It kinda sucks to be told that you have no empathy after a lifetime of feeling empathy very strongly.
I guess it comes back to my red not being your red, the internal vs the external, yadda yadda.
What if the emotions you would experience in a situation are different from the norm, and you are empathising from that standpoint? Is that not empathy?
Is empathy the expectation that your emotions will comply to a societal bell-curve, and that you will act according to the 50th percentile?
And that, if your emotions do not comply to the bell curve, you should act disingenuously and pretend that they do? And that if you act authentically and empathise with their situation, but your emotions would differ, that is unempathetic?
A single bird flying past a flock; which is going the right way?
I guess we aren’t talking about that though; that’s the internal. That’s the red being red. We’re talking about the communication of empathy.
So let’s say that this individual is hypothetically able to pretend they would feel a different way given a situation. Their brain tends to tackle logic before it tackles emotion. So they empathise; they’re like ‘if I was in this situation then what would I feel’?
And what they would feel is the need to solve things logically so they can have breathing room to process the emotions later. What they most certainly would *not* want to do is stop and talk about emotions while the world burns around them. So they empathise and propose a solution.
Isn’t everyone this way?
I’m not in the 50th percentile; far from it. Does this mean I lack empathy? No. Does it mean that my approach and emotions in situations might differ? Yes.
Empathy is all relative. When someone talks about empathy, are they talking about a complying to a societal norm or trying to empathise with them as an individual? Empathising with them as an individual is the only real empathy; the other is just a societal construct; another mask.
So if empathy is a meeting in the middle, it should be easier by default now I am diagnosed and medicated. Better chemistry, better understanding. But if it's meeting in the 50%, well, that's just social conformity given a fancy name.
But is empathy meeting in the middle or am I talking about communication?
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