Is Empathy More Prevalent In Sufferer?

[Ocean5]

Not sure if they had PTSD, but most empathetic people I've met went through much suffering in their life.

 

[Friday]

While empathy can be learned, it cannot be taught. How do you teach someone what to feel?

Respectfully disagree, here.

Part of both good & bad parenting is teaching children how to feel. Empathy is very specifically taught to children... From infancy onward... Via pain. Either physical or emotional. Either works. But it has to be done. The whole trick in responsible parenting, is applying enough pain to create empathy for other people, but not so much as to damage them. To oversimplify a smidge: Either extreme (no pain or unbearable pain) builds psychopaths. Still off of center, but not to the extremes, builds other serious disorders (PTSD, for one, though either neglect or abuse) as well as other issues.

When a baby yanks on your hair, or bites your nipple, and you scream or yelp & remove them? They get scared or angry & cry? That's a good thing, associating pain with hurting others, because it teaches empathy. 1,000s and 10,000s of times throughout early childhood, we teach empathy to our children, in our daily interactions with them. Good parenting does it well, bad parenting? It's one of the many, many, many things that abuse & neglect f*cks up.

 

[SunflowerHoney]

RussH said: ↑
While empathy can be learned, it cannot be taught. How do you teach someone what to feel?


Respectfully, I disagree with this statement.

"A Buddhist-inspired approach to this is to spend a whole day becoming mindful of every person connected to your routine actions. So when you have your morning coffee, think about the people who picked the coffee beans. As you button your shirt, consider the labour behind the label by asking yourself: "Who sewed on these buttons? Where in the world are they? What are their lives like?(BBC News, Can You Teach People to Have Empathy?"

This approach, extended more fully into your daily life can prevent you from leaving a mess on the floor in your office building because you are thinking of the person whose job it is to clean the floor after hours. Who knows what kind of day they may have? Taking a minute of your time could save someone else from one more stressor. I believe empathy is an easy to understand concept for most children. Giving people a foundation of concept learning and encouraging application in certain settings can indeed set them up to develop more and more empathy skills throughout their lives.

 

[scout86]

Are pts sufferers more prone to empathy than the "average" person,

Not necessarily. I don't "get" feelings real well and I'm not sure I "get" empathy. What I DO get is that life is more complicated than it seems from the outside. I DO get what it's like to be treated badly, and I have no desire to treat others that way. I tend to be pretty non-judgmental, but I don't think I experience empathy very much at all.

 

[RussH]

A Buddhist-inspired approach to this is to spend a whole day becoming mindful of every person connected to your routine actions. So when you have your morning coffee, think about the people who picked the coffee beans. As you button your shirt, consider the labour behind the label by asking yourself: "Who sewed on these buttons? Where in the world are they? What are their lives like?(BBC News, Can You Teach People to Have Empathy?"

While this will teach you respect for the person who picked the coffee beans, the one who sewed the button on your shirt, and can make you wonder what their lives are like. You can have compassion for their situation but compassion and empathy are two different things
Empathy is understanding the emotional pain another one is suffering. It is knowing what it is like to walk in that person's shoes.

We can learn, from history books, about the pain and suffering of people living in horrific circumstances, but this does not mean we know how they are feeling. We do not understand the scars they carry with them.
Senator McCain was tortured by the North Vietnamese, and truly understands how it feels to be treated that way. This is why he stands so strongly against aggressive interrogation methods being used with captured insurgents. He has an understanding beyond our ability to comprehend, and this is empathy.

 

[Truthful_Whispers]

I believe some people are born with empathetic tendencies, but yes, I think that going through severe trauma puts us in touch with other people's (and animal's) pain--particularly if it is similar to what we have personally experienced.

 

[deer_in_headlights]

I've been strongly empathic, for all living beings, for as long as I can remember. (Abuse started very, very early - in the crib.)

 

[SunflowerHoney]

While this will teach you respect for the person who picked the coffee beans, the one who sewed the button...

Hi RussH. I'm just curious, did something about my wishful thinking offend you? My comment about wishing people learned empathy at an early age came from a good place, from a place of wishing future generations could be spared some of the same pain we have all suffered. It was an innocuous statement.

Why are you so intent on squashing this?

 

[RussH]

No it did not offend me. I truly wish that empathy could be taught, but I certainly don't see schools as being able to do that.
I thought your post was very good, and certainly shows you as one with a caring heart; something this world could use a lot more of.

 

[SunflowerHoney]

No it did not offend me. I truly wish that empathy could be taught, but I certainly don't see schools as b...

Thank you, you're very kind.

 

[SunflowerHoney]

@RussH ,

Hi again. I had a pretty rough night yesterday and a hard day today. I'm wondering now if I was taking your attempts at discussion/debate as an attack. I really can't tell the difference at this point. I hate to think I shut you down or invalidated you. If so, unfortunately you would not be the first person I have done this to in my life.

I would like to offer my sincere apologies, if you feel this is called for. I'm new here and newly diagnosed. Most of the time I don't know what the hell I'm doing. :/

 

[RussH]

Everything is good and it was simply for the purpose of discussion.