From Cold And Callous To Caring

I know from experience that I'm capable of hurting people and feeling no guilt or remorse over it. There's a complete lack of (emotional) empathy. I'm switched off most of the time to a state of cold, callous indifference.

There are these odd moments where I 'switch on' and I can briefly feel things I don't normally experience, like sympathy for an abused child. It confuses me because I don't understand it. I don't understand how I can go from being someone who normally lacks empathy and compassion to these brief moments of caring.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Can you relate to my experience?

Have you ever felt genuine sympathy for someone else?

From the little bit I've read about it, even a psychopath can feel sympathy. I think it really depends on where they sit on the spectrum (how psychopathic they are) as to how much or how often they feel it. I imagine most psychopaths wouldn't experience sympathy much. I'd like to see actual research on that though for confirmation. It would be interesting.

If you can empathize with a child (which is a synonym for sympathy) once, then you can do it again.

A cold and callous persona, therefore, has become a choice of yours to take on. Probably at the same time in your life as the child you pity. So my question is, why don't you let yourself empathize more often?

For me, empathy is not my default setting. I'm sure i have felt empathy for someone, i just can't remember a specific incident right now. That said, i would like to utilize my empathy more in the future to come off as more of a gentleman.

I remember going on mission trips with my church in high school. We played with kids, built houses, and otherwise propped up sh!t communities. Every trip, i always had a stage 5 clinger child and i often wonder why. I think it's because i was able to display empathy? Must have been. Holding a hand can show empathy.. a nice smile.. etc?

I don’t know about psychopaths but There seems to be a lot of information out there that cluster b disorders tend to decrease in severity as you get older. APD being one of them obviously

No? I don't feel genuine care for someone, if I see a child getting hurt or abused I just think to myself "Meh, he'll be fine." Because he will be fine, I mean yeah sure it's not ideal, but he will be fine for the most part, he's not permanently losing limbs or something. And beside what care do I have about others? I just lack the actual ability to put myself in their shoes unless I choose to do so, but when do I choose? When I feel it's beneficial to me, cognitive empathy.

madness00 wrote:If you can empathize with a child (which is a synonym for sympathy) once, then you can do it again.

Yeah, so can a psychopath...

A cold and callous persona, therefore, has become a choice of yours to take on.

No, it hasn't. I didn't choose to be this way.

So my question is, why don't you let yourself empathize more often?

Because I don't have the mindset to do so. It's not like I'm stopping myself from feeling it. It's just not normal for me to do so. I rarely even empathize or sympathize with my own daughter let alone anyone else.

For me, empathy is not my default setting.

I don't believe that's true because on your knox account you talked about being able to empathize with your partners, which sounded pretty normal to me.

And how does that contradict with anything i've said?

Default setting doesn't mean permanent setting, my dear.

madness00 wrote:And how does that contradict with anything i've said?

You say lack of empathy is your default setting, but if you have no problem empathizing with your partners, as you mentioned on your knox account, then clearly lack of empathy is not your default setting at all. That's my point.

Reaper wrote:That's my point.

And it's moot.

Carry on.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Seems to me that there are two aspects to this:

1. Having the feeling of sympathy.
2. Recognising it for what it is.

I'm no doctor, but common sense would tell me that:

1. To feel this, the tracks have to be already laid. In other words, the person must be capable of experiencing the effect so the synaptic pathways have to exist.
2. The person must have had experience of this emotion previously, maybe as early as childhood and possibly forgotten, to be able to recognise it for what it is.

Can you relate to my experience?

No.

Have you ever felt genuine sympathy for someone else?

Personally, I know when I should sympathise but to the best of my knowledge I have never done so.

justonemoreperson wrote:Do you have any thoughts on this?

Seems to me that there are two aspects to this:

1. Having the feeling of sympathy.
2. Recognising it for what it is.

I'm no doctor, but common sense would tell me that:

1. To feel this, the tracks have to be already laid. In other words, the person must be capable of experiencing the effect so the synaptic pathways have to exist.
2. The person must have had experience of this emotion previously, maybe as early as childhood and possibly forgotten, to be able to recognise it for what it is.

Right, but that doesn't really tell me much. It doesn't explain anything. I don't remember ever feeling empathy or sympathy for anyone in childhood. If I did on some rare occasion and forgot about it, what relevance does that have?

Anyway, I did some searching and found this:

They concluded that psychopathy is not a simple incapacity for vicarious activation but rather reduced spontaneous vicarious activation co-existing with relatively normal deliberate counterparts.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0185106315000074

It seems to indicate that psychopaths do not lack the ability to experience empathy/sympathy, but experience it less often than the average person. If the research is accurate it makes me wonder why some of you here claim to have never experienced it, ever.

I find it interesting because I strongly suspect my experience relates to it, especially since I don't normally feel empathy or sympathy and only do on rare occasions. I strongly suspect I am a psychopath and every time I read something that relates to my own experiences it seems to confirm it, but I'm not accepting the label because I still believe in proper, clinical testing.

Why am I bringing this all up? Because I'm still trying to understand myself. I'd like better understanding of why I do some of the things I do. It's interesting to me.