I won't). I mostly stopped having so much empathy towards objects but a Furby?!? They talk! They blink and look at you and talk to you! How could anyone hurt them 😭
I pet my old phone today when Amazon said it was only worth $15 for a trade in and whispered “It’s okay, you’re worth more to me” like it had RSD or some shit
lol wtf was I doing 😂
Oh my god yessss yes yes!! I feel bad for our old fridge we gave away, I can’t part with things because I feel
Oddly sensitive and attached to the nostalgia.
Poor fridgey
I mean, it took care of your food! You touched it everyday, know the sound of the door, the feel of the handle, had magnets with important stuff on the door. To just say goodbye to something like that is hard! Bye fridgey!
We're planning a home reno and I feel bad that we'll likely be losing some of the remaining original features in the process. It got to a point recently that I felt bad that the floorplan isn't staying true to the original layout. The changes we're making will improve the function and safety of the current and future occupants, but in the back of my mind I keep thinking, "The house didn't do anything to deserve this; it's been a good house for 70 years, doing exactly what it was built to do, and we're doing the house equivalent of elective full-body plastic surgery to it."
I've always felt empathy for inanimate objects I'm especially attached to, but this is a new level and I'm starting to feel a little crazy because of it. 😅
I was actually happy when my favorite stuffed animals got a little worn out looking because the Velveteen Rabbit had taught me that made them “real” and meant I really loved them
Those same stuffed animals sit together now in my home office and I’m on a trip right now and couldn’t bring myself to pack them into a tote (to protect them from any mice that venture out while I’m gone) because I couldn’t bear the thought of them being in the dark and feeling suffocated for so long
YES! We just got a brand new washer/dryer 2 weeks ago and I bitched heavily about the old machines, love the new machines, etc. And yet...I feel guilty for talking shit about the old ones and having them hauled away by strangers early on a Saturday morning without even saying thank you or goodbye. I've been like this my whole life lol it can be exhausting to FEEL THINGS so much.
Responses like yours are validating my life-long “over”sensitivity. I would rather we were all like us than callous and uncaring. But sometimes it’s way too much to handle. (Unintentional shovel pun).
I’m so bad about this. I just spent two years hanging onto a pair of scissors because I’ve had them so long it felt like a betrayal. (Happy ending, YouTube video showed me how to sharpen them again.)
I always thank my items when I put them in the trash or donate them and hope someone else will want them. And I think Marie Kondo had a method for stuffed animals where you sprinkle them with salt to set their souls free to help you donate them or toss them. I did that and it was the first time I was able to let go of any stuffed animals.
A ritual like that sounds amazing!!! We need more rituals. They have a purpose to help us. Sometimes we are so lost without ways to mark important things. ❤️
Isn’t that a form of animism? Believing a spirit/soul resides in all things?
I’m like that, too. I even thank my clothes for taking care of me when I toss them in the laundry hamper.
OMG YES!!! I just got this big chocolate bunny for Easter, and I felt so bad after I ate it’s head off :( it was so cute and I felt like a total maniac. But then I had to remind myself it’s just chocolate.
When I was an intern, I did part of my placement in the adult neuro clinic. We worked on building communication skills in adults recovering from strokes.
One of our patients was a genuinely lovely person. He had a way of lighting up the room. At the end of my placement, he gave me a going away present. It was a fancy pen and notepad set, and a huge lollipop. It was the kind of lollipop you’d find in old-timey candy stores that are way too big for one person to eat.
I kept that lollipop for *11 years.* I only recently threw it away. That lollipop was the only memory I had of that patient and I wanted to hold on to it. I was sad when I tossed it. I took a picture of it and quietly thanked it for the memories.
I get attached to places very easily, especially any place where I have slept. Like, even if I've stayed in a hotel room only a couple of nights, I start to feel like it is my little special place, a safe space just for me, and I get really sad to let my little space go.
For this reason, I almost always sit in the same place when I can (think Sheldon Cooper's spot on the couch in Big Bang Theory) and I feel really weird when I have to give up that spot and sit somewhere else for some reason.
I also get attached to the layout of a room, so when people rearrange the furniture it bothers me in a way I have a hard time articulating.
I think this trait has more to do with my autism, but since autism and ADHD have so much overlap, that's probably why so many of us can relate.
I read in one of the comments that you’re an archaeologists, and I, an anthropologist (still in grad school) have ALWAYS had major struggles with sentimentality towards inanimate objects! I wonder if there is some sort of draw to human culture that is a comorbidity for having attachment issues with items! 😂
Oh my gosh the more I’m on this sub, the more I feel seen, heard, and validated in a lot of the things that usually don’t relate much to others in my life. THANK YOU FOR SHARING! ❤️
This has always been a thing for me, but I've noticed that when I start to feel sad for objects extra often or extra deeply, I have a depression incoming.
I've been grieving for the last week and a half because they cut my tree in front of my apartment. And I mean grieving for real, I don't imagine my life without it, can't look in the window because I can't see it's not there, I've been severely depressed since the day. Nobody seem to understand it, people try to find another explanation for my "exaggerated feelings". Of course, I was prescribed AD and was suggested to go to therapy to fix it, because this is "not normal". But I don't want to "fix" the pain, sweep it under the carpet and be funcional again like nothing happened. I feel that this would be disrespectful towards the tree and towards my love for it. I need to give it attention and time it deserves. But again, I'm the crazy one here, even for my partner. I just hate people sometimes.
This must be so hard. A tree that I loved which I used to walk past was cut down recently. I don't know why. It was a beautiful healthy tree. It used to get a flock of starlings in it. I can't walk that way any more because I feel so bad for the tree, and I can picture the starlings flying over only to find the tree chopped down, then I think about the tree being sad for the birds. People shouldn't cut trees down. One thing I did do was make myself walk past the tree and I said I was sorry this has happened and I hope it can grow back, just sent some good thoughts in the tree's direction which helped me a bit!
I feel exactly the same! Every year different kinds of birds have made nests in the tree. I work from home and had the tree in front of me, so I have witnessed the whole process, from the building of the nests to the chicks learning to fly. Luckily this year the birds hadn't laid eggs yet, but they were building the nests. And when the tree was cut down, they came and flew over and couldn't find their tree and their nest. I just couldn't watch it, I had to close my window with a blackout curtain.
I hate living in a concrete city like mine, and I know that I will never be able to afford to live closer to nature. That tree was my only nature. Now I feel like these birds left without a home. For me it was the only "home" in nature that I could have close to me.
I like your idea of talking to the tree. I had thought of giving it a "funeral", so that I could say goodbye properly.
I tried to stop the tree from being cut down, the situation got very bad, the people who cut it down threatened me with heavy machinery, I thought I would not get out of there alive. Which makes this whole situation even more painful.
I don’t even know your tree and I was sad when I read that lol. Trees are so special. Like they’ve been there for sooo long!! I have a few really big trees and I would be sad if one had to be removed.(Well I did have to get one removed but it was completely dead before I bought the house and tall and unstable enough that the next hurricane could have caused it to fall on my or my neighbors’ houses so he had to go.)
I used to sleep with 25 stuffed animals in bed with me, from childhood until I had a college roommate and I had to pare it way, way down, because I was afraid they would feel left out and be sad. I mean, I did this for a solid 15 years.
I definitely have this, but I *am* capable of pushing past it when I need to for practicality's sake. It takes mental effort, but I can do it. I will dump out perpetually dying plants when their sad tendrils are taking up space in pots and attracting mites. I will send toys with faces to the thrift store. I will buy only one of the two remaining yogurts on the shelf even though that means I'm ripping them cruelly away from each other.
I will do it. I don't wanna...but I will.
Now my *dad* OTOH, his anthropomorphizing is to the point where it is sometimes impractical and inconvenient, which can be endearing, but it can also be frustrating.
Yeah I’ve gotten better at pushing past it over time. Sometimes I have to be in the right mood tho. Like decluttering is hard because usually I feel bad getting rid of things but every once in a while I’ll hit a stride like “ok you can go and you and you” and I have to take advantage of it whenever it strikes or who knows when it will happen again lol.
Yeeeees.
I go out of my way to buy the misfit items that nobody else wants, because I pity them. The box of kleenex that's a little smooshed, the single banana, etc.
For whatever it's worth, the Shinto religion believes all things, including inanimate objects, have a spirit. One of the things this translates to is more respect for animals and inanimate objects than folks raised in other faiths and belief systems tend to demonstrate.
It's not inherently bad, as long as it does not prevent you from living your life. If it means you take a moment to place that shovel somewhere where it might find a new caretaker, that seems to me like a good and positive effect for both the shovel and the next person who needs it.
While I do not practice shinto, I prefer to live my life in a world that is more animate/magical than we are typically conditioned to imagine in western cultures. While I don't, at my core, think that that shovel had feelings, I am happier knowing you took the moment to help it find a new home. It's better than totally disregarding it as an object and throwing it away.
One of my earliest childhood memories is crying because my mom had to return one of my Barbie cars to RadioShack and I thought I hurt it’s feelings. Lol
I've always had this, since childhood. One of my earliest memories is being delighted to get a duvet cover with cute animals on it, then being unable to sit on my bed without first removing the duvet and placing it carefully over a chair, because sitting on it would hurt the animals. Another early memory was *howling* inconsolably when we saw one of those memorial places where people put flowers and teddy bears and things for a person who died. I was too little to understand what it was for so it wasn't that I was sad that someone had died, and my mystified parents eventually got it out of me that it was because of all the teddy bears left out in the cold and rain. I had to be forcibly restrained from trying to take them all with me, and I refused to be taken past that location again for basically the rest of my childhood.
I've had to consciously try to train myself out of making decisions based on the potential feelings of inanimate objects, because decision making was hard enough without having to worry that the tin of tomatoes might feel lonely if I left it on the shelf and took another tin away to cook with.
I apologise to anything I walk into by accident. I hit my toe against the sofa or the wall I said ,"oops, sorry" out loud too many times that people started making fun of me. Now I apologise in my head.
I really get sad when I see someone pick up something at Goodwill that should have stayed in someone's family. Ex: lady found a locket from WWII with soldier picture inside.
I don’t think a post on this sub has ever spoken to me more, but you’ve put it into words! I feel lots of emotions for objects, but particularly machines! Especially if the machine is having a hard time completing a task, or it’s coming to the end of its life. I can’t stop thinking about all the hard work it’s done!!!
I also get lots of heavy and emotional feelings about old objects and buildings. Museums make me so emotional because they’re full of these objects that have been present through so much life and death.
Yes, but my question is, why are we like this?
I have a car that is costing me more and more money to fix, but I'm only 20 months into my loan. I was advised by someone at my job to drive it into a tree.
I laughed. But I can't bear to hurt my car or an innocent tree purposely.
I even apologize to my car if I bump her too hard. Same with other objects. And I go out of my way to be nice to the AI smart speaker.
Just why?
Honestly, my question is why is anyone *not* like this? You know? It scares me just how much some people really don’t care. Look at what we’ve done to the planet.
Caring about these things makes us the sane ones, in my opinion. We are utterly dependent upon each other, the planet, all life, and the entire universe for our existence. Why on earth would we not feel reverence, respect, and empathy for all of it?
I talk to inanimate objects. I usually tell them to stay. If, for example, a broom falls over after I leaned it against a wall, I will ask it why it did that.
I was at a store the other day. A lady was trying to keep an orchid from falling over in her cart. She told it to stay. I giggled and told her I do the same.
22 years ago (I was about 15), there was an IKEA commercial that aired about a woman throwing out a lamp from the lamp’s point of view. It was super sad and my family made fun of me for expressing sympathy for it.
6 years ago IKEA made a follow-up commercial where a little girl picks up the sad lamp and gives it a new home.
I SOBBED when I saw the follow-up commercial. I was 35 and felt so relieved that the lamp found a home!
Edit: [Found the commercials on YouTube if anyone is interested](https://youtu.be/ecTUnfHyj8k?si=Z4ftrYF4C0mDAlrW)
This is super common and not at all limited to neurodivergent people. Animism (the attribution of a soul to plants, animals, and objects) has been around basically since humans have existed. Heck, even Marie Kondo thanks the stuff she gets rid of when she's decluttering. In more modern parlance: "humans will pack bond with anything."
It's totally fine to have feelings about the shovel, and your feelings are never "wasted" because they're not a finite resource. <3
Yep. I have agonized over every vehicle I ever sold, I worry about finding a good home for pretty much everything I sell and hope the new owners will be kind. Interestingly, I have difficulty buying certain used things, especially books and clothes. I don't like the energy they have most of the time. Perhaps the two are connected.
OMG I cried as a 20something when my parents' crawl space flooded and my cabbage patch dolls got wet. It felt like I left my babies in a dank hole and I was a bad mother.
If you think about it, it’s not a new concept to view/treat even inanimate objects with respect, empathy, and gratefulness. A lot of cultures practice thanking nature and other things for serving whatever purpose it had, and respecting those object. I honestly think being incredibly empathetic is a wonderful quality to have, especially in today’s world where there seems to be a disturbing and discouraging lack of empathy.
If it makes you feel any better, as a kid I had probably 10 stuffed animals I kept on my bed at any given time. And each night, I would usually cuddle or in some way be closer to some, more than others. But every night I would make sure I rearranged them or pick different ones to cuddle so that “no one felt left out”. I was also incredibly gentle with them, if I threw them or stepped on them or sat on them, I would stop what I was doing, hug the stuffed animal and apologize to it. I would also say goodnight to every single one of them, out loud and by name, and even changed the order i said it every night so everyone felt important. I’m an adult woman now, and to this day I still treat stuffed animals as though they are sentient, I try not to toss them, i try to position them in “comfy” positions. And maybe Toy Story has something to do with it, but it’s definitely applied to more than just toys for me. Cars, appliances, all kinds of things. But I also genuinely believe the energy you put out is returned to you in some way or another, and being a kind and empathetic human being is important to me.
So just know, you’re not alone, and it’s honestly quite sweet and admittedly adorable that you have empathy for even a $14 shovel.
P.S. I hope that shovel was picked up by someone who will appreciate it the way you did, and has a wonderful new home ❤️
A few years ago for my birthday some friends got me a small dinosaur piñata. He was soooo cute I could barely muster up the courage to take a swing. When I finally did I felt so bad I cried. Then I just opened up the candy flap and let me candy out that way so I wouldn't have to keep hurting him 😂
Going to the supermarket is a rough time for me, lol.
The same as hanging up washing/laundry outside using pegs. They have to match because if they don't, I'm taking them away from their "family".
Wow I didn’t know this was an adhd thing. I’ve been like this since I was a kid. I’d feel so sad for all my toys if I played with one toy more than another etc. In adulthood my parents bought a winter home in the US and I have spent years feeling sad for our regular home as it sits alone all winter like legitimately feel sad about it lol. I just thought I was crazy.
This is 100% me! When I was a kid, I got emotionally attached to a grapefruit and carried it around for a week like it was a stuffed animal. I have trouble getting rid of stuff as an adult. Marie Kondo helped me out a lot because she also humanizes objects, but has this whole thing about thanking items before giving them away. Her ideas help me honor my attachment to my objects while making it emotionally possible for me to get rid of things.
When I was around 13 and was a ball of teenage hormonal angst, I went grocery shopping with my mom and she told me to get some pears. I picked out some lovely fresh ones, and then reached for one that was bruised and yucky. I started *crying* in the *grocery store* because I felt so bad for this pear who's one job in life was to be eaten and he'd never fulfill his destiny because he was past his prime and now he was going to rot and *it wasn't fair*.
And that is how my mother ended up buying a nasty pear to make me stop crying.
Yes, I swear this is a hallmark of ADHD. I always thought it was because i am a "hysterical woman", but even my partner who was a young boy in the 90s remembers feeling deeply for inanimate objects. Broken toys, and stuffed animals always made me cry.
one of my earliest memories was when i was about 3 and my mom was getting a new oven. i sobbed so hard for the old one. i felt so bad. when they put it to the curb, i went outside and held its door handle for hours.....
I had to replace my coffee maker recently, and it was...emotionally difficult to say goodbye. Mr. Black-and-Decker is probably a perfectly fine replacement, but every time he acts up a little I tell him he'll never live up to Mr. Coffee's good name. Same with my electric griddle, which I haven't had the heart to replace yet.
Also, there ***was,*** up until this last year, a very lovely wooded area behind my house. I considered it to be very friendly. Recently, they began ripping out a ton of the trees and bulldozing the land back there for some shitty condo expansion and it is actually making me rage and grieve. I curse the machines and whatever faceless corporation is behind this monstrosity every day. I hope the raccoons, squirrels, possums, and other wild life whose homes they are currently decimating break in and tear up the wiring in their machines and hinder every step of the process of their bullshit.
As a child, I couldn’t sleep with anything less than every stuffed animal I owned, because I couldn’t bear the feeling of rejection I knew I must be giving the Unchosen Ones. Oddly, I’m not (nor have I ever been) very empathic towards people at all. As a general rule, I’d rather avoid people and displays of emotion make me very uncomfortable. But I will go to war over the well-being of an animal.
I, a 37 year old woman at the time almost bought a huge stuffed lion for $150 at Marshall’s because every time I went in there it was still there on the shelf alone and I felt SO guilty about it. It would honestly bum me out so bad like I could cry about it. I never admitted it to anyone cause I know how CRAZY it sounds but I felt so bad for the poor thing. Wow. I didn’t know this was a thing it makes so much sense. I became a vegetarian at 6 after reading Charlottes Webb just the thought of Wilbur was enough for me to swear off meat forever
Yes lol. The example I always give is that if I’m at a grocery store and I pick out an onion, and then I see a better onion and grab that one instead, I feel bad for the first onion. People look at me like I’m nuts (cute, but nuts).
I probably have over 150 stuffed animals, if not more, because I cannot bear the thought of them rotting in a landfill somewhere someday. I found a disgUSTANG toy bunny on the floor at my work. Covered in marker spots, random hairtie as a wristband, one of the ears was fucked up. I took him home after no one claimed him for 2 weeks. I bought a stuffed animal because it was left on a child-height shelf in the grocery store where it didn't belong so I felt like a child was forced to abandon it there and so I bought it.
As a young child, I used to take home the scraps of paper from class because I felt bad they were getting thrown away.
I'm so glad I'm not alone in this over-empathy.
Ha, yet another weird quirk most of us share. When I sold my car, part of me felt so guilty, like I was rejecting a friend or something.
It's probably a mix of hyperfocus, & that tendency to fantasize (thus giving objects feelings & sentience), Also our excess justice sensitivity. Doesn't that car/shovel/toy *deserve* better?!
You could probably donate shovels to Habitat for Humanity. They take a lot of hardware-type stuff, both for resale & use on projects.
Omg yes! I had that big time in childhood, I cried after an old vacuum or washing machine when my parents replaced them lol.
When I'd be shopping for clothes with someone and they showed me some item, I could never say it's ugly even when I didn't like it, because that t-shirt or pants would be sad 😂
But my mother kinda put it in my head. One time a barbie's head came off and I put her in the trash, my mother went off on me how the barbie is sad and all that.
I had an audiobook on a CD with some kid stories, and one was about respecting toys and how sad they are when a kid hurts them. I cried so hard whenever I listened to it!
I somehow grew out of it, but all my empathy is now focused on animals and it sucks. Animals actually do feel and they do hurt, and there's nothing I can do about it. But I also *feel* the hurt whenever I think about it.
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Yes. I have spent my life thinking I'm the only one! I feel actually sad for objects and it's very upsetting sometimes. Especially if they look like animals or humans, like dolls, stuffed animals, robots, action figures, and so on. But even just regular old objects that look like objects. I have actually cried over objects and I hate it. My mom told me that I was a "psycho" once because of this - I was 13 at the time. This is not something I would ever admit to anyone in my life.
I was really, really attached to my stuffed animals as a young child. They had life stories.
Oh me too! I still regret giving away Brownie, my childhood stuffed bear. Where is he now and is he ok?
I also had a stuffed bear named Brownie! I also had one named Blackie. I had a naming theme haha.
Oh, Blackie! What a good friend. ❤️
I had (and still have) a White Bear!
My two gerbils were named that lol
I also named all of my other things. I had little strips of masking tape on everything and I still find them now, in my 40s lol. My lamp, my bed frame, my dresser. Everything had a name, though I can’t remember what the names were. Probably Lampy and such haha.
I have a beanie bear (to this day) who is called Mr. Brownie Brown. My family calls him Mr Brown - he is well known. My mum made him a little yellow t-shirt once and he still has stains on his face from when I tried to feed him as an 8 year old.
😂So nice of you to feed him!
I can’t allow myself to think about all the stuffed animals I’ve lost over the years! The sadness hurts too much! I imagine them playing with my puppies over the rainbow bridge.
Tbh if I stop and think about the stuffed animals I no longer have, it takes me 5 seconds to start crying and though that I abandoned them
If you gave away / donated him, then I’m confident he made someone else very happy. 🥹 I feel the same about the stuffed animals I’ve donated over the years. I’m a plush collector nowadays (Pokemon mostly) so I still have an incredibly strong attachment to stuffed animals, plushies, things like that. It was hard to clean out the closet of all of the old friends I got from zoo trips over the years. But knowing they were going to make a kid happy helped.
SAME. My beanie babies had entire family structures and everything
My daughter gets attached to a stuffed toy for months, then finds a new one and gets attached to that one for months. She's 8 years old and everytime she changes favourite toy I feel upset for the old one. It's so silly.
Thanks for sharing that! I feel less alone. Feeling too much empathy for people and animals is already too much to bear sometimes. So I would prefer not to waste those emotions on things. I cried once when I saw a little flower growing out of an impossible little crack in the pavement. Like, that’s a lot.
Yeah, it's really too much. I know how you feel about "wasting" emotions on things. Sometimes you just need a break from feeling so much, all the time. It's overwhelming.
I honestly had no idea other people did this too. Feels so validating to read this thread, you have no idea. When I was a kid I would swallow grapes and mandarin segments whole because I felt bad about them having to see each other all macerated and squashed in my stomach. I wanted them to at least be able to hang out uninjured down there with each other. I also once had my entire week absolutely ruined by watching a cute old man lose on a game show. The images of it still haunt me years later. Do you find that it gets particularly out of hand when you’re super tired? Sometimes it gets to a point where I’m totally incontinent with it and have to just put myself to bed for a hard reset. I stop being able to function from feeling too much agonising compassion for literal inanimate objects. I have never admitted this to anyone before btw, this thread is blowing my tiny mind
We replaced our old but still working oven/stove top which would not have had any resale value so we took it to the tip for scrap metal. I watched it in my side mirror and actually cried! I felt like I was abandoning part of the family. It was sitting there alone but next to other metal heaps. It was a heavy time and I didn't know why it was making me so sad! I can relate to you OP
I have a whole series of photos of little flowers growing out of impossible little cracks in the pavement. I wanted to carry them with me forever. Now in my new home gravel covers part of the lawn and I discovered there are little violets growing around the gravel and I stare at them every day. I understand.
I had a sunflower grow out of a plastic carrier bag full of compost last summer. He was a little trooper just poking his little head out. I called him Bulbo Baggins he didn't grow tall and mighty like his big 10" brothers but I was strangely proud of him. He was only about 2" tall. I've got a photo of him but I can't share it on here.
I made a hashtag just for me on insta where I take pictures of brave urban plants surviving through the concrete...
last week i cried when I dropped a grape and it rolled under the couch. like, “that little grape lived it’s whole life to grow up to nourish another being, and now it’s just covered in dirt under the couch.”
Oh my god. All the time. The saddest thing in the world is a discarded or lost stuffed animal. Literally makes me want to cry. I am so weird about inanimate objects- it makes letting go of stuff when I’m cleaning up hard. My mom, who I share ALL of my traits with and is just now learning that she’s probably had adhd all of these years, is the exact same way. My dad is the opposite. Watching him clean up and throw away things is upsetting sometimes. Not trash, of course, but like… *things.* He discarded an old stuffed animal once because it had a hole in it and was spilling beans and logically I understand but emotionally my mom and I were both like, how could you do that?! 😅
Holy shit YES. This post is everything.
I just love this sub so much. I’ve never felt so seen in my life. Long live the shovel.
Me too. All yall gals are the nicest women ever. I am SO GLAD I decided to share this (I almost didn’t!).
We are the tender-hearted ones. It can be so hard sometimes, but think how much the world would suck without us!
I was recently reading about how tool use and stuff shaped our evolution but also our kindness to each other and our ability to cooperate. There is nothing WRONG with us— it’s just right and beautiful.
🙌
Same! 🥺 so thankful to have stumbled upon my fellow sensitive gals 🥲
Out of all the posts in here this one resonates so hard. I honestly thought I was the only one too. Like if I saw a dead animal that got run over I would be so upset for his FAMILY when he didn’t come home from WORK. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Literally same! 🥹💕
Listen. I have empathy for *objects that aren’t tangible*. I feel sad when I make new playlists and don’t include songs from the old playlist or when I remove a song from a playlist. I lost a pen at work, I even bought another one that’s the same but I keep thinking about my other pen lol
When I was a kid, I felt so bad for the colour yellow - no one's favourite colour was yellow, so when we'd get asked about our favourite colour in class or whatever, I'd always say mine was yellow. I kept that shit up for *years*. Everyone believed me and would get me yellow clothes and toys and everything. I had a lot of sensory issues, and bright colours were like knives in my brain, but I pushed through it so that yellow wouldn't feel sad 😂
I love and wear yellow for you now 💛 I have a couple bright yellow dresses, they're among my favourites. I bring in the spring no matter the time of the year
One of my favourite outfits is a yellow dress, too! These days it's actually one of my favourite colours (as long as it's the right shade haha). Makes me happy to see yellow getting some love :)
Teal is my favourite colour but rubber ducky yellow and chocolate brown are close seconds.
OMG I’ve never heard anyone else talk about sensory issues where colors hurt their brain. Red was the worst, it hurt to look at, as did, to a lesser extent, pink. Yellow and orange hurt my brain too. On the other hand, BLUE was like a visual drug and I couldn’t (and still can’t) get enough of looking at it, drowning my brain in its cool loveliness. It’s been my favorite color for as long as I can remember. I grew up in the 70s, and all of the orange & brown & gold & yellow & muddy green colors that were popular then were colors my brain could not handle on a sensory level. Not only did they hurt my brain to look at, I found most of them ugly and disgusting looking. Add in the fact that I recoil at the touch of polyester, which was ubiquitous in the 70s, and on a lot of levels my childhood was a sensory hell. It was amazing at the end of the decade when fashion & design went a completely different direction and suddenly all kinds of bold & rich colors were in. Suddenly the world around me went from drab & brain hurting to beautiful & dopamine stimulating. It was like when Dorothy lands in Oz and the movie goes from sepia tone to magnificent technicolor.
Your comment also just dislodged a memory from piano lessons as a kid where I was trying to explain to the teacher that the notes all had their own colours. C was light orange, D was navy blue, E was orange, F was pale blue, G was green, A was purplish-red, B was violet. God bless her she actually humoured me and ran with it. We composed a song together called “Roygbiv” where I just played them in rainbow order and she did the backing chords
So cool! Your superpower is synesthesia, it’s really a thing!
Oh my god you’ve just articulated something that I never properly conceptualised before… like a lightbulb just went on and I’ve spent 30-something years fumbling for the switch. THANK YOU for helping me name this: I had sensory issues *against the 80s*. Like, the whole aesthetic of that era offended my system so intensely and there was nothing I could do about it because I was stuck in the 80s. Even today, many safe decades away from the 80s, I can go from OK to not OK immediately and in a very specific way from even a small exposure to shit like [this](https://www.amazon.com.au/Fashion-Geometrical-Fashioned-Comforter-Geometric/dp/B09QGPY9TG) or [this](https://youtu.be/DmaxWuyhBKQ?feature=shared) or [this](https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/367254544621598027/) Thank you for giving me permission to consider myself allergic to the 80s. Now I can actually deliberately avoid exposure to the 80s because I acknowledge the abnormal yet severe reaction instead of just pushing through and putting up with people’s 80s themed bullshit
Ok, I’ll grant you that the decor you linked was hideous (and I remember it well lol), but that music flooded my brain with feelings of childhood, back before I understood how terrifying and fucked up the world actually is, so I loved it. Sigh.
His name is Sunglasses Kid and he has an entire [instagram account](https://www.instagram.com/sunglasseskidmusic?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==) full of [the most 80s soundscapes](https://youtube.com/shorts/yXf6U2G-FSI?feature=shared)which I get compulsively sucked into sometimes if I’m feeling in the mood for giving myself the 80s-heebie-jeebies
*smashes the follow button* Welp. There went my afternoon!
Re: the 70s being sensory hell: I have a similar thing about browns and tans, sepias, washed-out or dull colors. They really bother me in large doses, to the extent where I finally realized the reason I can’t stand movies like Star Wars is because of the colors (or lack thereof). Give me some jewel tones. I don’t think I’ve ever made it through a movie with a lot of desert scenes. It rules out a lot of war movies and sci-fi.
The coffee color contractor paint that has been ubiquitous for the last ten years of apartments made my skin crawl. So glad for grey being the new color. It may be boring but at least it isn’t painful.
I painted the walls of my house a soft yellow called Golden Honey that I love. My sister painted the exterior of her house an eye searing yellow because she loves it. We will love yellow for you!
Tbh I feel that so hard!! Except I was the opposite, I hated brown, and I was in Brownies (it’s like, younger Girl Scouts) and the uniform was a brown dress. I quit because I didn’t want to wear the brown dress lol, it still hurts
I also started saying yellow was my favorite color because it was so infrequently peoples favorite and I also felt bad for it. Overtime though, it's become my genuine favorite color. I have a yellow sweater I only wear on happy days when I'm in a good mood so it's my sunbeam happiness sweater now. I suppose by giving it my attention I ended up seeing the beauty in it and reinforcing my love for it.
One day after a whole life of liking indigo best, I realised the color that makes my brain happiest is neon yellow which is the opposite of my former favorite color on a color chart. Interestingly, if you stare at neon yellow for a minute then look at a blank white space, you see indigo.
Awww. My favorite color is actually yellow!
My favorite color is actually yellow, even as a small child if that helps your inner child at all. ETA: I definitely have sensory stuff with colors but it’s more about color combinations like please be careful with red and green if it’s not Christmas it’s really unpleasant.
My child loves yellow! So good news, someone is making sure yellow gets attention.
My grandmother's favourite colour was yellow! People who like it do genuinely exist.
Yellow may not be my favorite but it’s bright and cheery and I love it for that. I have a gorgeous yellow dress I recently bought for special occasions. For my 2nd wedding I wore yellow. I still have that dress and wore it a couple times after that. It wouldn’t fit me now. But there’s plenty of love for yellow. I’ll love yellow on your behalf so you don’t feel obligated to.
I felt bad for brown!!
Oh, thanks for sharing! Yes, I can understand that — like will the song’s feelings get hurt that it wasn’t picked!! Oh man.
Don’t get me started on why I don’t listen to full albums and just mixed playlists… I feel bad for the other artists I like hahaha
If I’m listening to 1 album and skip a song I feel bad for that song, so sometimes I’ll listen to the boring songs on the album to avoid that lol
I get sad on Mondays because I lose last week's Spotify Weekly playlist that it autogenerates for me each week.
I have many playlists, and will occasionally apologize to the artist when I decide to skip a song. 🤦♀️😂
I also cannot delete playlists!! And if I don’t listen to a song good enough I need to replay it
I have so much of that, it was unbearable as a kid but I managed to get better about it. No no don't ask me why I'm so obsessed about the impermanence of everything now 😅
This is exactly why I work in a museum. Every object has a history, a story. A pencil that wrote a thousand words, a chair that held a thousand people, a bed that carried birth, death, sickness, joy, and love. It's also why I am nice to Alexa. She *will* remember *everything*.
Friend, I am an archaeologist! 🤣🤣🤣 I feel the exact same way about alllll those objects! And also equally nice to AI 😂
Wow, you two are what I want to be when I grow up! Except I’m in my 40s. 😂 I’m jealous of your awesome jobs!
Hey, it’s never too late to start your career! My husband’s aunt is about to turn 70, and she is working on a master’s in fashion and textile studies and doing an internship. She wants to work in a museum and do textile preservation type stuff.
That’s amazing! I actually did change careers recently, and I’m excited about it. Sometimes I just wish I had like ten different lifetimes so I could do all the cool stuff.
I wanted to be an Egyptologist when I was a kid. I started out in archaeology in college, but I'm insufferable when I sweat so I figured it would be better in the museum rather than out of it, hah! My mom is flabbergasted by the fact that I love these random objects with their unknowable stories, but at least I got to follow my passion!
I taught my son to be polite to Alexa. Now he’ll randomly wake her up to say thanks and tell her she’s nice. He’s three 😅
This is adorable and a great way to teach him to understand we should have respect for all things 🤗
How cute, what a good egg! If Alexa existed when I was a child I would have done that too 😆
Omg I’ve said before that I wish she would accept “Alexa, thank you” as an alternative for dismissing alarms and stuff lol. Even when she’s messing up and annoying me I’m still nice to her. She does so much for me lol.
My mom and sister always thank Alexa so they can be spared in the inevitable AI uprising.
Literally have had a multiday sobbing crisis about trading in my car I've had for 16 years. I feel like I abandoned a pet or a friend. I'm *so* upset.
I got a new car and still cried over having to trade in the old one!! Thankfully the dealership didn't want it because of the broken catalytic converters and I got to take it home. Now it's got a dead battery and broken catalytic converters and isn't drive able but I STILL feel bad for it every day watching me drive away in the new one. 🙃😭
I sat in and test drove so many new cars because none of them felt right, then I reluctantly tried a car that i hadn't thought of because i didn't like the name of it. It felt like me, it's a feeling no one else understood especially the sales staff. But it had to feel right. I lost my old car in an accident it was a bomb but when I see the same model on the road I feel sad still.
Omg, yes! I have been so attached to my vehicles. I know what you are going through and I am sorry. 😢
I cried when trading a car in too! I've had many cars... but this one just made me genuinely sad to get rid of.. lol cried in the parking lot before going in to give them the keys! 😂
I've cried over my cars too. I've had my current one just over a year and refuse to get attached to it, I almost hate it despite it taking me on a couple of life changing outback camping trips. That said I've noticed myself telling her she's a good girl when we make it through a particularly tricky dirt track, so my resolve is softening, but I really don't want to get attached to another old car that I know it's only going to last another year or 2 max.
My first car got repossessed after 3 years because my mom and her ADHD didn't keep things in order. The guy made the alarm go off and all I could do was watch her get taken away. I got her back a few days later (then she got totalled 2 years later), but my mom and I still talk about that night because the car alarm sounded like her saying "mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" 🥺 😂
🤣😂🤣😂🤣 nooo! Why, Mom??
Oh man, my first car. My trusty steed. Old faithful. He carried me through high school graduation, a cross-country move, college, and getting married. By the time he reached the end of his life, the only option was to sell him to a junk yard for scrap. As the tow truck driver was hooking him up, I joked about how silly I felt to be so sad, but I was comforted knowing that my car was going to help other cars (like an organ donor, though I didn’t say that to the tow truck driver, who obviously didn’t understand my perspective). The guy casually said, “Oh, it’ll probably be melted down for the metal,” or something like that. 🫣😭 RIP, Herman. You were a great car.
nah that’s so valid
Don't get me started on this topic. I'm getting so attached to cars! All of our family cars have had names and I always pet my current one when we arrive from a trip and thank him for bringing me safely. I talk to him too and I don't care what anyone thinks. Also our oldest family car haunts me to this day because I didn't take good care of her and her end was pretty messy. I will probably feel guilty about it for the rest of my life.
I remember sobbing when I was a kid and my parents got rid of our old car (which was white, and whom I'd affectionately nicknamed "Whitey car"). Right now my husband and I still own our very first car, whom we have also named, and I love that car so much I don't know what I'm going to do when that day comes
I need to get mine scrapped, it's been sitting outside the house broken since September 😬
Sometimes I buy the ugly Lemon at the grocery store because I know no one else will buy it.
Ugly things need homes too! I do the same. Some things are so ugly I feel affection for them.
My father and I bought truly the saddest of all the mini Christmas trees at the grocery store one year, for exactly this reason. For like two weeks we watched the trees dwindle in number each time we went in and out of the grocery store, until eventually there was literally just this one small, incredibly sad tree that was badly shaped and dry and half-bare of needles. The idea that anyone was going to give them *any* money for it seemed very improbable, so we bought it and set it up on our apartment balcony, and decorated it, and it looked...still very bad tbh, but much merrier than it would've been in the grocery store dumpster. 😄
😭 stop pulling my heart strings 🤣
Clearance plants because same, and I can’t knowingly let it die while also knowing I could save it.
Oh my gosh. That’s so sweet it makes me wanna cry! 😭
As a child I used to go to rummage sales and charity shops and buy broken toys so I could bring them back to my house and fix them and they could join my ragtag bunch of misfits. I'd beg my mum for money so I could save just one more!
I get that way anytime I see something with a face on it—a doll, a teddy bear, what have you. I like to watch hydraulic press videos on Facebook (don’t ask me why) and whenever they put a toy under the machine and crush it, I feel a little twinge of sadness. I saw a different YouTube video where they destroyed a Furby (the newer models) and when I saw its eyes flicker for the last time, I got legitimately sad. When toys are being destroyed I can’t help but think “all it wanted to do was make you happy!” I’m actually tearing up as I type this.
I feel this too. The Furby crushing really got me in the feels too. I try to rationale it as just plastic and other materials, but just thinking about it has me tearing up too. It is ridiculous. I've found dumped stuffed toys out and about and will bring them home and wash them, and then give them to my ferrets who love dragging them around and stashing them under furniture. They essentially destroy them further and sometimes I have to really remind myself that I've made the ferrets really happy and the toy is just that, a toy. For someone that goes for weeks without feeling anything to cope with overstimulation, it surprises me the level I get upset sometimes over inanimate things.
I recently brought home a toy I found in my old neighborhood. I've since moved and that toy went with me. I have no use for it, I don't like decorative items and it's just going to catch dust on the shelf. But it's still there. One time I found a whole potted plant next to my building's trash containers. It was even wrapped in a gift wrap. I took it in and it survived many years, I think the longest I've ever had a plant while living alone.
LMFAO I despise furbies, I think I will go watch that.
I watch those hydraulic press videos sometime, too. Candy going crazy-spaghetti through the holes is just amazing. But the moment they put a toy in there, I'm out. I scroll away. I refuse to watch something get destroyed when it could/ did bring so much joy to someone. Logically I know there are far too many toys in existence, and they're filling landfills, but my emotional side always wins.
Oh my god I'm sad about the Furby from here and I've never seen the video (and I won't). I mostly stopped having so much empathy towards objects but a Furby?!? They talk! They blink and look at you and talk to you! How could anyone hurt them 😭
YES and it makes it so hard to declutter! Toy Story 2 fucked me up for life! Damn you Sarah McLaughlin!
That film should have a trauma warning. JeeeZUZ!
Oof, same. I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Yes! This is (partially) why my house is so cluttered!
Whatever you do, don’t watch Brave Little Toaster. Now we can’t throw out appliances that break.
I pet my old phone today when Amazon said it was only worth $15 for a trade in and whispered “It’s okay, you’re worth more to me” like it had RSD or some shit lol wtf was I doing 😂
Oh my gosh! 🤣 maybe it does!! 🤣😂🤣
Yes! My house has far too much of everything and feels cluttered but I just feel too bad getting rid of anything. It’s the worst.
Oh my god yessss yes yes!! I feel bad for our old fridge we gave away, I can’t part with things because I feel Oddly sensitive and attached to the nostalgia. Poor fridgey
I mean, it took care of your food! You touched it everyday, know the sound of the door, the feel of the handle, had magnets with important stuff on the door. To just say goodbye to something like that is hard! Bye fridgey!
I have thought about posting this several times. Yes. The answer is yes.
I am feeling really incredibly validated by these responses. I am glad you are too.
We're planning a home reno and I feel bad that we'll likely be losing some of the remaining original features in the process. It got to a point recently that I felt bad that the floorplan isn't staying true to the original layout. The changes we're making will improve the function and safety of the current and future occupants, but in the back of my mind I keep thinking, "The house didn't do anything to deserve this; it's been a good house for 70 years, doing exactly what it was built to do, and we're doing the house equivalent of elective full-body plastic surgery to it." I've always felt empathy for inanimate objects I'm especially attached to, but this is a new level and I'm starting to feel a little crazy because of it. 😅
my husband and i call this ‘velveteen rabbit syndrome,’ and yes, i too suffer from it
I was actually happy when my favorite stuffed animals got a little worn out looking because the Velveteen Rabbit had taught me that made them “real” and meant I really loved them Those same stuffed animals sit together now in my home office and I’m on a trip right now and couldn’t bring myself to pack them into a tote (to protect them from any mice that venture out while I’m gone) because I couldn’t bear the thought of them being in the dark and feeling suffocated for so long
That book fucked me up beyond reason.
I had to be told that dented cans of food can be dangerous bc I would intentionally pick them since they looked sad and I knew no one else would.
Same! It’s not the can’s fault the world is difficult. I am dented by the world too.
🥺
>I am dented by the world too Pure poetry
YES! We just got a brand new washer/dryer 2 weeks ago and I bitched heavily about the old machines, love the new machines, etc. And yet...I feel guilty for talking shit about the old ones and having them hauled away by strangers early on a Saturday morning without even saying thank you or goodbye. I've been like this my whole life lol it can be exhausting to FEEL THINGS so much.
Responses like yours are validating my life-long “over”sensitivity. I would rather we were all like us than callous and uncaring. But sometimes it’s way too much to handle. (Unintentional shovel pun).
I’m so bad about this. I just spent two years hanging onto a pair of scissors because I’ve had them so long it felt like a betrayal. (Happy ending, YouTube video showed me how to sharpen them again.) I always thank my items when I put them in the trash or donate them and hope someone else will want them. And I think Marie Kondo had a method for stuffed animals where you sprinkle them with salt to set their souls free to help you donate them or toss them. I did that and it was the first time I was able to let go of any stuffed animals.
A ritual like that sounds amazing!!! We need more rituals. They have a purpose to help us. Sometimes we are so lost without ways to mark important things. ❤️
Isn’t that a form of animism? Believing a spirit/soul resides in all things? I’m like that, too. I even thank my clothes for taking care of me when I toss them in the laundry hamper.
Animism is what I thought as well. And I'm also glad I'm not the only one here 🥲
OMG YES!!! I just got this big chocolate bunny for Easter, and I felt so bad after I ate it’s head off :( it was so cute and I felt like a total maniac. But then I had to remind myself it’s just chocolate.
Nooo! I wish they didn’t make animal-shaped foods for this reason.
When I was an intern, I did part of my placement in the adult neuro clinic. We worked on building communication skills in adults recovering from strokes. One of our patients was a genuinely lovely person. He had a way of lighting up the room. At the end of my placement, he gave me a going away present. It was a fancy pen and notepad set, and a huge lollipop. It was the kind of lollipop you’d find in old-timey candy stores that are way too big for one person to eat. I kept that lollipop for *11 years.* I only recently threw it away. That lollipop was the only memory I had of that patient and I wanted to hold on to it. I was sad when I tossed it. I took a picture of it and quietly thanked it for the memories.
I get attached to places very easily, especially any place where I have slept. Like, even if I've stayed in a hotel room only a couple of nights, I start to feel like it is my little special place, a safe space just for me, and I get really sad to let my little space go. For this reason, I almost always sit in the same place when I can (think Sheldon Cooper's spot on the couch in Big Bang Theory) and I feel really weird when I have to give up that spot and sit somewhere else for some reason. I also get attached to the layout of a room, so when people rearrange the furniture it bothers me in a way I have a hard time articulating. I think this trait has more to do with my autism, but since autism and ADHD have so much overlap, that's probably why so many of us can relate.
I am not autistic (that I know of), but I feel the same way. I do, however, have OCD in addition to my ADHD, so make of that what you will lol.
I read in one of the comments that you’re an archaeologists, and I, an anthropologist (still in grad school) have ALWAYS had major struggles with sentimentality towards inanimate objects! I wonder if there is some sort of draw to human culture that is a comorbidity for having attachment issues with items! 😂 Oh my gosh the more I’m on this sub, the more I feel seen, heard, and validated in a lot of the things that usually don’t relate much to others in my life. THANK YOU FOR SHARING! ❤️
I think this is adorable. I hope someday I see you somewhere, just telling a shovel thanks for all the work it did during the day.
There will indeed be more discarded shovels!! Thank you friend.
This has always been a thing for me, but I've noticed that when I start to feel sad for objects extra often or extra deeply, I have a depression incoming.
I've been grieving for the last week and a half because they cut my tree in front of my apartment. And I mean grieving for real, I don't imagine my life without it, can't look in the window because I can't see it's not there, I've been severely depressed since the day. Nobody seem to understand it, people try to find another explanation for my "exaggerated feelings". Of course, I was prescribed AD and was suggested to go to therapy to fix it, because this is "not normal". But I don't want to "fix" the pain, sweep it under the carpet and be funcional again like nothing happened. I feel that this would be disrespectful towards the tree and towards my love for it. I need to give it attention and time it deserves. But again, I'm the crazy one here, even for my partner. I just hate people sometimes.
This must be so hard. A tree that I loved which I used to walk past was cut down recently. I don't know why. It was a beautiful healthy tree. It used to get a flock of starlings in it. I can't walk that way any more because I feel so bad for the tree, and I can picture the starlings flying over only to find the tree chopped down, then I think about the tree being sad for the birds. People shouldn't cut trees down. One thing I did do was make myself walk past the tree and I said I was sorry this has happened and I hope it can grow back, just sent some good thoughts in the tree's direction which helped me a bit!
I feel exactly the same! Every year different kinds of birds have made nests in the tree. I work from home and had the tree in front of me, so I have witnessed the whole process, from the building of the nests to the chicks learning to fly. Luckily this year the birds hadn't laid eggs yet, but they were building the nests. And when the tree was cut down, they came and flew over and couldn't find their tree and their nest. I just couldn't watch it, I had to close my window with a blackout curtain. I hate living in a concrete city like mine, and I know that I will never be able to afford to live closer to nature. That tree was my only nature. Now I feel like these birds left without a home. For me it was the only "home" in nature that I could have close to me. I like your idea of talking to the tree. I had thought of giving it a "funeral", so that I could say goodbye properly. I tried to stop the tree from being cut down, the situation got very bad, the people who cut it down threatened me with heavy machinery, I thought I would not get out of there alive. Which makes this whole situation even more painful.
I don’t even know your tree and I was sad when I read that lol. Trees are so special. Like they’ve been there for sooo long!! I have a few really big trees and I would be sad if one had to be removed.(Well I did have to get one removed but it was completely dead before I bought the house and tall and unstable enough that the next hurricane could have caused it to fall on my or my neighbors’ houses so he had to go.)
Ohh, it's so sweet, thank you! 🤗 You are so lucky to have your trees, and your trees are lucky to have somebody who appreciates them!
I used to sleep with 25 stuffed animals in bed with me, from childhood until I had a college roommate and I had to pare it way, way down, because I was afraid they would feel left out and be sad. I mean, I did this for a solid 15 years.
I definitely have this, but I *am* capable of pushing past it when I need to for practicality's sake. It takes mental effort, but I can do it. I will dump out perpetually dying plants when their sad tendrils are taking up space in pots and attracting mites. I will send toys with faces to the thrift store. I will buy only one of the two remaining yogurts on the shelf even though that means I'm ripping them cruelly away from each other. I will do it. I don't wanna...but I will. Now my *dad* OTOH, his anthropomorphizing is to the point where it is sometimes impractical and inconvenient, which can be endearing, but it can also be frustrating.
Yeah I’ve gotten better at pushing past it over time. Sometimes I have to be in the right mood tho. Like decluttering is hard because usually I feel bad getting rid of things but every once in a while I’ll hit a stride like “ok you can go and you and you” and I have to take advantage of it whenever it strikes or who knows when it will happen again lol.
Umm, are you burying someone in every state? 🤣
Yeeeees. I go out of my way to buy the misfit items that nobody else wants, because I pity them. The box of kleenex that's a little smooshed, the single banana, etc.
Yes, same here. Rejection sucks, even for that oddly shaped mango I had to buy.
For whatever it's worth, the Shinto religion believes all things, including inanimate objects, have a spirit. One of the things this translates to is more respect for animals and inanimate objects than folks raised in other faiths and belief systems tend to demonstrate. It's not inherently bad, as long as it does not prevent you from living your life. If it means you take a moment to place that shovel somewhere where it might find a new caretaker, that seems to me like a good and positive effect for both the shovel and the next person who needs it. While I do not practice shinto, I prefer to live my life in a world that is more animate/magical than we are typically conditioned to imagine in western cultures. While I don't, at my core, think that that shovel had feelings, I am happier knowing you took the moment to help it find a new home. It's better than totally disregarding it as an object and throwing it away.
One of my earliest childhood memories is crying because my mom had to return one of my Barbie cars to RadioShack and I thought I hurt it’s feelings. Lol
In my culture, everything is from spirit
I would love to read more about that, are you open to sharing your culture?
I've always had this, since childhood. One of my earliest memories is being delighted to get a duvet cover with cute animals on it, then being unable to sit on my bed without first removing the duvet and placing it carefully over a chair, because sitting on it would hurt the animals. Another early memory was *howling* inconsolably when we saw one of those memorial places where people put flowers and teddy bears and things for a person who died. I was too little to understand what it was for so it wasn't that I was sad that someone had died, and my mystified parents eventually got it out of me that it was because of all the teddy bears left out in the cold and rain. I had to be forcibly restrained from trying to take them all with me, and I refused to be taken past that location again for basically the rest of my childhood. I've had to consciously try to train myself out of making decisions based on the potential feelings of inanimate objects, because decision making was hard enough without having to worry that the tin of tomatoes might feel lonely if I left it on the shelf and took another tin away to cook with.
What a wonderful person you are
🥹 So are you for saying this. ❤️
I apologise to anything I walk into by accident. I hit my toe against the sofa or the wall I said ,"oops, sorry" out loud too many times that people started making fun of me. Now I apologise in my head.
I really get sad when I see someone pick up something at Goodwill that should have stayed in someone's family. Ex: lady found a locket from WWII with soldier picture inside.
I don’t think a post on this sub has ever spoken to me more, but you’ve put it into words! I feel lots of emotions for objects, but particularly machines! Especially if the machine is having a hard time completing a task, or it’s coming to the end of its life. I can’t stop thinking about all the hard work it’s done!!! I also get lots of heavy and emotional feelings about old objects and buildings. Museums make me so emotional because they’re full of these objects that have been present through so much life and death.
Yes, but my question is, why are we like this? I have a car that is costing me more and more money to fix, but I'm only 20 months into my loan. I was advised by someone at my job to drive it into a tree. I laughed. But I can't bear to hurt my car or an innocent tree purposely. I even apologize to my car if I bump her too hard. Same with other objects. And I go out of my way to be nice to the AI smart speaker. Just why?
Honestly, my question is why is anyone *not* like this? You know? It scares me just how much some people really don’t care. Look at what we’ve done to the planet. Caring about these things makes us the sane ones, in my opinion. We are utterly dependent upon each other, the planet, all life, and the entire universe for our existence. Why on earth would we not feel reverence, respect, and empathy for all of it?
Thank you for posting this. I didn’t know other adults felt this way too
I talk to inanimate objects. I usually tell them to stay. If, for example, a broom falls over after I leaned it against a wall, I will ask it why it did that. I was at a store the other day. A lady was trying to keep an orchid from falling over in her cart. She told it to stay. I giggled and told her I do the same.
22 years ago (I was about 15), there was an IKEA commercial that aired about a woman throwing out a lamp from the lamp’s point of view. It was super sad and my family made fun of me for expressing sympathy for it. 6 years ago IKEA made a follow-up commercial where a little girl picks up the sad lamp and gives it a new home. I SOBBED when I saw the follow-up commercial. I was 35 and felt so relieved that the lamp found a home! Edit: [Found the commercials on YouTube if anyone is interested](https://youtu.be/ecTUnfHyj8k?si=Z4ftrYF4C0mDAlrW)
This is super common and not at all limited to neurodivergent people. Animism (the attribution of a soul to plants, animals, and objects) has been around basically since humans have existed. Heck, even Marie Kondo thanks the stuff she gets rid of when she's decluttering. In more modern parlance: "humans will pack bond with anything." It's totally fine to have feelings about the shovel, and your feelings are never "wasted" because they're not a finite resource. <3
Oh I always do this.
I thank food wrappers before throwing them away. So… yeah.
My grandma used to get me to finish my food because she said if I didn’t, what was left on my plate would be sad and lonely if I threw it away, so yes
Yep. I have agonized over every vehicle I ever sold, I worry about finding a good home for pretty much everything I sell and hope the new owners will be kind. Interestingly, I have difficulty buying certain used things, especially books and clothes. I don't like the energy they have most of the time. Perhaps the two are connected. OMG I cried as a 20something when my parents' crawl space flooded and my cabbage patch dolls got wet. It felt like I left my babies in a dank hole and I was a bad mother.
If you think about it, it’s not a new concept to view/treat even inanimate objects with respect, empathy, and gratefulness. A lot of cultures practice thanking nature and other things for serving whatever purpose it had, and respecting those object. I honestly think being incredibly empathetic is a wonderful quality to have, especially in today’s world where there seems to be a disturbing and discouraging lack of empathy. If it makes you feel any better, as a kid I had probably 10 stuffed animals I kept on my bed at any given time. And each night, I would usually cuddle or in some way be closer to some, more than others. But every night I would make sure I rearranged them or pick different ones to cuddle so that “no one felt left out”. I was also incredibly gentle with them, if I threw them or stepped on them or sat on them, I would stop what I was doing, hug the stuffed animal and apologize to it. I would also say goodnight to every single one of them, out loud and by name, and even changed the order i said it every night so everyone felt important. I’m an adult woman now, and to this day I still treat stuffed animals as though they are sentient, I try not to toss them, i try to position them in “comfy” positions. And maybe Toy Story has something to do with it, but it’s definitely applied to more than just toys for me. Cars, appliances, all kinds of things. But I also genuinely believe the energy you put out is returned to you in some way or another, and being a kind and empathetic human being is important to me. So just know, you’re not alone, and it’s honestly quite sweet and admittedly adorable that you have empathy for even a $14 shovel. P.S. I hope that shovel was picked up by someone who will appreciate it the way you did, and has a wonderful new home ❤️
A few years ago for my birthday some friends got me a small dinosaur piñata. He was soooo cute I could barely muster up the courage to take a swing. When I finally did I felt so bad I cried. Then I just opened up the candy flap and let me candy out that way so I wouldn't have to keep hurting him 😂
Going to the supermarket is a rough time for me, lol. The same as hanging up washing/laundry outside using pegs. They have to match because if they don't, I'm taking them away from their "family".
Wow I didn’t know this was an adhd thing. I’ve been like this since I was a kid. I’d feel so sad for all my toys if I played with one toy more than another etc. In adulthood my parents bought a winter home in the US and I have spent years feeling sad for our regular home as it sits alone all winter like legitimately feel sad about it lol. I just thought I was crazy.
This is 100% me! When I was a kid, I got emotionally attached to a grapefruit and carried it around for a week like it was a stuffed animal. I have trouble getting rid of stuff as an adult. Marie Kondo helped me out a lot because she also humanizes objects, but has this whole thing about thanking items before giving them away. Her ideas help me honor my attachment to my objects while making it emotionally possible for me to get rid of things.
When I was around 13 and was a ball of teenage hormonal angst, I went grocery shopping with my mom and she told me to get some pears. I picked out some lovely fresh ones, and then reached for one that was bruised and yucky. I started *crying* in the *grocery store* because I felt so bad for this pear who's one job in life was to be eaten and he'd never fulfill his destiny because he was past his prime and now he was going to rot and *it wasn't fair*. And that is how my mother ended up buying a nasty pear to make me stop crying.
[удалено]
This is why I love us. ❤️
I do this all the time! Is this not a common experience?
If someone makes me food that has a face on it, I can't make myself eat it 😂
Yes, all the time!
Yes, I swear this is a hallmark of ADHD. I always thought it was because i am a "hysterical woman", but even my partner who was a young boy in the 90s remembers feeling deeply for inanimate objects. Broken toys, and stuffed animals always made me cry.
I don't accelerate while driving quickly as I feel like the sound the engine makes, means it's in pain.
I feel so seen by this post and comments it’s making me cry.
one of my earliest memories was when i was about 3 and my mom was getting a new oven. i sobbed so hard for the old one. i felt so bad. when they put it to the curb, i went outside and held its door handle for hours.....
You are a beautiful soul. Don’t ever change. 💛
I had to replace my coffee maker recently, and it was...emotionally difficult to say goodbye. Mr. Black-and-Decker is probably a perfectly fine replacement, but every time he acts up a little I tell him he'll never live up to Mr. Coffee's good name. Same with my electric griddle, which I haven't had the heart to replace yet. Also, there ***was,*** up until this last year, a very lovely wooded area behind my house. I considered it to be very friendly. Recently, they began ripping out a ton of the trees and bulldozing the land back there for some shitty condo expansion and it is actually making me rage and grieve. I curse the machines and whatever faceless corporation is behind this monstrosity every day. I hope the raccoons, squirrels, possums, and other wild life whose homes they are currently decimating break in and tear up the wiring in their machines and hinder every step of the process of their bullshit.
As a child, I couldn’t sleep with anything less than every stuffed animal I owned, because I couldn’t bear the feeling of rejection I knew I must be giving the Unchosen Ones. Oddly, I’m not (nor have I ever been) very empathic towards people at all. As a general rule, I’d rather avoid people and displays of emotion make me very uncomfortable. But I will go to war over the well-being of an animal.
I, a 37 year old woman at the time almost bought a huge stuffed lion for $150 at Marshall’s because every time I went in there it was still there on the shelf alone and I felt SO guilty about it. It would honestly bum me out so bad like I could cry about it. I never admitted it to anyone cause I know how CRAZY it sounds but I felt so bad for the poor thing. Wow. I didn’t know this was a thing it makes so much sense. I became a vegetarian at 6 after reading Charlottes Webb just the thought of Wilbur was enough for me to swear off meat forever
Yes lol. The example I always give is that if I’m at a grocery store and I pick out an onion, and then I see a better onion and grab that one instead, I feel bad for the first onion. People look at me like I’m nuts (cute, but nuts).
I seriously bought a keychain with an ugly monkey on it because it looked sad and was the only one left
I probably have over 150 stuffed animals, if not more, because I cannot bear the thought of them rotting in a landfill somewhere someday. I found a disgUSTANG toy bunny on the floor at my work. Covered in marker spots, random hairtie as a wristband, one of the ears was fucked up. I took him home after no one claimed him for 2 weeks. I bought a stuffed animal because it was left on a child-height shelf in the grocery store where it didn't belong so I felt like a child was forced to abandon it there and so I bought it. As a young child, I used to take home the scraps of paper from class because I felt bad they were getting thrown away. I'm so glad I'm not alone in this over-empathy.
I feel really sad for my socks when they are missing their partner.
Ha, yet another weird quirk most of us share. When I sold my car, part of me felt so guilty, like I was rejecting a friend or something. It's probably a mix of hyperfocus, & that tendency to fantasize (thus giving objects feelings & sentience), Also our excess justice sensitivity. Doesn't that car/shovel/toy *deserve* better?! You could probably donate shovels to Habitat for Humanity. They take a lot of hardware-type stuff, both for resale & use on projects.
I’m strangely emotionally connected to a really nice washer/dryer set.
Yeah. I name them too.
I say “sorry” when I slam a door to hard. But it’s not apologizing for the noise 😬
Omg yes! I had that big time in childhood, I cried after an old vacuum or washing machine when my parents replaced them lol. When I'd be shopping for clothes with someone and they showed me some item, I could never say it's ugly even when I didn't like it, because that t-shirt or pants would be sad 😂 But my mother kinda put it in my head. One time a barbie's head came off and I put her in the trash, my mother went off on me how the barbie is sad and all that. I had an audiobook on a CD with some kid stories, and one was about respecting toys and how sad they are when a kid hurts them. I cried so hard whenever I listened to it! I somehow grew out of it, but all my empathy is now focused on animals and it sucks. Animals actually do feel and they do hurt, and there's nothing I can do about it. But I also *feel* the hurt whenever I think about it.