Does anyone here feel "grateful"

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I began pondering this a day or two ago because apparently I've slacked off on thankyous in my mother's opinion: Do I feel grateful?

I think this is one emotion which either I don't feel or I feel and don't realize it at the time. I have noted I can certainly feel happy about someone doing something for me and glad that they did it. But I just cannot imagine the feeling of gratefulness other than in a wordy sense.

I often try to say "I am grateful for this" or "I am grateful for that" but I feel as though I say these things to try and convince myself that I am. But I'm really not. I think if I say them enough I will begin to feel the gratitude. But I just can't.

I feel happy or glad or content instead. And so I often am sidetracked by this happiness enough to forget to thank someone for doing something nice.

--Or maybe in the end this is all a matter of my own semantics and my label of happiness is much more far-reaching than most and I do feel gratitude to some extent, unknowingly.

But does anyone else get this, or with another emotion which you just plain don't feel or don't think you feel???

I don't experiance gratitude. I only experiance anxiety about not appearing to be grateful when i know someone expects that of me and might give me a hard time if i don't.

Used to think I didn't feel anger or loneliness, but that turned out to be repression. I claim to not feel love, but that's an issue of semantics, 'cause I feel many of the things involved in what is commonly defined as love. Very rarely get grief, and typically not about the things people are "supposed" to grieve, like the death of relatives. I don't get gratefulness in the situations where it's polite or PC to be grateful (like to one's parents for raising one) but there are a few people I'm highly grateful to because they've helped me out in ways that made a big difference. In those cases, it's a feeling of oweing the person something, like I would help them out without question if they were ever in trouble. If I can't find ways to pay them back directly, I tend to feel better if I can treat other people in the ways they treated me.

Yes, I feel that. I suppose it's more a matter of semantics for me. Though I do have a tendency not to feel overwhelmingly grateful at the correct times and hence readily remember to show this gratitude.

Plus, I'm not good with warm thankyous. They feel so awkward.

I don't want to use thank you unless i really mean it, i wish there was another phrase which meant thank you, but less formal and sincere that was truely appropriate to use for every situation. Because thanks seems akward sometimes.

I was kinda thinking of something like "I'm really glad you did that/gave that to me/etc." It would be more honest.

Wow, I again thought this was just an oddity of my own. I didn't realize that other people felt the same way I do about gratitude and saying thank you. I really have a hard time truly meaning "thank you". I understand that I should be grateful, but I don't think I've felt like that, ever. For me saying thank you sounds too robotic and forced. I also agree with the anxiety behind saying thank you. It's my least favourite part of birthdays, or Xmas. I think we should come up with our own way of showing gratitude, but for the moment ideas escape me.

I feel gratitude, but something I don't feel is "I miss you." I don't miss people. This used to make for awkward silences when the other person would say "wow, I really miss you" or "I've missed you so much." Uh......okay. I knew I was supposed to say it back, and that not saying it back was Not Good, but I couldn't say it back, because it wasn't true.

These days I can say "I miss you too" to someone, because I've figured out a way for it not to be a lie: when I say "I miss you," it means "I like you (or love you) and will certainly enjoy seeing you again sometime in the future."

[Caveat: I do sometimes have a feeling which I think is similar to missing, when I strongly want to be with someone because there's something I want to tell them or share with them or do with them. But I rarely if ever miss people in the sense that I just generally would like their company.]

Yeah I don't miss people either. I'm currently on exchange, and I don't really miss anyone back home and I think that's what ended my LDR two years ago; she equated a lack of missing her to a lack of truly loving her. It's hard for people to understand, I know I've tried to explain this to NT friends before, and they thought it was very strange. I mean at first they think, "oh it's good that you're not home sick", but after a while they equate it to not caring. I mean I care about people, but I can't explain why I don't miss contact with them.

Sophist argues for egoism,

me, me and me. think abouthow you would feel if some-one didn't make you that sam'ich. Or nobody helped you move. or nobody remembered anything that you look forward to like a birthday or christmas.

how would that make you feel?

gratitude is the opposite feeling.

I feel very grateful sometimes (actually I feel very grateful right now )

But I fully agree on what is said about missing. I (allmost?) never miss anyone. The only ones I think I would miss is my wife and children (or more accurate: 2 out of 3 of my children) if they would suddenly be gone for some reason. I certainly would not miss them though if they go on a holliday for a couple of weeks (or even months?) without me. Actually I would feel very happy if they did.

And sometimes I think I miss my (late) mother, but it's a very rare and weak feeling. Until recently I did not even know that I had this feeling sometimes. And I liked her a lot when she was still around us, so this has got nothing to do with hate or anything.

(and not sure if it is the same feeling, but I do miss someone when I am in love)

I had never really thought about it, but I think my sense of gratitude is a learned response because saying "thank you " is a reflex action. I've even used it inappropriately, although I don't know what the trigger was, I just find myself saying it and thinking "why am I saying this?" but I can't stop. My parents are VERY big on thank-you's and displays of gratitude and are deply offended if you don't acknowledge their gift or action. But I tend to see it more as cause and effect.
You wanted to make me a sandwich, you did. If you didn't want to make me a sandwich you wouldn't have and I would've made one myself.
In day to day life I will say thank you when my wife makes my lunch because I know it makes her happy, but in the reverse it doesn't really matter to me if someone says thank you or not.

I don't think anyone has ever helped me move. They always say they will, but never show up. Yes, I guess the best part of Christmas for me is seeing someone's face when you get them a reallly great gift (gratitude), and although I get pleasure from seeing the gratitude I'm not sure I feel the need to express gratitude the way others do. Its all mixed up because I know how I'm expected to act.

That feeling I do know too. Saying thank you for a present is what I learned, but do not feel at all.

So I do not feel gratitude if someone makes me a sandwich, or helpes me move, or gives me a present, by itself. Sometimes I feel gratitude then, but it depends (on how it happens, and who it is that has helped me). I do feel gratitude for people doing other, more important things though (no time for examples now, may be later).

You just need different NT friends! There are some distant ones among us who don't miss people, and if we do it's for fleeting moments and/or we don't recognize it. When I think of someone who's gone, it feels more like a presence than an absence/vacuum, like I'm reliving the positive feelings I've had around them.

That's how I knew my wife (then girlfriend) was THE one that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. She was the first person I ever missed when we had to be apart.

I don't know if I feel gratitude. I can certainly intellectually appreciate something someone has done for me, but it doesn't necessarily fill me with warm fuzzy feelings, if you know what I mean. I'm not really sure what gratitude should feel like.

I very rarely, if ever, actually miss people. I may think of them if they are absent because I am doing something that reminds me of them, or if I see something they would like. But it's very rare for me to think "I wish that person were here with me" and feel that longing to be with them.

I learned when I was a kid that it's better just to say you missed someone, even if you didn't. My parents went away for a week or so and when they came back they told me that they missed me, and asked me if I missed them. I told them "No, why?" because I simply didn't understand it. They were quite hurt, I think, because they equate missing someone with caring about them.

I voted "feel, what is that?" in the poll, as I have a lot of trouble identifying my emotions. For awhile I thought I didn't have any, but some things are slowly starting to come through me now, and I think that for a long time I just never really recognized that they were there.