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The empathy myth...just some rambling thoughts and a little venting

DogwoodTree

Still here...
[posting this here because my blog site is down for some reason...sorry!]

I think that, primarily, empathy is a myth.

I think most of us, NT or AS, can choose to treat people the way we want to be treated, and if we're doing that to a person who wants much the same thing we want, we come out looking pretty empathetic.

But if we're trying that same approach across a significant personality barrier (using "barrier" the same way it's used in the term "language barrier"), there's actually a huge disconnect. If, for example, an extrovert considers being dragged to a party when they're feeling down to be a good way to help them feel better, he might offer the same kind of "encouragement" to his friend regardless of whether the friend is an introvert or an extrovert. If the friend is an extrovert, then the dude doing the dragging gets accolades for a job well done when his friend feels better within an hour or so. But if the friend is an introvert, the dude's extroverted efforts come across as very harmful and insensitive...not empathetic at all.

As for the NT/AS barrier (again, using "barrier" as in "language barrier", not with the intent of condemning or judging either side), both sides attempt to do the best we know how with the way we understand what works or what doesn't. But both sides are fairly limited in being able to truly understand the other side and predict the needs of the other in any context other than our own...although we both can learn by trial and error, and we both have the option of giving people the benefit of the doubt just like you would when a foreigner says something really strange in your own language--you know they're coming from a different cultural paradigm, and that's okay.

Just as AS folks have to cognitively process what works and what doesn't with NT folks, and we have to memorize those rules because the rules NTs live by don't come naturally to us, so do NT folks, when trying to understand us, have to learn by trial and error and memorize the rules. Not saying either side is better or worse, just that we both face the same communication barrier when trying to connect with each other and live side by side. AS folks are in the minority, so this barrier becomes more deeply ingrained in our life experience, just as a language barrier would be a bigger deal to a non-native-speaking immigrant.

I'm facing much the same situation with my family. They're deeply enmeshed, with so very little understanding or acceptance of healthy boundaries that they can't even begin to wrap their minds around why we might choose not to attend a family gathering from time to time, or that we might prefer to do something just with us and the kids instead of inviting everyone along who can possibly make it.

Their underlying assumption about relationships is that "It is everyone else's responsibility to make sure that I feel loved." If someone in the family doesn't feel loved, despite honest, sincere, extensive efforts by the person they don't feel love from, then it is still that person's fault (not making this up--my sister stated this presumption clearly two days ago, several times in the course of one conversation).

For example, if my mom doesn't feel like I love her and respect her, regardless of all of my efforts to express my heartfelt love for her in authentic ways, then it is still my fault. That's what everyone in my family believes, and has said outright, over and over and over, even as recently as this past weekend. (Somehow, that situation is not reciprocated...that if I don't feel loved and respected, it's still my fault.) There is simply no sense that someone might have their own issues in being able to receive authentic love from someone who is very different from them, with different needs, priorities, and desires. So because I'm in the minority with my understanding of what love is (respect, freedom, honesty, responsibility, as opposed to theirs being obligation, enmeshment, always being nice, always feeling happy, no accountability for anything other than meeting their standards for love), I'm the one perceived as unloving.

The point is, they're living from a different standard, from a different underlying assumption about life and love. They have just as much difficulty understanding my actions as I have understanding theirs (except that I have come out of that, so I can still look back and see what the thought patterns and justifications were for me back then).

Among them, there seems to be a lot of empathy, because they all operate from the same premises. But their efforts to try to cross the barrier between us, or my efforts to try to cross the barrier back in the other direction...these messages always get warped and twisted. It never comes across as the originator intended.

However, when I talk with other people, people who have fought their way out of enmeshed family systems and embraced the entire concept of healthy boundaries, love based on freedom instead of obligation, those people hear me clearly, sometimes even more clearly than I hear myself. Suddenly, I see that it's not that I don't have empathy--it's that empathy is so very limited in its traditional use for the purposes of crossing certain boundaries.

Basically, it's not really empathy until we can each start to see life from the other person's standards and understanding, NOT just from what we would personally feel if we were in their position externally. Empathy requires connecting with their internal world, not just the external one.

So for example, this past week my mom has announced that she's angry at me for the way I did some work the past several months and feels I should have done it differently (even though I did what she asked for). My external empathy actually drove the way I did the work, thinking I was giving her what she wanted, asked for, and needed (and I still feel that way...I have emails to show this is what she asked for to the extent she explained what she wanted).

But internal empathy goes a step further and recognizes that she is reacting out of fear of losing control of the next project we're about to start. She has never had a safe relationship in which she was able to really depend on someone and still have things turn out well for her. She is acting out of fear, and the way I handle this situation has to take that into account...plus the fact that she can't admit she's acting out of fear and dysfunction. Her external empathy says, "Yes, I recognize that you were trying to do the best you knew how and that it was an act of love on your part." But her lack of internal empathy is actually communicating the message, "You're so stuck on acts of service as your expression of love, and your refusal to communicate love to me in the way I want (regardless of what I say I want) is leaving me feeling unloved and it's your fault."

She's not seeing the world from my perspective, despite all my efforts to explain my experience and reasoning and desires and needs to her. She can "accept" what I want to the degree that she feels obligated to try to give that to me, but she's not really hearing who I am through it all (she doesn't have to agree with me to do this...just understand my perspective well enough to truly accept ME as being different from her in some very fundamental ways).

She resents that I'm different from her. She wants me to see things her way so she can give me what she wants to give, which are the same things she wants in return, things that make her happy and that she wants these same things to make me happy.

The thing is, empathy isn't really about the things that we do or say, although those are expressions of empathy or a lack thereof. Empathy is about seeing into and trying to understand and accept another person's internal experience of the world. I'm not trying to change my mom. She can stay as enmeshed and codependent as she wants to...with other people. But if she understood empathy, real empathy, she wouldn't be so dead-set on condemning me for having a different internal experience of the world than she has. This is not judging her for her underlying assumption that other people are responsible for her feeling loved. She can believe that if she wants to. The problem comes when she thinks everyone else should believe that, too.

Expecting everyone else to process life the same way that I do...THAT is a lack of empathy. On the other end, demanding of myself that I make all of the adjustments and never expect anyone else to adjust to me, is also extremely unhealthy.

Understanding and accepting that other people process life very differently...and at least making an attempt to understand their internal worlds in order to find ways to connect through the communication barriers...THAT is true empathy.

At the same time, there must be balance...

I attempt to understand another person's internal world and connect with them in ways that matter to them, even if they're not ways that would work for me. But I'm still not fully responsible for seeing that communication occurs accurately, because they can still choose whether to receive what I managed to offer or not.

Empathy must be fully grounded in freedom, or it turns into nosiness, invalidation, intrusion, enmeshment, and codependency.

  • There's the freedom for you to tell me only the parts you choose to tell me about your inner world, and the understanding from you that I can only act on what you've shared with me. That is, I can't read your mind.
  • There's the freedom for me to respond how I choose to respond, in ways that are authentic to me, from a place of caring and not obligation.
  • There's the freedom for you to receive what I offer or to turn it away if you decide it won't be helpful to you...without repercussions from me being offended.

It has to go both ways to produce desirable results. Your freedom, AND mine. Your authenticity, AND mine. Your efforts, AND mine. When the demands are lopsided, when the standards are dysfunctional or weighted toward one party over the other...problems happen. And it's not really empathy.

Empathy is an effort I make toward you and offer you. But freedom is the only medium that makes the transmission of love possible.
 
It actually sounds like you have a VERY high amount of empathy on your part. Empathy is not about liking someone, or getting along with them; it is about understanding where they are coming from and why they act/feel the way they do. I don't think it has to be a two-way street. Nor, in my opinion, does love. And it's not uncommon for NT's to lack empathy, or be unable to express it, any more so than for those on the Spectrum. Hell, several threads here have made it very clear to me that empathy probably doesn't have anything to do whatsoever with whether you are AS or NT...you either possess it and express it well, you possess it but are not very good at expressing it, or you simply don't have it. As detailed as your story is, I can't make any specific commentary on it without making additional assumptions or coming across as presumptuous. But it sounds, to me, reading this post, that you have quite a bit of empathy, even if you still ultimately don't find the relationship between you and your mother to be a healthy one...and it's also okay to have empathy and still dislike/hold a grudge/what-have-you towards the other party.

Anyway...just my $0.02.
 
[posting this here because my blog site is down for some reason...sorry!]demanding of myself that I make all of the adjustments and never expect anyone else to adjust to me, is also extremely unhealthy.

This quote really speaks to me. I have the same thing happening to me all the time, it leads me to the same conclusion, the next guy doesn't have more empathy than me. I was considering starting a project with my brother, and he always criticized my taste in music, so we were in my truck and I had my mile long Johnny Cash playlist on. He started in, changing the radio channel every 15 seconds, never settling on any channel. I started getting pissed. I said: just listen to something. We got in a big fight. He put zero thought into it, I was offering compromises, like "when we drive in my truck we can listen to my music, and when we drive in your van we can listen to what you want." I suggested he build his own playlist, as long as it was good quality. But nothing worked, he just wanted to do whatever he wanted and insult me at the same time. Any music I ever listen to sucks, that is universal knowledge from his perspective. Suffice it to say, we are not working together on the project.
 
Any music I ever listen to sucks, that is universal knowledge from his perspective.

Yeah, this is the message I get from my family, especially my mom. Anything I do/want/prefer/think sucks (i.e., it's evil, crazy, or selfish) IF it's different from what they do/want/prefer/think, and even if it's what they asked of me or expected of me (because apparently I'm supposed to read their minds by thinking exactly the same way they do as a matter of course). She said this weekend, with a disgusted sneer on her face, "Well I can see we're just not living in "normal" anymore...you're just going to do this your own way."

Well, yes. I'm an adult. I'm supposed to do it (grow up, process old trauma and emotions, figure out who I am) my way and not yours.

I can't tell you how heartbreaking it was this weekend for my sister to tell me over and over that the problems I'm having with my mom were all my fault because if I would just manage to communicate my love for her in a way where she would feel my love, then all our problems would disappear. And all this despite the fact I've spent my whole life, especially when I was a kid but also to extreme measures as an adult, to try to figure out what she wants from me and give it to her because I so desperately wanted her approval.

But in the past year or so, I started realizing how dysfunctional that kind of orientation in our relationship was...I started trying to be more authentically myself...mistakenly believed she would be proud of me for that, too, because that's supposed to be a healthy pursuit...and was left reeling when I started realizing how threatened, offended, and rejected she felt the more "progress" I seemed to make. The past two years have been a process of learning how to love her even when I don't feel like she loves me or is pleased with me in any way, that she just wants to use me, that she will only be happy with me if she can control me, if I will submit to being a repeat of her...and realizing that I just can't go back to that.
 
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You and me have a lot in common I think. We're both in the south, I like in Oklahoma, and everything you say resonates with me. I'm 31 though, it's obvious that you've got a lot of experience. My family is nicer to me than yours, but I've met the type of people at work who want to control me. It's politics. The second they feel their control slipping, you are their enemy. I had a manager trying to give me orders just because I would offer to help out pretty much anyone, even after I was out of his department, and he couldn't handle not being able to control me 100% anymore, and it got ugly. Maybe that's how my brother feels too. I was a dumb kid, dumber than average, my early memories involve me staring at cartoons with a straight face and I could watch them that way, but when my brother was there he would laugh, and then I would laugh, not because the cartoons were funny to me, just because he was laughing. He probably feels like he had to teach me a lot of things, which I appreciated, even though he treated me like the brat sister the entire time. I just don't feel like I owe him anymore. My parents don't see me as a dummy, I guess they never did, but I think my brother might hold onto that image more than them. When the fight happened, I also had a lot more money than him, which I still have. I really don't see him catching up to me financially, unless some miracle occurs, and it's not because he isn't smart, he is better than me at everything except math.
 
Okay, this turned into a long vent...sorry. Slowly working through my emotional reaction to all the drama from this weekend...

My family is nicer to me than yours

You know, as recently as last week, I would have attempted to clarify that my family actually is nice to me. They are certainly very civil and self-controlled as far as making sure they appear to be nice...and "right". But this past weekend, I started to see just how much lying my mom is doing about me, to the point where my favorite sister, the one I get along with the best, said that "if even half the things" she had heard from my mom were true (and if only half are true, then why would she trust her at all??), she could see why Mom feels the way she does about me (that I'm not a "team player" with our work, despite the fact I worked very hard to take an extra share of the load last year so she had the possibility of finishing her work on time (and I did an excellent job and finished my project on time)...but she said I didn't "collaborate" enough with her, so therefore I'm not a team player...despite the fact she says it was the hardest year of her professional life and for most of that time, she wasn't sure she was going to meet her project deadline...but I wasn't dependent enough on her, and apparently that's how she defines "teamwork"=dependency, because she needs to be desperately needed in order to feel valued, even though I did confer with her a lot at first and only took it over more as she encouraged me to so that she would have more time for her other project...apparently I did what she said, but not what she wanted).

And my sister was "too afraid" to approach me about any of it, despite the fact I stood by her when she was in Mom's crosshairs 2 years ago for a different drama.

I asked her what Mom had told her. Of the three things she told me about, two were exaggerated and extremely taken out of context and based on false information, and one was an outright lie and I have evidence of that. During one conversation over the weekend with Mom, my DH, and me, my DH kept noticing how Mom would jump to false conclusions and false accusations simply to make her point, but when called on it, she would just apologize or give a little on some of the twist, without ever recognizing her own deceptive pattern.

And my sisters are jumping on that bandwagon with Mom because they don't seem to know any better...they're just thrilled to be the one-ups now, the "good daughters", the ones who can do no wrong, sitting pretty on their pedestals, while I'm the scapegoat for anything that is wrong, even other people's behaviors or dysfunctions (of course it's my fault that Mom feels so defensive towards me...and it's my fault that another sister is afraid of me and doesn't want to work with me...and it's my fault that Mom feels unloved and disrespected...even though I never lose my temper with any of them, and never treat any of them disrespectfully, just (trying to be more) honestly, and I certainly never threaten anyone, and I don't backstab like they do or gossip like they do. But I'm not playing their "game" anymore, so it's all my fault because I'm not playing by the rules anymore and not collecting allies and not manipulating people to make sure that battle lines are drawn in my favor.)

So...they're "polite", and civil, and appear to be caring and sweet and wonderful people. My church friends will see my mom or sisters out around town and think it's cool to have run across them. Because I refuse to resort to gossip, or Mom-bashing, or anything similar. (I talk about it here, with my DH, and with my therapist...and with one friend who lives out of town...so that I'm not interfering with Mom's relationships with other people, whom she tends to be very kind and helpful toward.)

The second they feel their control slipping, you are their enemy.

Yes, exactly. It's about control.

Maybe that's how my brother feels too. I was a dumb kid, dumber than average...
He probably feels like he had to teach me a lot of things, which I appreciated, even though he treated me like the brat sister the entire time. I just don't feel like I owe him anymore. My parents don't see me as a dummy, I guess they never did, but I think my brother might hold onto that image more than them.

I actually did better in school than any of my sisters did, but I chose a profession that isn't nearly as respectable and impressive as some of theirs (my youngest sister is doing the same thing I am, though...we work together for our mom). So I'm treated as a dummy, too. My opinion doesn't count as much as anyone else's. Without giving too much personal, identifiable information...one of my sisters seems to believe that she can give her professional advice to us about our family whenever she wants, and if we don't take it (despite my being well-educated or self-taught on much of this), then we're idiots.

Okay, rant over...sorry.
 
Now that's a rant, it does sound messy, but I can see where your sisters are just glad to be on the good side. It's horrible thinking that someone you care about is out there listening to bad things being said about you. I like how you're handling it though. I gave in a lot last year and talked trash about people (who deserved it) at work, but I regret it, because thinking back I feel like I could have just done my duty, only considering the behavior around me as to how it might affect my decisions, or whether or not to report it to someone, like I had done the year before, and I left that job with a clear conscience. A clear conscience is worth more to me now, maybe that's the only lesson I learned last year. Maybe that is a lesson you already learned, or were you always a good person?

Not sure why your sister feels the need to behave condescendingly to you. That would bother me a lot. I would think she would be so happy with where she was that it would make her more accepting of your path and choices.

Your mom sounds like she has a lot of emotional problems. There are still some people in my life whose true motives I still don't know about, but I think it's better if I don't care in some cases. Needless to say, they had screwy motives and made my life miserable. Your mom might feel she has a right to suck the life out of you, because she gave birth to you. My dad often treats his mother a like a child, he teases her, and talks all sweet to her, it sounds a bit exaggerated and weird to me. She has a lot of emotional problems, and has caused a lot of problems for my mom, maybe he recognizes that and doesn't want to encourage her to take herself too seriously. Your mom sounds like she is taking herself really seriously right now, and that's not good. Maybe a bit of exaggerated sweet talk would help? Stuff my dad says is like "Hello mother dearest, most wonderful, supreme, lovely, etc.. How - are - You - to-day?" it's disarming I guess. I like to think my grandmother doesn't talk too much trash about us.
 
Your posts ring true for my experience. I have problems with other people, particularly some family members who have very little empathy, can be downright callous, and project all their worst behaviours and motives onto me. I am beginning to think it is not misplaced empathy, or a lack of empathy, but rather some serious cluster b personality disorder. I have had a couple of drinks so maybe I shouldn't elaborate for the moment.
 
For example, if my mom doesn't feel like I love her and respect her, regardless of all of my efforts to express my heartfelt love for her in authentic ways, then it is still my fault.

She's not seeing the world from my perspective, despite all my efforts to explain my experience and reasoning and desires and needs to her. She can "accept" what I want to the degree that she feels obligated to try to give that to me, but she's not really hearing who I am through it all (she doesn't have to agree with me to do this...just understand my perspective well enough to truly accept ME as being different from her in some very fundamental ways).


I can totally relate to that. In my family (NT's with personality disorders) i would be called psychopath a lot because their idea of empathy was alien to me and i refused to behave the way they wanted me to. For example, i am not sad at all if a person i consider bad dies. My grandmother was an evil abuser towards her children, grandchildren and everyone around her. When she was close to the end we had to hire nurses because none of the relatives would take care of her, even if she offered money. And she was so abusive that the nurses resigned one after the other. My mother insisted i should go pay visits, i refused and she would call me psychopath ''who doesn't love their own grandmother''.This is a total fallacy to me. I understand the societal importance of blood ties but behavior is still the decisive factor to me. If someone abuses me i cut off contact and i couldnt care less if we share DNA. So when she died full of hate and bitterness i went to the funeral (as the social protocol demands) but didnt shed one tear. Again i was the heartless granddaughter.
I was crying for many days when my dog died of cancer. The NT family said i am some obsessed animal hoarder who puts animals over humans. They said it is just one dog. Whats the big deal? I answered: it was just one abuser. whats the big deal?

I cannot reason or argue with those people. We are not in the same conversation. They have personality disorders and zero intention to try to see the world from anothers perspective. If this type of person is called empathic then i am not empathic at all and totally fine with that.
 

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