Lacking empathy. What now?

[Saarl]

I've listened to "Is empathy a selfless act?" podcast on yt

and it made me think about my lack of empathy towards other people.

Example given by Stef - watching yt fail videos, when someone has some sort of an accident is clear and simple. I can't watch videos like that, especially if it involves twisting or breaking part of the body. It feels extremely uncomfortable, I can almost feel the pain of the other person, and it makes me wanna throw up. So I guess this is genuine. There's an empathy involved.

But now, the listener has presented the example of his boss being in a difficult situation (hospitalized parent) and he was wondering about what would be a good thing to say to the boss. The conclusion was if you think about it this way it is just manipulative. And I get that. But then it made me think. People who were raised in a toxic environment have often difficulties with expressing feelings, emotions and so on. So maybe the case is a bit different...

I have my own example - I have a high school friend, who's life is (not to go to any details) very miserable, and as if that wouldn't be enough recently she's struggling with very serious health issues. I am really worried about her. I feel deep sorrow about the situation she's in. I want to help her, I think noones life should look like that, but there's not much I can do (since I live really far away from her). Before her health issues I was trying to talk her into looking for some ways to make her life a little less miserable, try to look for possible opportunities she maybe didn't consider or didn't see, or didn't believe she could use. Now the situation seems more and more hopless. I'm trying to be for her, show her that I care, I'm asking her how she's doing, how she's feeling, trying to empathize, trying to at least understand and show her that I do, asking her to let me know how is the situation progressing and so on.

When I'm thinking about it - I have nothing to gain here, I simply can't stand the thought of her life being this way. I can't stand the "unfairness" of the situation. But then every time I'm talking to her I have to think really hard what should I say. I don't want to make it worse for her and above all I don't want "to make it about me". Like stating that "I'm worried about her", "I'm sorry for the situation she's in" both of which are true, are making it about me and doesn't show any empathy towards her. So it is like trying to figure out what to say that would sound properly. I'm really not used to show any empathy towards anyone. I didn't see or experienced many examples of people being empathethic either. So is it still manipulative? Is there any way/better way to learn that?

And there's the third "kind" of situations which require empathy that I can't grasp at all. I guess some literature would be required here. So far someone recommended Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Inelligence" which I'm going to read. Could anyone suggest me some more? (Preferably audiobooks)
To put it as plainly as possible: I do not have a single shred of empathy when it comes to the situations when other people stand between me and my ambitions/goals. If it was possible I would simply crush them, and went straight to my goal over their dead bodies. I didn't do things like that in the past. It went more or less like this: I would jeopardise things I wanted to achieve for the sake of not having to confront anyone, to have peace and so on. I couldn't do that anymore, it was harmful to me. Going over dead bodies is harmful to others and narcissistic. So what now? How to learn to empathize in such situations? Where to start the work? Please help.

I will be also talking about it with my therapist, though I really wanted to ask for as much help/opinions with this topic as possible.

[Kevin Beal]

To put it as plainly as possible: I do not have a single shred of empathy when it comes to the situations when other people stand between me and my ambitions/goals. If it was possible I would simply crush them, and went straight to my goal over their dead bodies. I didn't do things like that in the past. It went more or less like this: I would jeopardise things I wanted to achieve for the sake of not having to confront anyone, to have peace and so on. I couldn't do that anymore, it was harmful to me. Going over dead bodies is harmful to others and narcissistic. So what now? How to learn to empathize in such situations? Where to start the work? Please help.

I'm confused about what exactly the dilemma is. That could be because I have the same problem and am not conscious of it, but I don't see what is narcissistic or manipulative about plowing over people who are opposed to your interests. Using other people as pawns in a game of some kind, yea, but simply working towards your own goals without prioritizing other people's opposing interests ahead of your own seems to me to actually be a kind of empathy, namely empathy toward yourself. You are not responsible for their success, obviously.

 

I think you can determine to some degree the level of narcissism, by how much you have to deny about reality and about other people. If something is manipulative, it has to be something along the lines of:

 

"Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics." - Wikipedia

 

I've noticed that a ton of very nice and empathetic people are quick to being self critical, and I'm always looking out for it. There is nothing that I could see in what you wrote that made me think that you are being manipulative.

 

I don't know you, but if you were raised by people who were inclined to making you bad for mistakes (real or perceived) that you made honestly, then I can imagine that you would internalize those kinds of voices in your own head, and make yourself out to be bad before someone else came around to condemn you.

 

Or maybe I've missed something obvious, in which case, sorry!

[MMX2010]

Bluntly, you're not supposed to empathize for the woman whose life is miserable and health is failing.  Nor are you supposed to empathize for people standing between yourself and your goals. 

 

When you've succeeded in a way (and to a sufficient degree) that you feel well-earned pride, it'll be obvious who you should (or shouldn't) empathize with. 

 

Success first, self-pride first, empathy second. 

[Saarl]

@ Kevin Beal

 

First of all thank you for the post.

 

I was raised kind of by myself, seriously neglected eventhough I lived with both of my parents, have 4-6 points at ACE (can't answer two questions, like I was spanked often, sometimes beaten with a belt, I don't know if I should count that as serious because I don't recall being beaten black and blue, so in this case I don't know the answer is yes or no, the other question is about living with mentally ill person - my mother's ACE is about 6-7, my father's 9, they were never diagnosed with anything, but obviously they have serious mental problems), and the dominant thing about my childhood is that my parents were ashamed of me, wished I was never born at all, held me responsible for ruining their lives (father was 15 and mother 17 when I was born), and blamed me for all bad that happened.

 

 

The situation is like that (trying to make the whole picture, it is still one-sided) - at work, I am doing purely creative job (illustrating traditional games), my goal is to make the game as interesting as possible on the visual side, without changing the mechanics. Now I worked on the project for over a month. I got nice idea how to make the game funny, tried to put some plot in it. I fugured out that if I remove one information on the cards I'd have much wider space to operate in. That actually wouldn't change mechanics and would not create a mess in the game because there was another information, a number, which still was grouping the cards in the category. Only instead of having defined name on it, there was just a number. And here comes the problem - the PR with whom I have to communicate and cooperate. They never suggested any alternative to my concept (they could), then when I more or less finished the job just came to me and told me that I have to change about half of what I did "because", which ruined all the "plot" (I figured out quite a time ago that their "because" is for them an argument, which stands over any possible argument followed by a reason). So I told them, that I'm not going to do it, I'm not going back to the previous version of the concept when the one I came up with is valid and not disprooven.

 

Now, I tried to figured out why did they do it myself, I came up with some possible explanations - either they could't grasp the concept (never asked me to explain it), the one information I recieved later was "it cannot be done because they would have to come up with forced explanation in the rules", and when I thought about that - it was a matter of being creative. They percieve difficulty of being creative, and additional opportunity for the game to be more colorful as "forcing explanation". I actually did show them examples of how you can be inventive and creative in this particular case (too late I guess). The other thoughts I've had about the case was - well maybe it was too much work for them (they've actually brought me the corrections after deliberating for less that an hour, which started all the mess, because I said that it is lousy). Or I saw one more possibility which was fear of responsibility of making the alteration, which was at least from the visual standpoint quite large.

 

Now  - what it has to do with me lacking empathy? Well at one point I was about to make all the alterations myself to find out if that's really impossible as they say. And if I didn't succeed it would be fine - I was wrong, they were right, we're going their way, case closed. No problem with that at all. But then what if I succeeded? It would turned out they actually didn't do their job properly, therefore maybe they should be doing something else, like translating the guidlines and doing other stuff they do? And of course I would be percieved as 100% narcissistic bitch. Then the social atmosphere at the work place would be even worse than it already is.

 

So now after few days I see that I have actually no capacity for empathizing with others at work. And I find it even harder to try because of some behaviours they've shown when I strongly opposed to them - I was threatened (one of the girls told me that "I don't have to make the corrections, in fact I don't have to work in the company at all" (she's not my boss, just another worker as I am), the other one tried to humiliate me by trying to force me to make some irrational promisses to her (she accused me of saboting the project, and wanted me to promiss that I won't do it).

I've had a sense of that was going to happen if I opposed from my previous experiences working with them, only then I decided I was going to do whatever they wanted and not confronting them. But I simply couldn't do that any longer.

 

The kind of problem doesn't appear when I tried to work in the same manner with my boss as I do with the PR - I often disagree with my boss, he disagrees with me, and we're able to find a satisfying compromise very quickly and it is a constructive process which actually makes the project better. So it is not the matter of "the project has to be done in exatly the way I imagined". The goal is to make the project as good as it can possibly be.

 

My conclusions were that either they are not able or don't want to work a bit harder on the project. If they're actually doing their best I should try to empathize. And I can't. I still see that not everything was tried. And then I can't know for sure. I know I am narcissistic (this is how my therapy progresses, and from what I've read it is supposed to go this way, I was suffering from another disorder, then the therapy lead me to this point), but I don't know where is a border between being right and being narcissistic. And on the top of that I am also mildly autistic, which makes it even harder to figure out what to do in the social situation. Confrontation like discribed above put me in a state of panic. And then - I have quite high "problem solving and pattern recognition" skills which is described by iq if I'm correct, which are needed for doing the alterations in these kind of projects I do, and since it is fairly simple for me to do it, it is even harder to understand that somebody else may not be able to see it. And ability to solve problems presented on paper and not involving emotions is completely useless when it comes to social situations. At least for me.

 

And at the very end of this case - I would happily leave the project as it is, not trying to make it better, but then - when it is done my name will be put on the cover, right next to the author of the mechanics. And since it is a publication, gamers (and potential clients of mine, so my possible future) will be percieving the looks of the game as my doing and not me with a bunch of other people who also worked on the project (and it is unfair, I don't see why aren't they listed as well). So you know - the responsibility is mine. And I am kind of ashamed knowing the project could be so much better. And by "better" I don't mean I'm sure it will sell better, I don't know that. PR don't know it either. In fact my boss who has most experience in this doesn't know that as well.

___

 

@ MMX2010

 

Thank you for your response.

 

I get that there's a possibility that maybe I shouldn't empathize with these people at work, especially if they're kind of abusive. This is what I'm trying to figure out. But then empathy is a form of understanding. And I want to understand. I'd really love to be able to see their side, their point of view.

 

But then why shouldn't I empathize with a friend? It is a relationship with another being. It's voluntary, there's no obligation involved of any kind. I feel bad for her, sensed she was angry (when she told me the details about her health I was furious, the public healthcare was responsible for almost killing her and creating life threatning situation that continues). She was worried obviously, suprisingly for me I didn't sense much fear from her (like panic or something), rather some sort of resignation about the current situation. Before the health issues I sensed the feeling of frustration, "being stuck", hoplessness, some sort of desperation. So the stuff I listed in the post were my responses to the feelings I sensed from her. I should probably mention that my perception is lowered because we are using a fb texting to talk, rarely speaking to eachother.

 

I don't see why it would be negative to empathize, I percieve understanding as a positive thing, I really want to understand. The case with the friend is - I don't know if it's empathy, or just manipulation. I'm simply trying to figure that out.

 

Can you explain me what you mean by success here: "When you've succeeded in a way (and to a sufficient degree) that you feel well-earned pride"? I don't get what pride has to do with empathy? Like do you mean that if I really empathize I will feel weel-earned pride? Why?

[MMX2010]

@Saarl - I'm going to be 39 in a couple of months, and lately I've been focusing on the idea of (and importance of) work.  About a week ago, I started watching some MMA videos: chicks and dudes beating the crap out of each other in front of large audiences.  On the one hand, I'm an anarchist and that kind of spectacle is violent.  But on the other hand, those people eat punches to the face just to get some work done. 

 

I'm a teacher/tutor.  For me, I have very clear lines between Helpful For My Work (Good), Has Zero Effect On My Work (Not Good), and Destructive Towards My Work (Bad).  My life is only as awesome as how intently I focus on my work.  This has always been true, but I've only recently been smart enough to realize it.  ("But what about relationships?!?" asks the FDR-community.  "What about empathizing with your fellow human beings??!")  I get annoyed when people ask me questions that I've already answered: the answer is those very clear lines I mentioned above. 

 

You're an artist.  Art is both who you are and your work.  (Love love love love love your work, by the way.  Damn.)   Artists, writers, and film-makers are n-o-t-o-r-i-o-u-s for deliberately exposing themselves to horrible situations and relationships in order to create art from those experiences.  It makes me *facepalm*.  (Don't get angry; my facepalming doesn't mean I'm right.) 

 

So you should ask yourself one simple question: "Does the empathy I've invested in this high school friend cause me to produce better art?"  If it does, continue to show her empathy.  But if it doesn't, then stop.  Now.  With 100% conviction. 

 

 

 

 

"When you've succeeded in a way (and to a sufficient degree) that you feel well-earned pride"? I don't get what pride has to do with empathy? Like do you mean that if I really empathize I will feel weel-earned pride? Why?

 

No!  The exact opposite. 

 

I mean that, "If you develop well-earned success, *hint* your art, then you'll magically know who deserves your empathy and who does not."  (*hint*  The ones who never produce anything, and whom you can never imagine producing anything equivalently awesome to (or better than) your art - because they've always got an excuse, a malady, a chip on their shoulder, a dramatic expression of their emotions that suspiciously saps their energy, or just a simple lack of discipline and dignity - never deserve your empathy.) 

 

Please let me know if this helps.  I'm making major changes to my personality and communication style, so let me know if you think anything I've said is wrong. 

[Carl Green]

When I'm thinking about it - I have nothing to gain here...

 

You have a happy and healthy friend to gain here.

[MMX2010]

You have a happy and healthy friend to gain here.

 

A thought experiment for you:  Picture yourself meeting an attractive woman who is not-Virtuous, but is interested in you.  You expose her to Stefan's podcasts and philosophy-in-general, and she becomes the AnCap Virtuous Woman of Your Dreams.

 

You marry.  It's awesome. 

 

It's your five year wedding anniversary. 

 

You take her to the perfect place, and say, "When I met you, you weren't virtuous, but now here I sit in awe of our marriage and your progress as a Virtuous Woman.  Tell me, dear, why did you transform yourself from Non-Virtuous to Virtuous?" 

 

She smiles, bats her gorgeous eyes and says.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Focus on what you feel immediately after reading her response.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ready?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I transformed myself so I could marry you." 

 

 

 

 

Now, I refuse to speak for your emotional experience to that response.  But I will say that if a woman said that to me, I'd have a strong feeling of revulsion and contempt.  Because becoming Virtuous solely for the sake of securing my loving commitment isn't the same thing as becoming Virtuous solely because it's morally right to become Virtuous. 

 

Do you agree with me?  If you do, then your advice to saarl, "You've a happy and healthy friend to gain here." is completely contradictory to the revulsion you have.  Saarl doesn't have any obligation, whether moral or aesthetic, to become empathetic IN ORDER FOR her friend to become happy and healthy.  Saarl's first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth obligations are to herself and her art, and so forming empathetic emotional connections in ways that diminish her art to any degree cheapens the art, cheapens saarl's virtue, and cheapens saarl's relationship to her high school friend. 

[Carl Green]

A thought experiment for you: 

No, thanks.

[MMX2010]

No, thanks.

 

Gotcha.  While I certainly can't force you to participate in a thought experiment, I can express my hope that saarl (and others) will see your unwillingness to participate in this particular thought experiment as an indication that your advice to saarl "You have a happy and healthy friend to gain here." is harmful to her. 

[Saarl]

Hello,

Thank you so much for the response.

I do understand the situation with MMA, or at least I think I do. Like - you don't aproove of people beating the crap of eachother because it is violence, but then it is their work, they're doing it voluntary (like nobody's forcing them to go there and beat someone or get beaten). My guess would be you're able to see your point of view (non violence principal, that's one of the reasons you're not doing this kind of job) and theirs (you see that they have some reasons to participate in the spectacle - get some money, master their body's skills) even if you don't agree.

I'm not sure if I get the concept. With these "lines" - good, not good, and bad - do you mean like you analyze possibility of empathizing in the very same way? In the manner of: If you show empathy towards someone, would it be helpful for your work, not helpful or destructive? Am I following correctly? So the empathy would be shown only when it's helpful to achieve your goal? Seem like the kind of selfishness described by Rand. Did I get it right?

And then I'm afraid I'm not there yet. Like the problem would be even more basic than that, the dillema (good, not good or bad) assumes that I am already capable of empathizing/ know how to. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I have very little clues of what empathy looks like/suppose to look like. Like the very basics - this fail videos example is some indication that I'm not completely devoided of the capacity to empathize (or at least I'd like to think that). But watching the video is nowhere near real life experience, there's no I involved directly. And in an everyday situation the I seem to be a huge obstacle for empathy.

So maybe the very core question I should be asking in this topic instead of doing all these rants is:

 

"How to get rid of the narcissistic I?" "Is that even possible?"

Any suggestion how to practice that? It bothers me a lot. And I guess it must be hard and very unpleasant and tiresome to others, and that is what nobody wants (me included).

The friend may not be that much of an inspiration for my art, but then it seems like she had a part in inspiring me to look for some more self knowledge. And then the art is my main goal, and I love doing that (it is also true that I didn't and still don't have much more in my life), but then I'd like my life to be a bit more than just about art. Self knowledge became another goal, probably as much important as the art was always for me. Today I took a day off at work. I had to because I've found my brain too much occupied by the topic of empathy and being narcissistic (and how to find any solution to that) to be able to work.


I find your post very helpful. Not only you gave me sugestion of the possible and useful method but also helped me put all these thoughts in some order. Thank you so much!

And if I may say - the thing you you've said about the creative people as a whole - I'm not sure if the kind of people are deliberately putting themselves right into the crap, my view of it would be rather that most of them had messed up childhoods (I've heard some stories of other creative people, their childhoos looked like a mess), and if the childhoods problems are not solved/dealt with, they end up repeating it over and over again. I mean, many of the messed up people are driven to do creative things, but doing creative things is not helping to solve the problems.

___


And then I do find Carl's observation helpful as well. It made me doubt even more in my capacity to empathy. I consider that very helpful in enhancing my perception of the problem. I see it is bad. Now I need to see just how bad to have some starting point. Thank you so much!

[Carl Green]

Gotcha.  While I certainly can't force you to participate in a thought experiment, I can express my hope that saarl (and others) will see your unwillingness to participate in this particular thought experiment as an indication that your advice to saarl "You have a happy and healthy friend to gain here." is harmful to her. 

 

Your thought experiment is merely a framework to place someone in your perspective of the situation with which you have limited second hand context.

 

Sure, I didn't add "..but only try to be there for her and help as long as she's not manipulating you" because I made the assumption she either already knew that, or fine people like yourself would make that crystal clear.

 

I was only expressing a potential. You can not claim my advice is certainly harmful and your willingness to do so is another example of something that tells me I shouldn't waste my time with thought experiments to see things your way.

[LovePrevails]

I've listened to "Is empathy a selfless act?" podcast on yt and it made me think about my lack of empathy towards other people.

 

 

 

here are some resources for you to practice and improve your empathy skills:

 

 

[MMX2010]

 

 

Sure, I didn't add "..but only try to be there for her and help as long as she's not manipulating you" because I made the assumption she either already knew that, or fine people like yourself would make that crystal clear.

 

I was only expressing a potential. You can not claim my advice is certainly harmful and your willingness to do so is another example of something that tells me I shouldn't waste my time with thought experiments to see things your way.

 

Some striking things: (1) You're defending your actions by speaking ONLY about how your felt about your actions.  (2) You're defending your actions, by speaking ONLY about how you felt about your actions, to a man who is hyper-focused on the importance and healing power of work.  (3) Your explanations, when viewed through the perspective of work, read, "I did the absolute minimum amount of work - period.  Am I feel mad, sad, offended that you would disapprove of the work I did.  You need to value my work EQUALLY as much as you value the work of others." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello,

 

Thank you so much for the response.

 

I do understand the situation with MMA, or at least I think I do. Like - you don't aproove of people beating the crap of eachother because it is violence, but then it is their work, they're doing it voluntary (like nobody's forcing them to go there and beat someone or get beaten). My guess would be you're able to see your point of view (non violence principal, that's one of the reasons you're not doing this kind of job) and theirs (you see that they have some reasons to participate in the spectacle - get some money, master their body's skills) even if you don't agree.

 

 

Not only that, but the way they approach their work makes highly visible the way other people approach their work.  Miesha Tate is a really attractive woman outside of the ring; in it, she's a bloody mess.  But when she becomes that bloody mess, she makes me ask myself, "Do I approach my own work with the same level of self-sacrifice, endurance, and passion as she does?"  (Since the answer is no, the problem is me, and the solution is blindingly obvious.) 

 

Hilariously, if she didn't do MMA, she'd be "just another hot chick" - but doing MMA both defines her in a much more powerful way *and* makes her hotness irrelevant. 

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure if I get the concept. With these "lines" - good, not good, and bad - do you mean like you analyze possibility of empathizing in the very same way? In the manner of: If you show empathy towards someone, would it be helpful for your work, not helpful or destructive? Am I following correctly? So the empathy would be shown only when it's helpful to achieve your goal? Seem like the kind of selfishness described by Rand. Did I get it right?

 

It's selfishness when viewed through the perspective of my goals, but it's selflessness when viewed through the perspective of my emotional needs and personality.  I'm not currently looking for a mentor to help my work along, but if I were looking I'd prefer a Cute Helpful Funny Chick who I could develop romantic feelings for.  But what would happen if I got an arrogant, yelling, non-empathetic male who calls me names and very quickly makes me four times more productive in my work? 

 

I'd be happy!  Because the Cute Helpful Funny Chick caters to my emotional needs, and makes me feel happy.  Whereas the Angry Horrible Guy teaches me that my emotional needs and happiness aren't all that important, because the work is always most important. 

 

 

 

 

"How to get rid of the narcissistic I?" "Is that even possible?"

 

Any suggestion how to practice that? It bothers me a lot. And I guess it must be hard and very unpleasant and tiresome to others, and that is what nobody wants (me included).

 

The friend may not be that much of an inspiration for my art, but then it seems like she had a part in inspiring me to look for some more self knowledge.

 

 

The blog author, TheLastPsychiatrist, helped me figure this out.  He's tough to read, because he's extremely snarky and peppers his explanations with subtle hints and inside jokes.  But his cure for narcissism is foolproof, brilliant, and infuriating. 

 

 

 

(Quoting from memory): People ask me all the time, "TLP, you're so amazing at detecting narcissism that your blogposts make me wonder whether I'm narcissistic.  Am I?  And if so, what's the cure?" 

 

I sigh into my rum glass, push the temporal vein back inside my forehead, and say, "I've told this to thousands of people, few of whom have understood, but the cure for narcissism has two steps.  The first step is Fake Not Being A Narcissist.  The second step is There Is No Second Step."

 

99% of the time the recipient is confused, and says something like, "But that doesn't make any sense.  You're a psychiatrist, so you're familiar with multiple forms of therapy.  But you're not even suggesting any therapy here.  And what the hell is with this 'Fake Not Being A Narcissist crap?'  You're advising me to be FAKE?!" 

 

And then I reply, before leaving to let the recipient think about it, "You don't understand.  The cure for narcissism is the cure for narcissism because it isn't for you.  The cure for narcissism is the cure for narcissism, because it's for everyone else you'll ever interact with." 

 

 

 

If you still don't get it, that's totally okay, because it took me a while to get it, too. 

 

The trick is that the self-knowledge you get by introspection, even introspection through therapy, is highly likely to be narcissistic.  Whereas the self-knowledge you get by working with others, especially if you focus your work-efforts on providing value for others, (Get it?  Providing value for OTHERS?) is very unlikely to be narcissistic. 

 

For example, throughout my life I've never been interested in physical fitness.  But now I'm determined to take up physical fitness, then boxing, then Brazilian Ju-Jitsu.  I would've never been able to reach those desires by focusing solely on how I feel about my work, nor on how I feel about boxing and BJJ.  The trick was to realize that pretty much all of my students would find it very cool to learn from someone who boxes and does BJJ, and this reason alone is strong enough to over-power any personal objections I have towards physical fitness, boxing, and BJJ. 

 

It doesn't matter how much pain the path demands, because my pain doesn't matter.  My emotional needs don't matter.  My emotions themselves don't matter.  The work matters.  It accepts me when I'm depressed, but only when I'm working.  It accepts me when I'm elatedly happy, but only when I'm working.  It accepts me when I'm enraged, but only when I'm working.  It is interested in my emotions in the abstract sense of, "You work 10% better when you're happy, so you should be happy." - but it only really cares about my emotions when they interfere with the work, as in, "I don't care how happy, sad, or angry you are right now: GET TO WORK!"

 

Saarl, your art, if you view it through this lens will cure your narcissism.  It will hint at all of the things you can do to improve yourself, but it will only love you when you undergo those improvements for the sake of Your Art Itself.  If you undertake those improvements so that you can be happy with yourself, it'll sternly disapprove.  (And it'll be right; you'll be wrong.) 

 

I'll PM you some articles by TLP on narcissism; they're amazing. 

[Spaceballs]

... Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Inelligence" ...

 

1 year later...

I think Molyneux and one of his listener destroyed Goleman's EQ book.

www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/3228/why-emotional-intelligence-is-nonsense-call-in-show-march-11th-2016