Is this empathy? If not, what's the point of it?

There are pros and cons, but I’d have to say more pros to being able to feel true emotional empathy. You did a good job at outlining each of these, and while it can be seriously hard and painful, to experience the emotion of someone struggling, the fact it gives me the ability to be able to connect with them is something I can’t imagine living with out.

There has definitely been times where I’ve wished I could just be broken, I’ve literally said exactly this to my parents and psychologist multiple times over the years. I used to spend a lot of time hanging around the streets and rough people. I witnessed good people be traumatised and experienced a fair share of trauma myself. From 13-17 my closest friends where all older than me, and a lot of them had PDs like narcissism, they took my under their wing, and called me ‘Little One’ so I felt a sense of belonging. I wanted to be like these people. I wanted to be as charismatic and as mentally attractive as them. I wanted to be cold and not have to deal with these emotions, as it seemed far easier being cold hearted, than having to feel things like empathy, and it arguably is easier. But I remember being stuck at a cross road for quite some time, that still lingers to this day.

As I’ve got older though (I’m 20 now, still a baby but older), and have acknowledged and embraced my deep curiosity for psychology (something my experiences definitely played a part in), I have realised that there is nothing truely sadder, than being cold to other peoples emotions, and only ever being emotionally invested in oneself. Sociopathy and personality disorders, that inhibit people from feeling empathy, create lives that are unmatched in terms of loneliness.

As humans, all of us are the same. The number 1 thing I learnt, from my first psilocybin trip (solo trip at home), an experience I can only describe as a spiritual awakening, is that we are all connected and we are all one. Just like how every life form growing out the earth is connected through the mycelium network beneath our feet, us humans are connected to not just each other, but every other life form on this planet. Humans share 98% of the same DNA as Chimpanzees, 70% of the same DNA as slugs, and 50% of the exact same DNA as bloody bananas. We are all ourselves, one with each other, and one with life and the universe. We all come from the exact same seed. Every single human, that can feel empathy or not, doesn’t truely embrace this though. And every single human still hurts and hates, and judges each other, like we aren’t all the same. Our ability to have an ego has taken us away from nature and made us believe that we are individuals, which we aren’t. This has resulted in each one of us having some level of narcissism, and is why we should never judge anyone or anything, because no ones perfect.

Anyway I kind of really went off topic there lmao, what I was trying to say, is that everyone has an ego and therefor everyone is missing true connection. Most people can, and do however, feel empathy, and guilt, and remorse and most people have the ability to experience a sense of connection and belonging with each other. Lacking this ability brings some benefits, with majority of the most ‘successful’ people in terms of materialism, lacking this ability. This means that they will never experience true connection, and will always feel alone in this life, and will never be able to love someone or something else, as much as they love them self. This on its own is the definition of loneliness.

/r/sociopath Thread Parent