Many people share a special attachment to stuffed animals, plants, furniture… even though they are just inanimate objects.
When Lilianna Wilde had to throw away her favorite jeans that she had worn for many years, she felt sad for them even though they could not reciprocate her emotions.
Many people have feelings for stuffed animals, plants, furniture… – (Photo: Getty).
When Wilde shared this experience on TikTok, she discovered that many others felt the same way. People commented that they had emotional connections with stuffed animals, plants, furniture, and even the voice of the GPS feature on their phones.
Dr. Melissa Shepard, a psychiatrist in Maryland, stated that this behavior may be part of the natural human desire to seek connection in everyday life.
“We are programmed to connect with others, and sometimes this extends to non-human things,” Shepard said.
Shepard explained that when people feel empathy towards inanimate objects, they are anthropomorphizing them, attributing human behaviors or emotions to them, even though they cannot feel like humans do.
The exact reason why humans do this is still unclear, but experts have several hypotheses. According to Kim Egel, a marriage and family therapist in California, sometimes the emotions are linked to objects that a person has been attached to for a long time, to the point where they become sentimental or evoke memories of a certain time in their life.
It could also be a reflection of a person’s emotions onto objects, such as attributing feelings they have experienced to those objects. Alternatively, it may indicate that a person is not receiving the connection they desire and need from other humans.
Additionally, there is a medical condition known as delusional companion syndrome, where individuals may have extreme empathetic feelings and believe that objects genuinely possess those emotions. However, this condition is less common than the general tendency to anthropomorphize objects.
According to Shepard, if you find yourself emotionally attached to objects, there is nothing to worry about unless those feelings are extreme and hinder your daily life.
“If you excessively anthropomorphize objects, or cannot part with them due to overwhelming emotions, then it is time to seek help from a mental health professional,” Shepard advised.
