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Getting my empathy on
Kakodaimonos
Code fondlerHelping the 1% get richerRegistered User regular
Code fondlerHelping the 1% get richerRegistered User regular
So I apparently have a problem with a lack of empathy. It's never been something I've missed or felt like I needed and I can kinda understand what it is. I usually get along fine, but I've run into problems with this when I'm dealing with other people. So I guess the short and curlies of this is how do I learn to actually give a shit about other people and not just see them as annoying obstacles or useful resources?
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True lack of empathy lends itself to narcissism. If this is for real it's likely nothing you can just decide to turn on. You need to figure out why you apparently lack the faculties to care and get help to fix it.
If this is really how you feel, you should seek professional help.
If this is how you seriously view other people, you're not in a good place.
Words that come to mind:
Sociopath
Narcissist
Asperger's
These are not good things and only one is forgivable.
but they're listening to every word I say
I'm inclined to agree, although whether you are responsible for or can effectively control any of the three is something that neurobiologists will be debating for a long time. Sociopaths, and I've had the unfortunate luck to encounter a couple, are one of the few things that truly scares me. This is not to say that they're universally perceived this way: many are personally successful in, for example, business because they aren't constrained in their behavior. The problem is that, wherever they go, they leave a trail of scorched and salted Earth behind them. The best thing you can do is get out of the way and hope they don't find you.
Note that when I say sociopathy, I mean it in the sense of Dissocial Personality Disorder, and not the more serious interpretations (e.g., Antisocial personality disorder or Psychopathy). The behavior of people with these latter conditions is serious enough to warrant social censure, which is bad but limited. But sociopaths I've known could walk a fine line for a long, long time.
I dunno. I've shared house with some pretty huge assholes, and I couldn't feel much empathy towards them when they were having problems. It's difficult to care about everyone, all the time.
I've tried this. But I seem to always be so far off and wrong from what they do that I'm not sure what to think. I'm always just incredibly focused and efficient and I'm not willing to tolerate what I see as weakness.
Here's one example. I had a guy working on my team. His wife was pregnant and I guess there were some complications and the baby was born like 10 weeks premature. He was all upset and sad the first week or so after the birth and while I didn't really understand why, I let it go. But it just kept going and his performance was going to shit. So I just sat down with him one day said he needed to either get things under control or take unpaid leave. And then he got all upset and mad about why I was bringing this up. It's not like sitting around feeling sad and upset was going to do anything that would help. The kid was born and they were going to either get better or they wouldn't, but it really wasn't anything he could help with, so why worry about it?
So no, I don't really understand why people can't control things like that or turn it off. I learned long ago you can take any amount of physical punishment that doesn't kill you, but if you let it turn into something emotional, you'll never be able to get away from it. So you just shut it off, dump it, get rid of it. And I don't know why everyone else isn't able to just shut stuff out like I seem to be able to.
He's upset because his baby might die.
You should seek help.
I think this is the point that you really need to come to grips with.
Just like you seem to be able to shrug it all off and dump it in a pit (or not feel it in the first place), there are some people who are the opposite, they have NO control at all over their emotional state.
Then f course, you have everything in between the two extremes. Even if you can never get around the way you feel or do not... I think the biggest thing for you in terms of interaction is just a simple understanding of that fact.
If you sit down in a similar situation next time you should not be thinking "Man, why can't this dude just deal already", you should be thinking more like "I don't know why he can't deal, but I know that he can't so I'll adjust accordingly".
Now, the whole take unpaid leave deal may still have to come up... you are, after all, a business... but you could certainly have worked with the guy some, offering paid vacations (if you have any) for things like family emergency, etc... or simply advising that maybe he needs to take a bit of time off to ensure he can be theref or his family... the job will still be there for him when he gets back, etc.
You can say the exact same thing multiple ways, you just need to teach yourself which are appropriate to certain situations if you don't want people looking at you like you're a total douche.
The former means you need professional help, but the latter means you're just insensitive.
Yeah, I don't understand why he was upset. This was a problem that he had no control over and there was absolutely nothing he could do to fix it. So why couldn't he just let it go and deal with what happens as it happens? That's what I find weird about other people. They get so upset and worked up about things that they have no possibility of controlling. Or they get upset and don't do anything to attack the problem. Shit, let it go and deal with the consequences as they happen or smash the obstacles out of your way. Anything else is just being weak and irrational. All he did was spend 6 weeks pissing everyone off over something that eventually turned out ok due to absolutely nothing he did and all he accomplished was he got a reputation that eventually made him leave the company.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
Yea, you're kind of a terrible person. Scratch that, you are a terrible person. Good luck with that. This isn't about empathy and since you think it's fine to be so judgmental you're probably not going to change so there really isn't a point to this thread is there?
Either way, professional help should be sought. It's one thing to not really care about your co-workers kid, that just makes you kind of a dick, but the fact that you can't understand why he does care is a red flag the size of Ecuador.
1. Analyze the situation:
People will invariably start bitching about their problems. Listen to them for keywords like family members, tragedies, and any other assorted drama you might find on the jerry springer show.
2. Compare:
Compare that person's problem to something you've read or watched on tv. Tv is better because it's badly written and you get stuff like, "Jims mom died and that made him sad" instead of "...and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it." Lets face it, you need some amount of emapthy in order to understand what's going on in that last one.
3. return a value that isn't null:
When they're done talking, say "Yeah, that must have made you feel _____" where the blank is some emotion someone else felt in a similar situation.
If you don't know, the awesome thing about empathy is you can just ask: "Well how does that make you feel?" You might get a look of "are you fucking stupid?" in some situations, but generally, people will tell you because they like to bitch about their problems.
So, as an example:
"Jim, your performance at work has been slipping these past few weeks."
"yeah, sorry, I have a lot on my plate right now. My wife just had a baby but it turns out he might have baby-aids and we're waiting for the tests to come back.
"Yeah, that must be scary. You can take some time off if you need to."
Or
"How do you feel about that?"
"Are you fucking serious? I'm fucking terrified, this little guy's been kicking around in my wife's stomach for nine months and has only been out for a week and already he might be gone!"
"Oh. Yeah. That must be scary. You can take some time off if you need to."
(as you can probably tell, asking people how they feel is a great way to gather data for your database of stimuli and reactions)
Now, the bolded parts are those things that cause emotions in human beings. You have to relate them to certain emotions and then guess at how people are feeling. It's like a game.
Some pitfalls to avoid:
Don't parse the very first emotion-causing stimulus and ignore everything else. You might think that Jim is happy because he had a baby, and he probably is, but that's not the issue here. Remember that good emotions in people usually make them work better and bad emotions make them work worse. Usually. Also keep in mind that one stimulus can cause a wide variety of emotions and combinations of stimuli may cause different and unexpected emotions.
So there you have it: a beginners guide on how to seem like you're not an asshole when you're actually a cold, heartless robot.
There's "socially inept," and there's "annoyed with other people's insistence on having feelings." He's kinda past faking it here (and has said it didn't work in the past, hence his question).
Human connection is not a bad thing just because you can't understand it. Life isn't all about efficiency and control.
how does that make you feel?
Like advising him to get professional help.
I can understand that, but just because someone else gave some other advice that doesn't directly agree with your own it doesn't mean your own advice is wrong or ineffective.
Fair enough, and I apologize if it seems I shat on your advice, but I was worried that the OP might try again to teach himself to fake it instead of going to a therapist, and his problem sounds so severe that that's not a good idea, in this case.
I am not a doctor but this does sound like signs of sociopathy/psychopathy.
Oh, calm down. I agree that the guy needs therapy just as much as everyone else, but that advice was already given and I didn't feel the need to reiterate it.
Not that I'm out right saying the OP is a sociopath, but it is troubling.
Do you ever get stressed?
You are awfully mechanically with your way of thinking.
Don't be dumb. This isn't like, I don't understand why a person would be upset about some random person in North Korea they don't know dying. This is a guy not understanding why someone he works with's child probably dying is upsetting. You emotionally invest in your family and friends. It is probably biologically ingrained by evolution. You look out for people that help you and provide you support, and you feel bad when bad things happen to them, so you want to stop it. They do the same for you. Even without a biological component there is the general idea of the social contract. If this guy truly can't emphasize with people then he has a very big problem.
So, yeah, don't be stupid.
Hey OP. Do you have any friends? Close family relationships? You need to get invested in some relationship. Then you will understand.
but they're listening to every word I say
Sociopathy is a real condition that people are diagnosed with, and it doesn't mean you're automatically an inhuman monster with tendencies to criminal behavior. It's a different way that people see the world, and something to cope with in order to fit in with other more emotional humans.
Your issue here is that you're thinking logically, and when you don't throw emotions into the mix situations like these have fairly simple resolutions. In this case, if you don't have control over a situation, disregard the situation and continue with something productive. In a completely rational world where people have on/off switches for their emotions, this would work.
Now lets throw some emotional variables and structures in here. This is a guy's kid, so there's going to be an emotional bond there where this guy loves his kid and will worry about the kid's well being. As well, he's got an emotional bond with his wife, which causes the guy to worry about her well-being as she stresses about the situation in a similar manner. And that's just about the kid's well-being. On top of this, the guy may be concerned with the financial impact of this medical care, and there may be other variables in his life which you'll be unable to account for concerning the situation which is causing him to feel some pretty extreme emotions. This leads to him being a fairly upset individual, and not having control over the situation which is causing this cavalcade of emotions leads the gentleman to feel pretty angry about the whole deal. When an individual can't control the situation which is causing these sorts of emotions, they'll irrationally resort to what-if scenarios dealing with the worst possible outcomes, which in turn causes the individual to be more upset and the whole emotional buildup (without an on/off switch) will either shut a person down completely or force them to vent. It's sort of like a feedback loop with gain that you get when putting a microphone next to a speaker, only instead of a really loud screech, it's a really loud emotional mashup.
Now while this whirlwind is going on in his head, a person on his team tells him to either disregard the situation or leave without pay. Notice how that doesn't deal with this gentleman's extreme emotional buildup. Sometimes people need to vent these emotions, and for that you can sit them down and have them tell you their situation and how they're feeling. Sometimes people just need to know that they're not alone when dealing with them, and for that you just need to let them know that you're there and willing to help however you can. Your weakness in this situation is that you attempted to solve the problem of an inefficient individual without all the variables, without understanding completely why he was being inefficient.
Arguably, it's one of the best places for a sociopath/psychopath to be in.
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-unburdened-mind
Why? You can make decisions not based on emotion and only on the fact that you are going to make more money doing something
It would impair a person's ability to see some of the negative externalities.
Yes, and that's when people start to die.
The Pinto cost/benefit analysis is the perfect example of a sociopath in a decision making business role.
You can both be right! Let me explain using Jim and his baby as an example:
Jim's predicament undoubtedly affects the entire office. Just imagine what would happen if you fired him because of his output. People would be outraged! You can't fire Jim, they'd scream, he's got a baby in the hospital! At the same time, Jim's work really sucks, and you have to find a way to get that busted cog in the machine fixed while keeping everyone else from going absolutely bat-shit insane. There's a lot of social dynamics going on there, but at the same time, it's a business, not a popularity contest.
So, in summation, you need to understand people in order to make them do what you want.