10 Familiar Feelings That You Never Knew Had Names

I may be a writer, but sometimes, there just are some things you have difficulty describing. And here’s a list of those top words that may describe exactly what you’re feeling

1. Sonder

n. The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passed in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.

2. Opia

n. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out.

3. Monachopsis

n. the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach.

4. Liberosis

n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather, to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball.

5. Rubatosis

n . the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, where the thumping feels less like a metronome or a nervous tapping similar to the kind of people that compulsively hum or sing while walking in complete darkness.

6. Kenopsia

n. the eerie atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem very empty.

7. Chrysalism

n. the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, whose muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension you understand perfectly.

8. Anecdoche

n. a conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening, simply overlaying disconnected words like a game of Scrabble.

9. Ellipsism

n. sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.

10. Occhiolism

n. the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all.