I lack empathy. Please help me.

[Philosphorous]

After two conversations with with SM and then listening to this:

 

I have come to the realization that I lack empathy. I'm not sure what to do about it.

 

This is a frightening realization as I am not young.

 

I don't even really have self empathy. I am not suicidal, but if my life ended, I would not particularly care.

 

I was wondering if when I encounter situations, I can post them here and some empaths can tell me how they would feel or deal with them. I honestly have no idea.

 

I really thought I had empathy as I feel great emotional pain when I see animals and children suffering. Adults? Not so much.

 

If you would indulge me--first, has anyone else had this realization? What is the first step? Begin evaluating all personal relationships? I have begun to do that. I think if I elminated them all I would be completely alone.

 

Thank you for your input and consideration. (It baffles me why anyone would want to even help me--a complete stranger. Is empathy why something like this would matter to you?)

 

***

 

I was thinking about when people actually ask me about my interests or myself. Two things typically happen:

 

1) I feel smothered. It gives me a horrible feeling and I want to leave.

2) I feel like they are lying--like this is a social more and they are just asking to make small talk.

 

Even SM. (I'm not saying this is true.) I feel like he was only talking to me to boost "ratings" for the call in show, not because he actually cares.

 

How can I possibly change this? I have felt like this my entire life. Why the hell would people care about anything I do?

 

I have made it a point to expose myself to a very wide variety of experiences and activities. (I don't want to die with regrets.) I want to try everything. I do have a lot to talk about but... I still don't feel like people actually care. I feel like they are pretending for whatever reason. (Maybe to tell people about the guy they know who does X or Y since most people come across as incredibly boring and limited.)

[ThoughtDogFrank]

In which way? Can you give an example for others to work with? 

Empathy, I think has to do with being able to understand other people. It is about respecting others as human beings with thoughts, beliefs, flaws, strengths, worries and ambitions. When you say you lack empathy but give little description of what it is that you are experiencing you are not understanding that others need more information from you in order to help you out more specifically. I will say that empathy is understanding the other as something that you can relate to and responding to it as such. So for instance empathy would be giving more description because you understand that others need more to work with to help you out, also empathy would be you asking the members a question to find out what they think about the subject understanding that they may have some views and things that they would like to talk about as well. Hope that helps out a little bit. 

[Tyler Durden]

You don't lack empathy.

 

You actually have more empathy than most, which is why you see suffering that many other people either don't see or don't care about. As a result you've experienced so much rejection when talking about topics that matter to you that you've set up defenses to shield you from further rejection. What you call a lack of empathy is actually just a perfectly understandable defence mechanism.

 

At least, that's my theory based on a number of your posts.

[quickstine]

I don't get the sense from your question that you got anything out of listening to the podcast. Do you, as Stefan describes in his answer, deliberately push peoples' pain buttons? Well, you could stop doing that. Or you could explore why you continue to cause pain in others. Perhaps you have not acknowledged what you are doing. Keep notes on actual things that happened. I think it is hard to feel alone if you have empathy.

 

Follow the exercise he gives here. Make a list of all the people you know and write down their likes and dislikes and the whys for each like and dislike.  We don't need to see these notes, but that is the only writing you should be doing -- not providing us your reflections on situations that we only see from your point of view. And if you don't have the information about the people you know, go and get it (as Stef says in the podcast you posted a little more than halfway through).  Talk to them and listen. We would not mind reading about what you discover after doing this. We'd need to see you showing how you have made an attempt to understand others.

 

Eventually you should be acknowledging how you have hurt others through your lack of empathy, or struggling to understand it. In your question, you are just circling around the problem. Accusing Stef of ulterior motives is trying to push a button. Your consideration of his work is based on utility, and this is exactly what he has said (in this podcast) hurts others and demonstrates a lack of empathy.

 

Please know that the circling around the issue of empathy and not making a genuine attempt to do the work that was suggested is not going to get you anywhere. You could report here with examples of how much time and effort you invested in showing caring for the people you know--another exercise suggested in this podcast. There are very clear guidelines in this podcast on what to do and you would need to do those things.

 

You are ascribing utility motives to others when you say they show interest in you. You have 77 down votes here at FDR, so I suspect that you are resisting doing the work required to build your empathic muscle. You must be struggling with cognitive dissonance though, as you are a donator. Get to work before it is too late to meet your goal. Mind you, if you really lack empathy, you wouldn't worry about dying with regrets, as you won't even know you have them. So a good place for you to put some effort might be to list some of your regrets and why you have them. Then try to work on rectifying those or at least not repeating the patterns.

 

This is work you could do with a qualified therapist who can also help you work on your self esteem.

[LovePrevails]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGY8DRc_BA4

[Philosphorous]

 

I was the second call. I just don't feel bad. It was decades ago, and

 

a) I was bullied as well by my parents, relatives, and others, and

b) A lot of the time people provoked me into fights. I had an obvious handicap and took a lot of heat for it.

 

For example: one of the hospital visits happened because a bully threw sand in my friend's face. I ended that quickly--perhaps too harshly, but I just see that as a bully getting what he deserved. I'm suppposed to feel bad about this?

 

If someone comes back from a prison camp he has been in for 20 years and acts like he is still in the camp, should we jump all over him for doing so? Even if he stops?

 

Also, it's not like I'm still doing any of this. It ended a long time ago.

 

I have been actually talking to people and asking questions instead of avoidance or talking about myself. Also, I am working hard to not draw conclusions before talking to people. It is slow but steady progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGY8DRc_BA4

 

I don't understand what "empathize with yourself" means. Don't we do this by default?

[LovePrevails]

no,a lot of the time we completely ignore what we are feeling and that's often why people act it out

 

people are put into a habit of ignoring what they feel by caregivers who find their feelings inconvenient

[fulop78]

 

I was the second call. I just don't feel bad. It was decades ago, and

 

a) I was bullied as well by my parents, relatives, and others, and

b) A lot of the time people provoked me into fights. I had an obvious handicap and took a lot of heat for it.

 

For example: one of the hospital visits happened because a bully threw sand in my friend's face. I ended that quickly--perhaps too harshly, but I just see that as a bully getting what he deserved. I'm suppposed to feel bad about this?

 

If someone comes back from a prison camp he has been in for 20 years and acts like he is still in the camp, should we jump all over him for doing so? Even if he stops?

 

Also, it's not like I'm still doing any of this. It ended a long time ago.

 

I have been actually talking to people and asking questions instead of avoidance or talking about myself. Also, I am working hard to not draw conclusions before talking to people. It is slow but steady progress.

 

You keep evading your responsibility (I was bullied) and you keep defending your choice (he got what he deserved, don't jump all over me) and you indulge in self pity.

If you don't feel bad, why did you apologize in the video?

If it ended long time ago, why are you here writing about it?

 

In the video you said you feel very very different towards children than you did then. But now you say the bully got what he deserved. So you'd do it again? So where is the difference? 

[Brentb]

I was the second call. I just don't feel bad. It was decades ago, and

 

a) I was bullied as well by my parents, relatives, and others, and

b) A lot of the time people provoked me into fights. I had an obvious handicap and took a lot of heat for it.

 

For example: one of the hospital visits happened because a bully threw sand in my friend's face. I ended that quickly--perhaps too harshly, but I just see that as a bully getting what he deserved. I'm suppposed to feel bad about this?

 

If someone comes back from a prison camp he has been in for 20 years and acts like he is still in the camp, should we jump all over him for doing so? Even if he stops?

 

Also, it's not like I'm still doing any of this. It ended a long time ago.

 

I have been actually talking to people and asking questions instead of avoidance or talking about myself. Also, I am working hard to not draw conclusions before talking to people. It is slow but steady progress.

 

I don't understand what "empathize with yourself" means. Don't we do this by default?

 

You do feel bad. You called in because you're ashamed to be alive. The point of what Stephan and Michael were doing, as far as I could tell, was to distinguish where the shame was coming from in your past and to isolate it so that you wouldn't continue walking through life in some nebulous cloud of antipathy.

 

You can justify all you like, but it isn't anyone on this board that you need to convince. It's your conscience that doesn't believe any of your justifications.

 

The good news is that you do have empathy. The bad news is that it's eating you alive.

 

It sounded like you were having difficulty connecting with your feelings and those of your victims. This may be a stupid suggestion, but I find that the arts helps me to find feelings. Novels can put you into other's heads better than anything. If you google "bullying novels" you can maybe find something that will help the feelings come. 

[cynicist]

I was the second call. I just don't feel bad. It was decades ago, and

 

a) I was bullied as well by my parents, relatives, and others, and

b) A lot of the time people provoked me into fights. I had an obvious handicap and took a lot of heat for it.

 

For example: one of the hospital visits happened because a bully threw sand in my friend's face. I ended that quickly--perhaps too harshly, but I just see that as a bully getting what he deserved. I'm suppposed to feel bad about this?

 

If someone comes back from a prison camp he has been in for 20 years and acts like he is still in the camp, should we jump all over him for doing so? Even if he stops?

 

Also, it's not like I'm still doing any of this. It ended a long time ago.

 

I have been actually talking to people and asking questions instead of avoidance or talking about myself. Also, I am working hard to not draw conclusions before talking to people. It is slow but steady progress.

 

I don't understand what "empathize with yourself" means. Don't we do this by default?

 

God man, can you fit any more lies and excuses into a single paragraph? You seriously think that throwing sand in someone's face warrants hurting them so badly that they have to go to the hospital? I don't see how saying it happened 'decades ago' is supposed to mean something. The reason people feel bad about things they've done in the past is because they can't take them back.

 

How are you not avoiding? Your whole post was about evading responsibility for the damage you did to others.

 

As long as you refuse to see it nothing will change. You will make zero progress. Zero.

[Philosphorous]

You keep evading your responsibility (I was bullied) and you keep defending your choice (he got what he deserved, don't jump all over me) and you indulge in self pity.

If you don't feel bad, why did you apologize in the video?

If it ended long time ago, why are you here writing about it?

 

In the video you said you feel very very different towards children than you did then. But now you say the bully got what he deserved. So you'd do it again? So where is the difference? 

 

I would not act in such a way again except in certain circumstances when I was protecting a friend or stopping somebody from bullying.

 

I think part of the reason I don't feel bad is because I was in a victim's shoes. I was bullied. My parents did not pull me out of school. In high school, a kid bullied me until I finally got fed up with it and laid him out. I didn't want to do that, but it stopped the horrible treatment almost immediately.

 

This actually happened a few times. Kids acted terribly toward me. Physicality ended that very quickly. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Bullies tend to listen closely when you speak their "language."

 

In all seriousness, is that something about which I'm supposed to feel bad?

 

There is only one person I can think of that I truly bullied who absolutely did not deserve it, and I feel pretty bad about that. I'm trying to find him to apologize, but I don't know how much of an effect it will have. I've met the person who bullied me and he feebly tried to apologize. I rejected his apology and walked away. 

God man, can you fit any more lies and excuses into a single paragraph? You seriously think that throwing sand in someone's face warrants hurting them so badly that they have to go to the hospital? I don't see how saying it happened 'decades ago' is supposed to mean something. The reason people feel bad about things they've done in the past is because they can't take them back.

 

How are you not avoiding? Your whole post was about evading responsibility for the damage you did to others.

 

As long as you refuse to see it nothing will change. You will make zero progress. Zero.

 

Would you please relax with the combative tone? I'm not doing anything on purpose.

[fulop78]

I would not act in such a way again except in certain circumstances when I was protecting a friend or stopping somebody from bullying.

 

I think part of the reason I don't feel bad is because I was in a victim's shoes. I was bullied. My parents did not pull me out of school. In high school, a kid bullied me until I finally got fed up with it and laid him out. I didn't want to do that, but it stopped the horrible treatment almost immediately.

 

This actually happened a few times. Kids acted terribly toward me. Physicality ended that very quickly. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Bullies tend to listen closely when you speak their "language."

 

In all seriousness, is that something about which I'm supposed to feel bad?

 

There is only one person I can think of that I truly bullied who absolutely did not deserve it, and I feel pretty bad about that. I'm trying to find him to apologize, but I don't know how much of an effect it will have. I've met the person who bullied me and he feebly tried to apologize. I rejected his apology and walked away. 

 

You said in the video that you feel terrible and that you are so sorry ... was it genuine? Because now you describe it almost as a form self-defense.

 

Could you please describe to me how you were bullied? What did the kids do to you?

Also could you please describe your "physicality" a bit more?

How often would you pick/start fights? In the video it sounds it was quite a lot. I just want to have a clear picture.

 

Are you supposed to feel bad ... you don't have much responsibility and control over the environmental destruction that is happening, yet you feel terrible guilt. You had much responsibility and a lot of control over the personal destruction that you inflicted when you were kid/teen, yet you say you don't feel bad. There is a dead tree you've never seen, here is a broken child that you beat up. Which feels worse? And why? Could it be that this environmental guilt is something much less personal than the guilt of beating up someone? Could it be that there is some self-righteous satisfaction in that environmental guilt that you would not be able to feel if you accepted that broken nose guilt?

[Stoic_Dreamer]

 

I was the second call. I just don't feel bad. It was decades ago, and

 

a) I was bullied as well by my parents, relatives, and others, and

b) A lot of the time people provoked me into fights. I had an obvious handicap and took a lot of heat for it.

 

For example: one of the hospital visits happened because a bully threw sand in my friend's face. I ended that quickly--perhaps too harshly, but I just see that as a bully getting what he deserved. I'm suppposed to feel bad about this?

 

If someone comes back from a prison camp he has been in for 20 years and acts like he is still in the camp, should we jump all over him for doing so? Even if he stops?

 

Also, it's not like I'm still doing any of this. It ended a long time ago.

 

I have been actually talking to people and asking questions instead of avoidance or talking about myself. Also, I am working hard to not draw conclusions before talking to people. It is slow but steady progress.

 

I don't understand what "empathize with yourself" means. Don't we do this by default?

 

 

If we have done immoral things, our body doesn't much care that time has passed or we had very few good options available.  If you cannot emotionally connect to your history, at least be a historian in the recollection of it- this happened to me, I did this action, this was the result.  The trying to explain it or saying that it was a long time ago or that the person deserved it is obviously doing more harm to your capacity to connect than it is reducing anxiety.  Saying such things will also make it far more acceptable to repeat actions in the future, even though you are no longer a child and have infinitely more choices in dealing with situations/people.

 

As far as doubting the intentions of others- paranoia or mistrust often has its roots in childhood when a child must determine if the world is a safe place or filled with danger.  Distrust can also come from engaging in actions or manipulation ourselves that we then project onto others.  My guess in your situation would be that it is a mixture of both.  Having mistrust is not inherently problematic as long as you counter it with evidence.  If you think Stefan is untrustworthy or that he is using you for a talking point- what is the evidence of that? Not what you feel or you think you feel due to anxiety, but what is the evidence for that?  You have thousands of his interactions with people recorded for all time and readily available.  You also have recordings of him admitting when he was incorrect or did not like the way a conversation progressed, either on his end or a caller's.  There is this great wealth of personal information right at your fingertips.  It is not just to accuse him of using you or not caring without considering his past behavior.  Obviously it is possible that you are a unique case but after a preponderance of the evidence, it would make more sense to turn toward internal sources of discomfort.  Now take that example and universalize it to all of the people around you.  If you treat innocent people the same as manipulative/exploitative assholes than you are not going to be able to emotionally connect with anyone healthy.

 

I would start there in therapy and personal relationships.  If what you say is true that applying ethics to the people around you would eliminate them from your life, than so be it. fuck those people, they don't matter and you don't want them in your life anyway. 

 

Just my observations and opinion. take it or leave it. hopefully something in there is helpful.

Nick

*distrust