I’m not sure what empathy is or how to feel it. It’s sometimes left friends and partners feeling frustrated with me when I can’t comfort them in the way they need and it causes me to be upset that I don’t understand it. I want to understand what it’s like.
Edit: tagged as chemistry because I guess technically it’s brain chemistry.
Edit: I’m talking about this issue with my therapist later today.
Edit: just got done with therapy. Turns out I do feel empathy, but it just comes off as not caring because I get frustrated that I can’t always figure out how someone needs to be comforted. I might look into getting tested for autism because it happens a lot.
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1. you could have empathy but still not be able to comfort people, being able to comfort and being able to know what or how someone feels are to very different things… but knowing how someone feels could help.
2. empathy for me is coming into a room full of happy people and feeling happiness myself. or being near someone and having a gut feeling that they are sad or anxious. Most people know the latter by microexpressions and demenour and is something you can learn.
basically empathy is the ability to position yourself in one’s shoes. to know how they will react if you say something or proposition something. knowing why saying a derogatory term can hurt someone or why laughing with cancer is not (always) the way to go when your friends grandfather just passed.
think to yourself: do i like it when someone calls me dumb, probably not, now imagine someone who is a bit anxious and has a big fear of failure, calling them dumb would ruin them.
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