The Book of Human Emotions: From Ambiguphobia to Umpty - 154 Words from Around the World for How We Feel - Tiffany Watt Smith 2016

Formal Feeling, A

Sometimes life’s most painful experiences can leave us eerily cold and a little mechanical. The poet Emily Dickinson described it as “a formal feeling”; the heart seems stiff and detached, our feelings wary and ceremonious. “This is the Hour of Lead,” wrote Dickinson. But, she reassures us, it too will pass. First there is a “Chill,” she wrote; “then Stupor—then the letting go—”

See also: GRIEF; SADNESS.