Shannon Bierbaum

“23 Emotions people feel, but can’t explain

1.    Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
2.    Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.
3.    Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.
4.    Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.
5.    Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.
6.    Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.
7.    Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.
8.    Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.
9.    Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.
10.    Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.
11.    Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.
12.    Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening
13.    Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.
14.    Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.
15.    Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.
16.    Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.
17.    Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.
18.    Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.
19.    Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.
20.    Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.
21.    Liberosis: The desire to care less about things.
22.    Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.
23.    Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Simon & Schuster, November 16, 2021)”
― John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows