Fed-Up Empath

[quintessentone]

 
Feelings are internal -- saying someone makes you feel is incorrect.  How you perceive an external event is from within yourself.  Where are you in understanding your own emotions?

Being highly sensitive can be very dangerous.  As Jung/Yung says the road is long to get to the point of self protection.  A point of choice -- rather than reaction.

Absolutely, I agree.

Sometimes understanding my own emotional empathic response is a shock when confronted with someone else's tragic experiences where I can relate it to my own life or family.

Dangerous for sure if one has no self-protection in place, which I think I have to a certain point, but sometimes others' tragedies bring out reactions in me that take me by surprise when I put myself in their shoes. 

I have a support system where I can let it all out and get varying feedback from people with different levels of compassion/empathy/personal long life experience of tragedy, which gives me different perspectives of how others handle tragic or horrific events that befall them.

One of my support people is compassionate, but not empathetic, but has lived a horrific life during WWII as a child. Their outlook is basically 'toughen up and get on with it'. It becomes very clear when I am told "You are too sensitive" that that person is on different level of life experience than I am or that I ever will be, but it depends on the context of the discussion when they say that to me.

[ANNEE]

. . .  'toughen up and get on with it'.

Well, kind of, yes!  But more in the ethereal realm.

I'm just shy of 80-years-old.  Did not get where I am overnight.  

I had out of body experiences as a very young child, am probably on the Autism Spectrum, no real support system that could "reach me".  My brother was a narcissist, my mother used Shakespeare quotes as discipline.  I married a "solid rock" to find stability.  Worked for a while.  

As Jung says -- it's a process.  Your experiences can destroy you or you can make them part of your strength.

[quintessentone]

Well, kind of, yes!  But more in the ethereal realm.

I'm just shy of 80-years-old.  Did not get where I am overnight.  

I had out of body experiences as a very young child, am probably on the Autism Spectrum, no real support system that could "reach me".  My brother was a narcissist, my mother used Shakespeare quotes as discipline.  I married a "solid rock" to find stability.  Worked for a while.  

As Jung says -- it's a process.  Your experiences can destroy you or you can make them part of your strength.

I am a few steps behind you age-wise, perhaps slow steps, and of course toughening up would be in the ethereal realm at our stages of life? lol

I have not toughened up per se, but I think I am getting more and more empathetic as I go along because as I learn and experience more, I therefore understand more, which makes me see how things really work. We could be so much better, with so little effort by those who hold all the power.
 

“ Nothing has a more divisive and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections. This necessary corrective demands self-criticism.”

— Jung, The Undiscovered Self
 
"This understanding is the foundation of our work at The Salome Institute: True, lasting, and inclusive change does not unfold through divisiveness, nor righteousness.
 
But shrinking away from the current struggle and avoiding events in the outer world is not the answer either."
 

---

I will not shrink away.

[AlroyFarms]

okay since no one has said it it's "Jung" but pronounced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSEVKGI-MIo

german-swiss

I've always just been Jung at heart *shrug*

[ANNEE]

I have not toughened up per se, but I think I am getting more and more empathetic as I go along because as I learn and experience more, I therefore understand more, which makes me see how things really work. We could be so much better, with so little effort by those who hold all the power.
 
— Jung, The Undiscovered Self
 
"This understanding is the foundation of our work at The Salome Institute: True, lasting, and inclusive change does not unfold through divisiveness, nor righteousness.
 
But shrinking away from the current struggle and avoiding events in the outer world is not the answer either."
 

---

I will not shrink away.

Nor I.

I really can't be avoid of emotions and raise a high functioning Autistic teenager.

I swear they are an evolution of a new species.  How can their unique behaviors be so similar to each other.  

OK -- I'm gonna need to go read more Jung before I can tie that in.

Back to Empath, Empathic, Empathy.  I'm going to go re-read this thread.

[Sirius]

Wait a minute... 

don't get lost in the whirlwind

go here
https://denyignorance.com/Thread-Pity-the-fool

then here
https://denyignorance.com/Thread-Where-d...-come-from

and here
Raphael

[Sirius]

Does that not project the argument that "empathy" is not a "class of character" but a quality of choice?

In fact, is it empathy to just plain be nice?  Some would say yes, most certainly... but think there's an argument that "nice" can be self-serving in many complicated ways...

Is empathy an "internal perceptual level? Or is it a choice of how to be?

Not sure the "clinicians" approach is 'de facto' what it proclaims to be...

after all these medical professionals gave us robust scientific assurances about other things which, turns out, were utter bullshit at worst, or patently guesswork...

A short list:

"Homosexual Panic,"
"Excited delirium,"
"Temporary" Insanity,
Cannabis is a class-III narcotic,
We do not object to doctors participating in waterboarding,
What made COVID a "novel" emergent existential threat.
The W.H.O. is our "mothership," the insurance companies say so.
Treatment is the object of attention... not health outcomes.


Sorry if I seem jaded...

Same medications might suppress empathy, budgie made an interesting very short post about it. beta blockers springs to mind for some reason
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol

"Does that not project the argument that "empathy" is not a "class of character" but a quality of choice"
I pray for this everyday

[ANNEE]

I just want to say that an empath may not have the urge to jump in and save the day.

In reality a narcissist may be the one to jump in and save the day -- to be the hero -- to get the accolades.

I tend to stand on the sidelines -- watching that help is offered -- then slowly walk away when I feel its safe.

If someone is injured -- I do feel the pain.  If someone is given a shot -- I do feel the needle prick.