Turning the empathy off - For dummies

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Why did I upset you so much lol lol that is great but I still can not get angry dammit. I do not want to get rid of empathy completelly. [Mod edit]

I also have a ridiculous thing we're I need to say the last word. Well I lost empathy in the first place because purple wasn't kind. So simple. I do not know also what am I supposed to say, [Mod edit]

lol Jullia just comes into this thread, takes one look at Purple, and is all like



What in the actual ###$ is happening in here and why isn't it in PM instead of derailing Shanzik's thread?

Jasmer wrote:What in the actual ###$ is happening in here and why isn't it in PM instead of derailing Shanzik's thread?

But you're doing the same thing...

But you're right. Shanzik, my apologies.

What I didn't realize I started it. I got angry because he wasn't kind.

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What does empathy feel like when it's 'on' for you?

My relationship with empathy for somebody or something is that I can absorb their pain and feel it as them in a visceral way, if I want to. I can see a cowering, broken-hearted agony and have the capacity to take that perspective and experience it for myself. But it never gets in the way. The empathetic response of understanding their pain doesn't act as a barrier that needs to be switched off. One can inflict blows through that and not feel bad about it. It's just an experience of that person in the moment that allows a kind of understanding. The empathy is distinct from myself; It's vicarious.

Presumably, we are trying to discuss the kind of empathy that leaves you with a mental barrier and leads to shame or disgust or guilt at yourself. Suppressing that is surely harmful. The narcissist is capable of doing so because of an egocentricity. Unlike in my absorption, tending towards the object, they see the object through the subject (themselves) and so create a lens by which they are pathologically able to dehumanise. It's about them and their wants and that system overrides any notion of what it means to act with empathy.

In turn, rather than trying to 'turn off' empathy by going cold, if this were really a goal, you might try rationalising how your wants are more important and that they are nothing and that they do not matter in comparison to whatever urge it is you need to fulfil. That is the essence of narcissism.

Jasmer wrote:But I can shut the empathy switch off without dehumanizing or degrading somebody. Many times I've just turned off an emotional or empathic response. One minute I feel something, the next I simply decide not to and it's gone, utterly and completely. I don't rationalize it away, I just decide I've had enough and turn it off. I think it's just well-practiced repression.

This blunting and ability to 'turn off' affect is usually better associated with PTSD which both Lusid and you have written in your Signatures as diagnoses. It may be prudent to note so, for the others here: One particularly effective way to be able to stop being empathetic is to be abused beyond a capability to see others as people that could possibly be loved or cared for or whose feelings ought to be considered, else they'd never have done that to you.

Courtier wrote:One particularly effective way to be able to stop being empathetic is to be abused beyond a capability to see others as people that could possibly be loved or cared for or whose feelings ought to be considered, else they'd never have done that to you.

Interesting point. Early on in therapy my psychologist and I discussed viewing others as actual people and not props or extras on The Jasmer Show. It's not much of an issue anymore but once upon a time I had a huge problem with object constancy, people could cease to exist for all I cared when I wasn't dealing directly with them. I couldn't even wrap my mind around the idea that other people had their own thoughts, feelings, and lives.

Jasmer wrote:It's not much of an issue anymore but once upon a time I had a huge problem with object constancy, people could cease to exist for all I cared when I wasn't dealing directly with them. I couldn't even wrap my mind around the idea that other people had their own thoughts, feelings, and lives.

How did you become aware of other people's thoughts/feelings?