Empathy / Hypocrisy

According to my psychotherapist (I was there because of insomnia/anger managent), I have light narcisstic traits.
So, one question: a lot of people (who are ,,normal'' lol) talk about empathy. They are so empathic and good humans because of their giving nature.. (lol!)
Lies. Sorry, but a lot of them were extremely unempathic when it comes to certain problems. I have recognized it a lot.. Personally, I think it belongs to the human/the character. So, isn't it a bit naive and dumb to expect empathy in all areas (family, relationships, job..)?
Sometimes I think that this empathic people do not know what empathy means? Especially that there are huge differences between the cognitive/emotional (affective)/somatic. A lot of them do not know that, lol.

You know I have recognized affective empathy a lot in the faces of people, mostly when they experienced something similar - despite the psychotherapist I had. She was really emotional empathic (and didn't experienced the same). So isn't empathy based on our morals (right/wrong)?

Oh, and a lot of ,,normal people'' expect empathy, but do not have it at all. lol. I have just narcisstic traits (however my cognitive empathy is quite good), but my former friends and work-mates were kind of that. I think that they are just weak people (in case of beeing that needy), because of needing help, but not giving that engagement back. They are much more egotistical than me, and didn't had my analytical thinking/methods. I was extremely good at solving their problems according to get to their core problematique (they were too stupid/too afraid for that..). However, I know that people are complex (they do not... lol).

Did anyone experienced something similar with ,,normal people''? Sorry if I upset someone who has the full diagnosis.

NevaCroix wrote:(however my cognitive empathy is quite good),

Is it? Your post seems naive. If you want to discuss it, you'll need to stop putting "lol" at the end of every sentence.

justonemoreperson wrote:

NevaCroix wrote:(however my cognitive empathy is quite good),

Is it? Your post seems naive. If you want to discuss it, you'll need to stop putting "lol" at the end of every sentence.

Lol

I had a friendship with a very troubled woman a few years ago who had struggled at school, has dyslexia and other health problems, narrowly avoided prison in her 20s. She mostly socialised with quite brutal people or people bordering on having learning difficulties. If anything needed sorting out, a shouting match or one party or the other walking away was how it was done.

I haven't made a career of getting an average-ish degree though I did publish writing modestly for a time. My time isn't spent on highbrow pursuits. I don't parade my learning and have certainly let myself go a bit. We began this friendship after meeting in a cafe, and it would often be therapeutic - just to have company, trot out some funny lines, kill time - but all the while she was on the verge of mistrust, expecting the worst. I was sympathetic and would tread lightly. But then what was apparent was what in other contexts would be called 'inverted snobbery'. I used the word 'cutlery' once and even that made her angry. She didn't know how to bracket me really - this man who was neither browbeaten or fooled nor ever going to shout or get violent.

There was something she couldn't have or couldn't be, or so she has been led for decades to believe. She would demonise these things outside her. Worse, one of her daughters was dyslexic also, and she'd start to mock me in front of the daughter and poison her, basically. It was as if she was starting a little subculture, establishing its parameters, kind of what a lot of dysfunctional families do in their four-walled Republics.

I think it's a mistake to start to formulate a demonised view of traits and behaviours that are for the most part virtuous and beneficial that you maybe happen to struggle with or that seem to be alien or something synthesised or that seem impossible to synthesise - this way one can only compound being unreachable and compound difficulties in reaching others. That is a dead end.

I don't know - is this a case of turning frustration to aggressive-defensivity? On the internet, talking to strangers across the world, despite the trolling nonsense no one is any real harm or threat. I'm nearly 50 and have nothing, have remembered my friend reading your post, and am typing this calmly with fraternal feeling. Can you talk yourself down from deconstructing empathy in this unhelpful way? Yes, a lot of people are awful and hypocrisy exists, but going from specifics to coalescing a worldview in abstractions based on this in a fixed, overly defensive way is something else. I have recently resumed speaking to someone with NPD who I care about. I don't know how we will navigate what comes next, but I'm open, I think she is approaching openness. The openness is key.

u dont understand, op, that people adapt to sociopathic tendancies in the work place.

im sure the vast majority of people have empathy, just suppress it during mergers and aquisitions