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.
In: 7230
Yay, a question regarding my field of study!
Scientifically, we do not know entirely how it works, but we have a good general idea. Time for the explanation:
When you get home after a very hot summer day and grab a glass of water and gulp it in two seconds, you do this because you are thirsty. You did all the things you did (open the cupboard, get a glass, fill it with water, raise it to your mouth, swallow the water) because you were thirsty.
All these actions had one cause: you were thirsty — an internal state no one can “see”, a feeling.
When you see someone do a certain set of actions or displaying a certain behavior, you interpret what they are doing as if that were you (with some adjustments depending on how well you know the person).
So, when you see a family member come home after a hot summer day, immediately going to the kitchen to drink some water, you don’t merely see their actions, you also feel their thirst (on a very moderate level), because you know what it is like to be thirsty.
In short: you do/express X because you feel Y. When you see others do X, you’ll perceive them as feeling Y.
A bit more in depth: empathy seems to have its origin on something called “mirror neurons” and to be connected to our constitution of ourselves as individuals and our relationship between our mind (internal states) and our physical body. Our familiarity with the other is also very important, which can be seen in cases where, for example, owners know exactly what their pets want, even though they don’t express any human-like behaviors (and the opposite is also true, since it is almost impossible for us to empathize with, for example, a spider, since its reality is so distant from ours that we can’t fathom what it is like to be a spider in that moment).
EDIT: Well, this exploded! Thank you everyone for your amazing feedback! I have been trying to reply to people, but it’s taking some time. If you want to talk about the topic, you can drop me a PM so it’s easier to track and remember.
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