General Empathy?

[Deleted member 1860]

In essence, the military turns them into sociopaths so they can do their jobs correctly.

Are you serious? Do you even know the clinical part of what a true sociopath is?!? This is one of the craziest statements I have ever heard!

I think you should go public with this statement. Spread fear into the lives of everyone, letting them know that the government is putting the most destructive weapons on the planet in the hands of "sociopaths"!

Please don't throw around psychological terms like that. It perpetuates this misinformation about PTSD!

 

[rightkindofme]

Ok, I will say that sociopath probably isn't the right word for what the military does to people. But it does deliberately train feeling numb.

 

[monicaelise]

Are you serious? Do you even know the clinical part of what a true sociopath is?!? This is one of the craziest statements I have ever heard!

sociopathy
[sō′sē·op′əthē]
Etymology: L, socius, companion; Gk, pathos, disease
a personality disorder characterized by a lack of social responsibility and failure to adapt to ethical and social standards of the community.


Learning to kill without remorse is a learned sociopathic behavior. The reason so many of these men fall apart when they re-enter civilian life is precisely because they've learned to override the normal ethical and social standards of their respective "peace time" communities. That is the essence of what it is to be a sociopath. In any other time or place, the things they must do to do their jobs properly would land them in jail or worse.

You can't have life experiences like that without it taking a toll, so while you may be offended by the characterization, sociopathy is exactly what they're trained in. If it were their normal, default state of being they wouldn't come back with so much baggage. No one ever said any of these men were innately sociopathic. If they had been, they wouldn't be suffering the way they do when they come back.

With that, I stand by my original choice of terms and I'm as serious as a friggin' heart attack.

 

[ninja]

Maybe he was referring to the sense of isolation he may have felt due to his job/certain events having left him with sets of memories that fall so far "out of the ordinary"? I find that it is sometimes very hard for me to have compassion for others when they complain about certain aspects of their lives that have caused them emotional turmoil, but to me seem rather innocuous. In those instances, I seemingly cannot empathize because I begin to get so wrapped up in some of my own issues.

I do often wonder if the above is an attempt to protect against empathizing too much, as I am also an empathetic type and have trouble modulating it.

 

[BewitchedBewildered]

Thank you so much for all of your honest feedback. It has helped me.

 

[TLight]

I was recently married to someone who had no ability to feel empathy. He did not have ptsd, was highly functioning and would like be diagnosed as a narcissist. Truly had no empathy, just no ability to feel for others. He'd stand next to me in a horrible flashback and just say, "I don't feel anything."
Don't get involved with narcissists. They lack the ability to see that others have needs or feelings.......and take no responsibility for hurtful actions, in most cases they blame it on you.

I feel tons of empathy......almost picked up a homeless vet on the side of the road a few weeks ago. The only thing that stopped me was my fear. I think most of us have more....even vets.

 

[BewitchedBewildered]

Thank you. My ex would explain that as a PTSD issue, but honestly he did not act like he had no empathy. He is always taking on other people's problems and doing things for people. When he would say it, it sounded more like how he wanted to be or maybe how he felt when he shut down.

I wish now I had asked him more about it. He is isolating and I am worried. For some reason understanding his PTSD helps me deal with him walking away from me like he did.

 

[Sweetpea76]

Social responsibility - an ethical theory that an entity, be it an organization or individual, has an obligation to act to benefit society at large.

Ethical standards - rules and regulations that establish acceptable conduct.

I do not believe military personnel are trained to sociopaths in the least bit. They are not trained to go out and kill kill kill indiscriminately. They are trained to engage in combat with an enemy force. They are in essence protecting their society (be it their country or their military unit). It's not murder, it's warfare. In times of war, that is the ethical standard for a soldier.

As far as the empathy goes, combat PTSD sufferers also had to learn to turn off their emotions in order to focus and survive, and that behavior was rewarded and reinforced when they made it out of there alive.

Furthermore, there is a lot of guilt involved with combat PTSD sufferers. Yes, some of it may be guilt over killing enemy combatants, but a lot of it is survivors guilt. It may also be guilt over actions that inadvertently caused the death of their brothers. Whatever the case may be... when they felt empathy for these deceased, they felt crushing guilt.

I agree with some of the statements above. Combat PTSD is not the same as PTSD from other traumas.

 

[twopenny]

My experience is that combat and non-combat PTSD are very different.

I don't think soldiers (or other military) are trained to be sociopaths. I think they're trained so that they react in a certain way on instinct, so that they can take action in a nano second, without thinking at all, in order to survive.

I heard a lecture once, given by one of the military historians at Sandhurst (the British Army officer training school, aka the factory). He said that it was thought that something like 10% - 20% of the soldiers in WWII, and other major warfare (before modern computerised war and reduced army sizes), were sociopaths, and that they were responsible for the bulk of the actual killing (outside of 'kill or be killed' situations).

I know that my hub can empathise - too much if anything. There are times he can't, because it's too much, and he switches off like a light being turned off, but most of the time, he empathises more than most people I've met.

I know he's killed a lot of people (not sure how many), and this is one of the things that tears him to pieces - the fact that he did what he did to other human beings (he's told me). If he were a sociopath, even partly, there's no way he could feel that.

 

[71nothing]

I am not a sociopath nor am I a combat vet. Empathy is very hard for me. I have a difficult time recognizing and experiencing emotion in myself so to take on and recognize emotion in someone else is often way overbearing. I am not an uncaring person. In fact people often come to me in emotionally charged situations because I can keep emotion out of it and help them see all points of view, listen to all sides, and give a strictly cognitive opinion. You can lack empathy without being a sociopath.

 

[HëllaBubz]

Well, before this turns into a cat fight.......

Here are a few things to consider......

Displaying components or behaviours of a personality type, does not make you that type. IE, displaying a learned personality trait associated with a sociopath does not make you a sociopath.

Being 'Like" does not translate into "Are", and it's worth remembering that.

Secondly, we often accuse people who haven't been through the domestic traumas that we have, of not truly understanding why we are affected the way we are. We should be very careful not to do what we hate the most to people who, like us, have PTSD, but have obtained it in an entirely different manner.

Finally, combat veterans are/were humans before they received training that would allow them to operate the most efficiently with least damage to themselves. 'Sociopathic' thought processes and behavior that is instilled into these people is, for the most part, broad spectrum and designed with minimizing mental and physical injury, whilst maximizing the effects on the enemy.

Any 'interactions' between personality and behaviors taught is purely individual, and therefore the term 'sociopath' cannot be applied to an industry specific area, but rather to specific personalities which trend towards sociopath behavior with or without the assistance of reinforcing training.

Do I make any sense, or have I tied myself into a granny knot?

 

[mamachick]

Tlight-I have had same experience