Notice when you’re performing a feeling instead of having it. That gap tells you a lot.

Performing a feeling and having one are different activities that look alike from outside. You can hear the difference in yourself though: the performed version has an audience in mind and keeps checking whether it landed. The gap usually shows up where you do not trust the real feeling to be enough on its own.

Catch one this week without making it a crisis. Sympathy you did not quite feel, enthusiasm you dialled up, hurt you let show more than you had. Then ask what the real one was and whether it would have been enough.