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Do me a favor. Close your eyes for a moment and try to remember what you felt during lunch yesterday. Not what you ate or who you were with, but what you actually felt. The texture of your emotions, the quality of your thoughts.
Drawing a blank?
When I tried this exercise last week, I realized I couldn’t remember feeling much of anything. I remembered the salad I ate at my desk, the email I was drafting between bites, but the actual experience of being me in that moment? Complete static.
That’s when it hit me: I’d been sleepwalking through my own life.
Psychology has a term for this phenomenon: emotional autopilot. It’s that state where we go through the motions without really experiencing them, where days blend into weeks and suddenly you can’t remember the last time you felt genuinely present in your own life.
The scary part? Most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it until we’ve been stuck in the pattern for years.
1) Do you struggle to remember how you felt during routine moments from even yesterday?
This isn’t about having a bad memory. It’s about emotional disconnection.
When we’re on autopilot, our brains process experiences superficially. We remember the facts but not the feelings. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology shows that emotional engagement is what transfers experiences from short-term to long-term memory.
If your days feel like a blur of tasks without emotional texture, that’s your first red flag. You’re not forgetting these moments; you’re not fully experiencing them in the first place.
2) When someone asks how you are, do you automatically say “fine” or “busy” without thinking?
“How are you?”
“Fine, busy, you?”
Sound familiar? I caught myself having this exact exchange five times in one day before I realized I had no idea how I actually was.
These automatic responses aren’t just social niceties. According to psychologist Susan David, they’re symptoms of emotional rigidity. We’ve trained ourselves to give the expected answer rather than the honest one, and eventually, we stop checking in with ourselves altogether.
The real kicker? Studies show that people who can accurately identify and articulate their emotions have better mental health outcomes and stronger relationships. Every “fine” is a missed opportunity for genuine connection, both with others and ourselves.
3) Do you find yourself constantly multitasking, even during activities meant for relaxation?
Last month, I realized I was checking work emails during a massage. A massage. If that’s not peak autopilot, I don’t know what is.
Neuroscience research from Stanford University reveals that what we call multitasking is actually rapid task-switching, and it diminishes our ability to be present. Our brains literally lose the capacity for deep focus and emotional processing.
When you can’t watch TV without scrolling, can’t eat without working, can’t even relax without productivity guilt, you’re not living efficiently. You’re avoiding the discomfort of being alone with your thoughts.
4) Has it been months since you felt genuinely excited or deeply moved by something?
Remember the last time something gave you goosebumps? Made you tear up? Made your heart race with excitement?
If you’re drawing a blank, you might be experiencing what researchers call “emotional numbing.” It’s a protective mechanism where our psyche, overwhelmed by constant stimulation and stress, turns down the volume on all feelings, not just the bad ones.
During my burnout period, I watched my favorite movie and felt nothing. The same film that once made me sob left me checking my phone halfway through. That’s when I knew something was seriously off.
5) Do you make decisions based on what you “should” do rather than what you want to do?
“I should go to that networking event.”
“I should say yes to this project.”
“I should be further along by now.”
Should, should, should. When I looked at my calendar, every commitment started with that word.
Psychologists call this “introjected regulation” – when we internalize external expectations so deeply that we can’t distinguish them from our own desires. We become strangers to our own wants, operating on a program written by everyone but ourselves.
6) When did you last do something just for the joy of it, without any productive outcome?
Here’s a question that stopped me cold: When did I last do something simply because it brought me joy?
Not because it would look good on Instagram, advance my career, or check a box on my self-improvement list. Just pure, unproductive joy.
Research from the University of California shows that engaging in purely pleasurable activities actually improves cognitive function and emotional resilience. But when we’re on autopilot, everything becomes a means to an end. Even our hobbies become hustle.
7) Do you feel like you’re watching your life happen rather than living it?
Sometimes I feel like I’m hovering above my own life, watching myself go through the motions. Psychologists call this “depersonalization” – a dissociative symptom that can occur when we’re emotionally overwhelmed or disconnected.
It’s that strange sensation of being a spectator to your own existence, where nothing feels quite real or immediate. You’re physically present but emotionally absent, going through motions you’ve rehearsed so many times they’ve lost all meaning.
8) Can you name three things that brought you genuine pleasure this week?
Not accomplishments. Not completed tasks. Genuine pleasure.
When my therapist asked me this after my panic attack at twenty-seven, I sat there for five full minutes. I could list everything I’d achieved that week, but pleasure? That felt like a foreign concept.
The inability to identify recent sources of joy isn’t just sad; it’s clinically significant. Anhedonia, the reduced ability to experience pleasure, is a key marker of depression and chronic stress.
9) Do Sunday nights fill you with dread rather than anticipation?
That familiar Sunday evening anxiety isn’t just about Monday meetings. It’s about returning to a life that feels more like a sentence than a choice.
When we’re on emotional autopilot, we create lives that look successful from the outside but feel empty from within. We optimize for appearing okay rather than actually being okay, and Sundays become a weekly reminder of that disconnect.
Final thoughts
If you said yes to six or more of these questions, you’re not broken. You’re human, living in a world that rewards productivity over presence, achievement over awareness.
Breaking free from emotional autopilot isn’t about dramatic life changes. It starts with small moments of intentional awareness. Feel the warmth of your coffee mug. Listen to a full song without doing anything else. Say how you really are when someone asks.
My partner, who works in a completely different field, reminds me daily that work isn’t everything. Some days I believe them. Other days I’m back to checking emails during massages. Recovery isn’t linear.
The point isn’t to feel deeply every moment; that would be exhausting. It’s to remember that you have the option to feel at all.
