Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…
Being deeply closely related, it seems we humans are doomed to forever struggle between violent chimpanzees and highly emphatic bonobos.
Feel the same way as you, and I had to withdrawal as a child and now have mental disorders in the spectrum of schizophrenia. So anecdotally, I imagine that’s correct. The loss of boundaries thing is very real, I know there are some upsides to it but most days it’s hard to not feel like a curse
Just FYI "schizoid personality +/- disorder" has absolutely nothing to do with (the spectrum of) schizophrenia, they're about different things on different systems on different axes etc. And yeah, psychologist REALLY suck at naming things! And one of the reason to avoid ever discussing about "schizoid personality" with people who aren't trained psychologists since they're 90% likely to think you're talking about the…
There is a schizoid spectrum, which what people call "Schizophrenia" falls on. They do suck at naming things, that's a pretty fair point.
Why does stress make more empathetic people less kind, but has little effect on others? We believe this is due to a set of linked phenomena. The first is publish or perish . When a researcher needs a publication, his or her cortisol levels increase. This reduces the researcher's ability to empathize with the victims of useless scientific results, or their own future self when their work turns out to be a dead end. A…
The science behind it may be bogus but it did lead to an interesting discussion about empathy and self boundaries.
Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…
Don't numb it, master it and let it lead under control. Empathy is an incredible virtue, but it must be disciplined. I don't know enough neuroscience to know what the "right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex" is exactly but I know that you can over-ride/master it with reason and discipline. So I think there's something more to people allowing their better nature to slip under stress than simple brain chemicals. A colone…
Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…
> It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. So is intelligence. However on the balance intelligence is a pretty significant advantage. Empathy can be a super power for those who are able to control it - one that can be used for good or evil. Think high EQ, natural political instincts, very persuasive, ability to push emotional states onto people. The hypersensitivity you mention is the flip…
I think a big part of it is having a supportive and understanding environment growing up that helps you foster the empathy in a healthy way, while teaching you to build and maintain your own self boundaries at the same time.
If you didn't have that, it can be very difficult to change it as an adult.
Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…
I think that's probably true, but it's more about conscientiousness than empathy. If you're empathetic and lack conscientiousness, you have a great advantage in being able to "work" people. And you feel no guilt if things don't go well for them. On the other hand, you could be highly conscientious and lack empathy. You may try to do the right thing, but you feel guilt anyway because you're unable to understand why wh…
Hmmm, in my mind empathy isn't just cognitively understanding that somebody is feeling pain, it's feeling that pain on their behalf. Most people have that ability to some degree, but it's extremely magnified in certain individuals.
Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…
You shouldn't numb it, that's crazy. The best people on this planet care about others. The worst turn into Putin.
Numbing it was never a conscious choice, and it's not like I even noticed it happening while it did. It was a learned response to significant pain over years / decades, without having a support network to help deal with it in a healthy way. This is one of the theorized ways schizoid personality disorder presents itself, and it's not a conscious choice that people make. And it's not just a switch I can turn on and off at will, it's much more complex than that.
Cortisol can be very destructive. A lot of people are either unaware of high stress levels, or don't do anything meaningful to bring those levels down. I've been taking Ashwagandha and it works really well.
Psychologist measured that people differ by personality, and can be roughly grouped into 16 categories based on traits. I used to think everyone was more or less the same. I'm not sure if 16 is the correct number. But my understanding of the world has been helped by the concept that there are people that do and act in particular patterns. For example some of the battles on twitter that are going on, are just extensio…
Are you by chance referring to the 16 Meyers-Briggs types? It's been claimed that it's less useful than it is popular: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
I am myself very wary of this kind of personality tests but the case has been made in an interesting article that I can't seem to find that it is a form of "syntactic sugar" for the (apparently?) more established Big Five model. Anyways, I think OP's conclusion that it is eye opening that people have their own emotional structure/pattern of behavior from how they grew up and that you can find resembling patterns in different people quite reasonable.