Feelings are the conscious components of emotions. What they feel like is not the same as the core emotions from which they emerge or the sense of self they seem to reflect.

Before they reach consciousness, emotions are mitigated and sometimes transformed by unconscious assumptions, judgments, biases, and coping habits. The resulting feelings, though always real, can be inauthentic instantiations of emotions and lead to behavior that feels inauthentic. That’s why we can act on our feelings and later judge that the behavior was not an authentic expression of ourselves.

Think of when you’ve done something and later thought: “That’s not who I am.”

Some authors conflate habituated and familiar feelings (those we’re conditioned and used to) with authenticity. The existential concept of authenticity includes choice, responsibility, values, and meaning. Acting on feelings without choice and responsibility and not in accordance with the values and the meanings we give to behavior won’t feel authentic for very long, if at all.

Examples of real feelings and inauthentic behaviors include:

A sign of precarious authenticity is the urge to justify feelings or explain why we feel the way we do, hoping that someone will validate us. Authentic feelings are self-validating.

Exploring feelings is the starting point of self-awareness, but it is by no means the endpoint. Like the surface of a lake, feelings reflect the sun above and the trees around it but conceal life within the lake. The authentic self lies beneath surface feelings.

The drill-down process described........

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