We know that empathetic people put themselves in other people's shoes and experience what they are going through, but what does that feel like to you? How do you experience it? Do you ever have moments of uncontrolled empathy? Does it ever confuse you? Do you have trouble differentiating what you are feeling from what other people are feeling? Why do you think this happens? What is the psychology behind it? I've read a little about it and some articles say a history of trauma primes the brain to pick up and respond quickly to emotional cues. That makes sense.
Other people's emotions make me uncomfortable and anxious. I want to get to a point where I can clearly separate myself from others' experiences and process it correctly to offer whatever help is necessary. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. But I have trouble understanding those feelings in the moment. I guess these experiences are examples of emotional empathy, and not cognitive empathy.
I’ve been thinking a lot about something lately. Something that I usually brush off, or think is the result of a hyperactive imagination. Or maybe some kind of mental illness. I thought it was just social anxiety. I thought I was just naturally anxious and awkward. But what if I am awkward because I am picking something up and not processing it? But just trying to escape it? What if I just don’t know how to manage it, and so in certain social situations, I start to feel frantic and become skittish? Maybe I'm picking up nonverbal cues and not consciously processing them? I feel things after interacting with people that don't line up with the way people are behaving and with what they are saying. I always thought I was just socially inept, but lately, it's happened a few times--the person I've interacted with will inadvertently confirm that I was absorbing what they were feeling during our last interaction.
An example: A few months ago, I had a meeting with a new client and his mother. It was the first time that I had met them.
She was pleasant and polite. She was very cooperative in answering my questions. But there was just something so off. I felt so extremely uncomfortable with her, like I just had to get out of there. But it wasn’t because I wanted to leave-- I felt like she desperately wanted me out of there. She NEVER once said or even did anything to convey this that I recall. She was pleasant but seemed guarded, which is normal I think when you have someone you have never met come into your home and ask personal questions about your kid. She didn’t seem to really act any different than many of the other families I meet with for the first time. I tried to be easy going and informal and conversational with her, and still it didn’t ease the tension. I didn’t know why I felt this tension. But this is how I felt: I felt like I was some type of threat. And that made me feel guilty and wrong and confused. It made no sense because I felt like I was there to help.
I couldn't make sense of my reaction. These were nice people, I never thought they meant me any harm while I was in their home. I was really puzzled by this for weeks until my next meeting with her. At my next meeting, she opened up and confided that she had been abused by her son's father, her ex-husband, and that since leaving, he used the legal system to victimize her through the courts. She explained that she was afraid when she met me that her husband would somehow find a way to badger her through my involvement with her son. And it made sense then, that what I was feeling when I met with her, was what she was feeling.
It's happened online. Someone posted a response to me on a forum in a thread I created and I just remember reading the post and feeling like a huge emotional blowback. It was like a psychic- energy explosion. I read their post several times over and the words didn't line up with my reaction to the post. I thought I was imagining it and it confused me. The content did not match my reaction to reading it. So I didn't say or do anything, but just kept this all in the back of my mind. Then, MONTHS later, in a PM, this person inadvertently brought up the post and told me they were feeling very strongly when they posted it. This was not a controversial thread topic.
Those are just two examples. The most recent ones. They are salient because the people later confirmed what I experienced.
Anyway, please share your thoughts and experiences.
