Guilt and empathy

[TransientEternal]

Does anyone else feel like their guilt and empathy are slipping away? I used to feel bad when things like worms got accidentally squished, but now I can't seem to care even when humans get tortured on gore sites. (I should mention that this varies depending on the time of day. It becomes worse the deeper into the night it gets).

 

[hikikomorizombie]

!!!! mememe. except i think it's more or less totally gone atp. @ first i thought it was unfortunate, now i think it's more of a pro than a con

 

[heisenberg]

me three, i don't feel empathy when bad things happen to other people. i watch gore and it doesn't make me feel upset. whenever i'm having a conversation with someone irl about something that happened to them, i have to remind myself internally how to react. i mask my emotions well so they don't know i really dont care.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Yes.

After certain things I've been through I don't feel obligated to care about anyone else. I still will, but I don't feel the obligation.

Sometimes I feel Schadenfreude about other people's misfortunes. I can't say I like that feeling but people can't be judged just for their internal emotional reactions to things.

 

[R_N]

Did you desensitized yourself by watching gore stuff etc or it happened naturally?

My emotions are pretty tame compared to years ago but I still have them. I can feel empathy, not so much guilt tho.

I can care but I can often not care as well. What allowed me to have better control over my emotions is seeing myself as a human body.

 

[hikikomorizombie]

whenever i'm having a conversation with someone irl about something that happened to them, i have to remind myself internally how to react. i mask my emotions well so they don't know i really dont care.

omg same!!! do u also feel like u don't really feel any emotions anymore?

when i talk to ppl i'll change my tone of voice & facial expression according to the convolike i'll be shocked/upset/sad if ik that's what's needed, but i don't rlly feel it. it's almost as if emotions are now just smthg to scroll through & pick, like a catalogue.

 

[R_N]

omg same!!! do u also feel like u don't really feel any emotions anymore?

when i talk to ppl i'll change my tone of voice & facial expression according to the convolike i'll be shocked/upset/sad if ik that's what's needed, but i don't rlly feel it. it's almost as if emotions are now just smthg to scroll through & pick, like a catalogue.

You two are wearing very well tailored person suits.

 

[heisenberg]

omg same!!! do u also feel like u don't really feel any emotions anymore?

when i talk to ppl i'll change my tone of voice & facial expression according to the convolike i'll be shocked/upset/sad if ik that's what's needed, but i don't rlly feel it. it's almost as if emotions are now just smthg to scroll through & pick, like a catalogue.

yeah, i know logically when i need to act sad/surprised/etc. and just present myself that way and say things that i know i'm supposed to say. i don't actually feel anything and couldn't care less. i just pick and choose what to feel and when pretty much

 

[TransientEternal]

I don't know what started this whether it's my self questioning that started me watching gore or my gore watching starting my self-questioning.

Endlessly asking myself why. Why do I care about this? Is it because I care or another reason. I reached the conclusion that it's simply because we were designed to feel this way. Combined with my mentality that can be shortened to death takes all I started seeing everything as temporary. Pain will pass, life will pass, happiness will pass, memories will pass and then we will die. There's a lot more things to be said and this isn't the most precise reason. This is just what I can recollect in these short moments.

 

[dragonofenvy]

I think a part of it comes from the fact that nobody has cared about my problems, so why should I care about other people's problems? Part of it also comes from not knowing what to do about other people's issues. I've always just ran through social interaction purely logically with almost no emotion involved. "Oh, they said a joke, I should chuckle slightly to show that it was funny."

But as time went on I've found myself to be more understanding of people I guess? Not necessarily on an emotional level, but when they talk about some topic I'm able to logically understand where they're coming from even if it's something I don't agree with or have experienced. It's not quite empathy, I'd describe as detachment that let's me see things a little more "objectively" (I hate to say objectively since I don't get to decide what's objective). Maybe it's more of the logical robot component kicking in.

Sometimes though, I just feel that everything is so unimportant that there isn't a point to care. We have almost no power to change the world around us, or to change other people, and because we don't I don't see a purpose in getting worked up over anything since I can't do anything about it anyways.

 

[Final_Choice]

I do, and I don't like it. I didn't have much but I used to feel good about just actively listening to someone and helping them vent their frustration or whatever they're going through until they feel at least a little better. Now I just can't really do that anymore, I try to fake it but can't connect with others as I used to. I used to feel bad about what someone else was going through and could actually connect with them. Now I feel like I've lost one of the few things I've had.

 

[Buildingsandcastles]

I completely lost this since 2 years ago when I had ECT. Yet somehow I am very good at just acting like you're supposed to with emotions and mirroring/masking like some of you were talking about. Like people really seems to like fake me I almost feel kind of like a sense of dark ironic pride in my easy manipulation. But then I'm almost too good that when I do try to be real with my lack of emotions to try to actually connect/see if its possible they believe that is me being emotional/exaggerating/being hard on myself (or they want to believe this maybe cause it's easier?) so I just keep my exaggerated laughs and empathy and pretending to be human and care until I crack through the realness when I get too tired and start the whole process over again to zombie through like I'm supposed to.

 

[xmissellax]

Every day that passes my empathy diminishes. I find myself just not caring about a lot of things anymore and having a sense of apathy for life. Even my amazing support system, I kept trying to stay for them, but now the pain of living is too much that it bypasses a lot of the time how devastating it would be for them if I went.

 

[Captive_Mind515]

Nope, they're still there…

I do feel like I'm in control now though. When I was younger, I was less able to have a coherent internal dialogue about why I felt a certain way. My brain matured, and now I can rationalise a feeling or emotion and where it came from very well.

You can still have feelings, without letting them control you. I think this is the better scenario, rather than burying things and becoming some sort of robot.