Do you believe in objects having emotional charge?

[CoastOfXmasPast]

When I had a hard day at work or a nightmare dream, I have to wash those clothes I worked / slept in, it feels like the stress lingers on them.

My Grandmother has passed away more than 10 years ago, few years later DM, GM’s DD, has offered me GM’s necklace, green beads. As I live in another country, this has happened on my visit home and meant that I would be taking the beads from GM’s house, they all lived together. I didn’t feel that I could take them, like GM didn’t want me to, like she would be angry.

And the last one is a little metal clover charm like you put on a phone. I found it in the street when running and felt compulsed to pick it up. It’s been hanging on a random hanger in my wardrobe for years, no idea why it makes me feel at peace when I see it.

I am not religious or spiritual, and wondered if anyone else feels something similar about random things?

This is called object attachment in psychology. It’s sentimentality essentially but is more common and often stronger in neurodivergent people.

No

No.

You are having the emotions and attaching them to the objects, due to your feelings about the objects or about the people or events to which you connect them.

They do for me. Not necessarily the things people have bequeathed me either. Like you, OP- I like things I’ve found. Maybe it’s that I’ve become custodian of that object by chance?

No, I don't think there's emotions somehow stored in the object itself. It's all about your feelings associated with that object.

Yes, I do occasionally. If you were to put on eg. someone else's shoes or something else that they wear every day then you would feel a bit of their essence in it. (I did once wear someone's leather jacket and did feel I was really connecting with him.)

I don't know if it's the same thing but maybe it's like if you pick up a handmade vase, you can almost connect with the person who created it, held it. When you look at a Turner painting you can feel something of his energy.

I think you're more spiritual than you realise.

There's a categorical difference between an artwork that's been created as self-expression, or even with the intention of invoking a particular emotion in the viewer/reader/listener, and imputing an emotional content to neutral objects.

With the neutral objects, you're generating the emotion and attaching it to the thing. Shoes might be a special case, as they take on the form of the owner's feet, but jackets are just jackets.

No. I used to like crystals but then just decided they are annoying objects as fiddly and sit in a pile.

Alan Bennett remarks on this phenomenon in his Untold Stories: "good" and "bad" shoe brushes, particular forks. The fact that these identifications began in childhood and are still with him in his much later age is what mystifies him. Possibly mystify is too strong.

@echt I will have to look this book up, thank you, sounds interesting.

I feel peace wash over me when I touch/look at a doll my late nan gave me as a child, but I know that’s because it makes me think of her. It doesn’t make me sad or cry like photos of her sometimes do. Strange!

No, of course not.

You’re attaching your own emotions to the items in question, they don’t have any emotional qualities themselves.

I seem to be the finder of keys started when I was 8 and found my first one on the seat of a swing. I have so many and am always happy to find another one. I find it funny because I'm 40 and have lived in over 50 houses throughout my life and my key collection has always gone with me everywhere, never lost one in a move.

Sorry but no, thats coming across as a bit batshit x

I don’t think so, no.

there’s things i keep and will be upset to see go due to the connection they’ve had with a person (for example, a pair of ugly pjs that actually have a hole in them, but my late mum gave them to me so I keep them and I wear them when I’m feeling down)

I also bought a new dress for her funeral which was thrown away straight after, but that’s more to do with not wanting a reminder hanging in my wardrobe than any vibe from it.