For most of my life I considered myself what some call a psychic empath. For those who don’t know what that is, simply put, it’s someone who has such a highly honed sense of empathy, or the ability to read other people’s emotions, that they sometimes have “psychic” or unexplainable insights into what what people are going to do, or put another away, unexplainable predictive capabilities.
Here’s one such example. When I was in my twenties the woman I was infatuated with was seeing someone else. Obviously, I didn’t have good feelings about it, after all, I wanted me to be with her not him. But even at a far distance I had a feeling something “not right” was going on. Then one night, after I’d left town for a few weeks during summer break so I could try to reset, I had a dream where I met her beau. Something was just off when he introduced himself; I had this impending sense that she was in some kind of danger. I woke up and my sense of self-need completely left me. I had to do something to help. So I borrowed one of my parents cars, as I didn’t have one at the time, drove the two plus hours to her apartment, knocked on the door, told her I dreamed of meeting John, and that I wanted to warn her. Her jaw dropped. Up until that time I hadn’t known his name. I said my goodbyes, got back in the car, and drove back over the mountain pass to my parents’.
With some age and cynicism I recognize that the odds of my subconscious being right about the name were pretty high given the prevalence of the name John, but I don’t discount my consistent ability to recognize subtle patterns and predict future outcomes. In fact, over the years I’ve been able to explain it in more and more scientific terms. As someone that grew up in a household where emotional violence wasn’t uncommon, I had to learn, early on, to predict family drama in order to protect myself. Since the queues were things that would be missed by your typical person, I have, since my earliest memories, honed my ability to predict the seemingly unpredictable. Later in life I learned about “mirror neurons” in our brains: these are specialized areas of our brains that help us “mirror” other people’s emotions; they’re the basis for empathy. As with any other cognitive trait, I’d trained this area of my brain early on and as such, by the time I was in my twenties, they could bench press a Sherman tank. As my journey into recognizing my existence on the autistic spectrum became a thing I learned that super hero levels of pattern recognition are a standard trait for anyone on the spectrum—it just happened that mine had been trained to observe, feel, and predict, the emotions and behaviors of other people (as opposed to being focused on gaining an insane level of expertise on an interest or hobbies, as is stereotypically the case with autistics). Scientifically speaking it all makes sense.
As many of you have noticed, there’s been a lot of criticism of empathy in the news lately. Elon Musk, for example, sites empathy as threatening western civilization (no surprise, his type of autism is defined largely by a lack of mirror neurons, as can be observed in his interest, behavior, and decisions). I heard an evangelical pastor on a podcast this week who stated flatly that empathy is a “sin” (anything you hear someone throw out this word a red flag should go up) and that it leads to Jezebel wives who will infiltrate and destroy good Christian families. None of this surprises me: for years, anytime I’ve tried to connect with MAGA republicans, my most frequent observation is a completely lack of empathy for anyone outside of their tribe. As long as something didn’t directly (and obviously) affect them, why give a shit?
I could discuss the right wing’s general lack of empathy in excruciating detail but I’ll leave that for another day (and pot of coffee).
I’m the last person to suggest empathy doesn’t come with its downsides, especially when one has it at super human levels. I can’t walk into a public place without having to forcefully shut out the cacophony of emotions spilling out from everyone around me. This wasn’t automatic when I was younger. Autistic overstimulation anyone?
Here are just a few, briefly described, ways empathy has negatively impacted my life (especially or specifically when I was younger and less mature in my ability to consciously control it):
- Difficulty differentiating my own emotions from other peoples.
- Propensity towards putting other people’s thoughts, feelings, and needs before my own.
- Heightened need to avoid conflict or, in general, social situations where others are experiencing negative emotions.
- Regular anxiety about what other people think and feel about me, especially when a) they’re not around and b) they have some level of perceived control over the quality of my life.
- Being more easily manipulated by people who, whether consciously or subconsciously, target me as an easy mark.
And that’s just a a few. So yeah, I can see how someone might automatically assume empathy is not just a weakness, but maybe even a “sin”—especially men who for some reason think being an Alpha male willing to destroy anyone that gets in their way. But, as with many a conservative view, this is short sighted, black and white thinking. Empathy also has many positive traits:
- Social bonding.
- Ability to stand up for social justice issues, even ones that don’t directly benefit oneself.
- Ability to positively influence others in a way that also results in positive results in one’s own life.
- Improved ability to work well with others, both as a leader and a team member.
- Heightened communication skills.
- A leaning towards peaceful diplomatic skills.
- Heightened intimacy.
- Great sex!
The White House just posted on Facebook that ICE has arrested someone for distributing Fentanyl. They end the post by bragging that they’d made the woman cry. Let’s forget, for a moment, to ask ourselves the very real question: did she really do what they’ve accused her of? That’s a different conversation regarding appropriate use of law enforcement. What’s of interest to me is the need to brag about making someone cry. Honestly, the last time I saw this kind of behavior was in middle school by two bullies that decided to spend a week beating the shit out of me while my school mates ignored it for fear of retribution. It’s a prime example of what happens when someone lacks empathy and it’s not, in my experience, a character trait most people have any respect for. Those without empathy tend to be bullies, narcissist, cheaters, liars, con artists, and abusers. They’re not my kind of people. And they shouldn’t be yours either.
…ask…