[pransterrr]

You can't think your way into empathy, it's not learned. You're a human, first and foremost. Unless you're a psychopath, you've got empathy. Just feel it and don't chain it down with thoughts and rationalization. Simple.

[MissionPossible]

	Originally Posted by pransterrr To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You can't think your way into empathy, it's not learned. You're a human, first and foremost. Unless you're a psychopath, you've got empathy. Just feel it and don't chain it down with thoughts and rationalization. Simple.

Actually empathy IS learned, its simply not something that is usually learned in an analytically academic way. Empathy is often learned and developed (OR NOT) through life experiences. Some formal educational activities and classes can help people learn and develop empathy, but usually via well-constructed social experience activities.

Empathy is about understanding how and why someone could possibly feel the way they do or behaved the way they did even if you disagree with their choices or don't feel the same way about the situation.

In contrast, basic sympathy is innate because sympathy is merely about feeling and mirroring the emotions of others, regardless of any understanding or lack therof in terms of the reality of the situation underlying those feelings.

[pransterrr]

Originally Posted by MissionPossible To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Empathy is about understanding how and why someone could possibly feel the way they do or behaved the way they did even if you disagree with their choices or don't feel the same way about the situation. In contrast, basic sympathy is innate because sympathy is merely about feeling and mirroring the emotions of others, regardless of any understanding or lack therof in terms of the reality of the situation underlying those feelings.

Interesting, I've never made a distinction between sympathy and empathy before.

[FruitLoop]

	Originally Posted by Distance To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Any chance you could strip off the superiority complex inferences and the need to control?

This is your own projection. Discard what is not useful to you and collect from it what you need to move ahead, without making your own progress conditional on the messengers wordology.

Yes I can completely flummox any counsellor in minutes. I'm miles ahead of them, and when they DO show me something new I can move ahead and cover the entire topic in minutes word for word from their textbook without having read it. It's fun.

edit: btw, good article.

[MissionPossible]

	Originally Posted by pransterrr To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You can't think your way into empathy, it's not learned. You're a human, first and foremost. Unless you're a psychopath, you've got empathy. Just feel it and don't chain it down with thoughts and rationalization. Simple.

I realized today that when I responded to your claim the first time, I forgot to address the part of your point that had a kernel of truth.

The average human brain is hardwired for the capacity for empathy. However, that natural structure then requires data from life experience in order to develop actual empathy, which by the way, can be a positive or negative quality.

Many areas of the brain are involved in our experience of emotions. The anterior insula plays a role in our experience of pain and more importantly, in our experience of recalled pain and in self-refection and sense of self. Both the anterior insula and the anterior singular cortex of of the brain are activated not only when we feel pain, but are also active when we sense the emotions of others. In addition, this system seems to be naturally hardwired for persons or groups with whom one can identify. One other piece of the neural hard-wiring for empathy is the role of mirror neurons in human learning via mimicry. It is a significant point here that not everyone has the same capacities for mimicry because mirror neurons vary and because of our varied response to mirror neurons, the latter of which might be an issue of attention and reflection.

In addition to a natural structural capacity for empathy, the brain requires specific information to be fed to the system to make it work. In order to experience a meaningful and correct sense of the emotional experience of another person, there seem to be two basic requirements in addition to that natural hard-wiring. First, one needs to have a reasonably similar emotional experience of one's own stored away in memory for recall and comparison. Two, one needs to be able to identify with the other person or group in of themselves. Thus, our natural capacity for empathy is actually developed through our experiences of socialization and education. Those who fail to develop a normal sense of empathy tend to be those who experienced dysfunctional socialization and lack of adequate education and life experiences and/or organic pathological issues of the brain itself.

It is helpful to note that the popular concept of either having empathy or lacking empathy, can be rather misleading. It is better to think of empathy in terms of how much or how little and more importantly, in terms of what one does with that empathy. In reality, almost nothing is entirely good or entirely bad in of itself, but derives its end value from its relationship to its situation. Empathy and altruism, tend to be mistakenly viewed as uniformly positive qualities, when in fact, they also have the capacity to exist in pathological forms and degrees that result in problems and harm.

---------- Post added 05-07-2012 at 01:31 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by pransterrr To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Interesting, I've never made a distinction between sympathy and empathy before.

Think of a baby who is laughing until mother starts crying/becomes fearful. The normal response of a baby is to cry/become fearful as well. The baby doesn't understand the WHY of the sadness or fear, but feels a similar emotion via the work of mirroring neurons which aid in mimicry. Very young children and dysfunctionally immature and undereducated/life inexperienced people tend to operate in the more instinctive realm of sympathy rather than the more sophisticated quality of empathy.

[puddlejumper]

Originally Posted by Distance To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Empathy is really simple. Someone appears to feel sumthin' and if you don't understand, ask them. Once you've asked them sumthin', you acknowledge their feelings which doesn't mean you have to agree with their conclusions drawn. It's no different than having an intellectual disagreement where you agree to disagree sometimes, where you accept that there are other perspectives. Now if you really need to control your environment, then manipulation works. The price to pay for manipulation are your values. But then, not everyone has the same values and some are quite happy, hopping and skipping along, merrily manipulating people.

What's so controlling about struggling to acknowledge someone's feelings if their feelings and reasons seem foreign to you? Or, just plain over the top for the situation?

[Cat1021]

From what I've experienced with INTJ's, it isn't necessarily their inability to understand emotions, it's more of an inability to understand emotions outside of their own. My boyfriend used to get really confused about my emotions or if his actions with another female made me jealous. I had to constantly remind him that he might feel a strong sense of devotion and loyalty to me physically and emotionally, but how am I supposed to feel secure in that if he doesn't express that outwardly when I'm around and when I'm not around? Then I would try to use examples of times when he felt jealous: IE---"Remember when you told me x,y,z makes you feel a little jealous sometimes? It's similar to that."

It's as if they can rationalize their actions, but they forget that if you want people to trust you and treat you with kindness and respect, you have to remember that NOBODY knows what you're thinking and people know that people are capable of anything. So it's like an extra step. They have to develop a habit within their thought process that zones out their own logic and internalizing to think about how it would make THEM feel if someone did that to them.

---------- Post added 08-31-2012 at 03:20 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by pransterrr To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Interesting, I've never made a distinction between sympathy and empathy before.

Empathy and sympathy are very different things. Empathy is simply saying "I can relate to that emotion."

Sympathy is often synonymous with pity. It means that you don't necessarily have to relate to that emotion, but something someone is feeling makes you feel sad for them.

I can empathize very easily with people, but sympathy is very rare for me.

For example, I can empathize when people are upset at their parents. That doesn't mean that I agree with whatever pity party they might be throwing themselves, and I might try to be a voice of reason.

I have never been physically abused, but if a friend came to me with a black eye because her SO hit her, then I would sympathize. I might even break into tears at the story, hold them, comfort them, etc. I have no idea what they're feeling, exactly, but their rightful sadness would overwhelm me.

[sunitaishot]

Well, people with no sense of empathy are mentally ill.

[Huruma]

I don't claim to empathize with most of the humans but I think it would help to imagine the worst pain or greatest pleasure that you have ever felt and pretend that the experience is someone else's. If you naturally care about your own experience of pleasure or pain, you would naturally care about the exact same experience if it were felt by anyone else, at least if you had a vivid understanding of what it actually felt like. Caring about anyone else is just the natural extension to caring about yourself since the inherent goodness/badness of happiness and suffering is universal. I don't know how to put it into words.