Hi I hope this isn't weird or uncomfortable or anything but I've seen you talk about empathy a bit before and you don't really feel it normally, right? It just stuck out to me because I also am like that and I've never actually met anyone else before who admitted to it and like, IDK, I guess I wanted to say that I like, see you. You can answer this ask privately if you want (or not at all IDC)
Aw, man. Yeah, that's something I'm loud about specifically because "admitting to it" makes some people label you a Bad Person™ despite 1) the concept of bad people being nonsensical in the first place, 2) it being something that's fundamentally innate and that I can't exactly change. It took me over a decade to come to terms with the fact that it didn't make me a monster so I kinda just. want people around me to know it's okay not to have emotional empathy and it doesn't mean they're predestined to kill people or whatnot. Not having empathy has become normal to me (as opposed to. having been a ~Shameful Thing~ I ~Needed to Hide~ before, I mean) so I'm specifically vocal about it to let other people know it's chill lmao
Gonna dump this here for whoever sees this who isn't aware before I get screamed at about kindness:
There are different types of empathy — grossly, there's emotional empathy (I feel what you feel, the ability to mirror someone's emotions automatically → one might cry because they see someone crying even without knowing the context, for instance) and cognitive empathy (being able to tell, based on logical reasoning, what someone feels → This person is crying, therefore I think that they are sad).
While emotional empathy is something that is typically innate according to most research, cognitive empathy comes up later on and is acquired, in big part during early childhood. Cognitive empathy is something you can (and sometimes need to) work on and improve, contrary to emotional empathy in most cases. It's sometimes called "theory of mind" in developmental science as well!
Compassion, on the other hand, is the conscious act of comforting someone, supporting them, or accompanying them in their emotions. Empathy isn't a prerequisite to being compassionate, neither does it make it inherently easier or more likely.
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