#on empathy

[fromadistantstar]

i will rip my heart out and remain the same

[youngpeachenthusiast]

looking for a bit of advice here.

does anyone else tend to feel automatically very upset when their friends are very distressed? like to the point of making my own symptoms worse and ending up unable to care for me or them because it just feels so awful.

not only does it make it hard to be a good friend but being chronically ill and always in pain is already bad enough as is.

if anyone here has any advice on how to deal with this i'd greatly appreciate it

[die-wunderkammer]

— Sosuke Natsukawa, from The Cat Who Saved Books.

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

someone got clips of simon stone’s post-premiere speech after the greek passion at the salzburg festival and i CONTINUE to respect this man IMMENSELY:

[rmscarpathia]

“These are the dangers of a wound: that the self will be subsumed by it (“personal vanishing point”) or unable to see outside its gravity (“everything led to it”). The wound can sculpt selfhood in a way that limits identity rather than expanding it—that obstructs vision (of other people’s suffering, say) rather than sharpening empathic acuity.”

— Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams

[rmscarpathia]

“My greatest wish for humanity is not for peace or comfort or joy. It is that we all still die a little inside every time we witness the death of another. For only the pain of empathy will keep us human. There’s no version of God that can help us if we ever lose that.”

— Neal Shusterman, Scythe

[thequotablescollector]

“Kindness begins with the understanding that we all struggle.” – Charles Glassman