The perspective box

A thread for outside opinions on whether or not what you're feeling is status quo or not. Think of it as an "am I the asshole?" Thread but for everything.


For my part: I'm starting to think the severity in which I mirror other's emotions isn't normal or cash money of me? My boss is incredibly stressed at work, and pissed off because other departments keep shoving off all their work on her. I myself am seeing this and while at first I assumed it was empathy and that I am pissed on her behalf, it seems more and more that I'm just angry and scared because she's angry and scared, and I can't find my own feelings about it. Is this normal?

 

It does! It's not quite a "things are harder for her so it's making things hard for me as runoff", my job and tasks are essentially unchanged; but I wouldn't have thought of that example so that ticks off a box.

It's more like, I can see she is sad, overwhelmed, and discontent so I'm like. Matching her? To comfort her? But I'm doing it on an uncontrolled and involuntary level that I don't notice unless someone points out I am doing it. example: Precious is crying because she lost the chance for a grant to do a project she wanted to introduce to the community because she was covering a bingo game that was supposed to be run by another city member. I don't particularly think this grant project was as fun as she did, but I am also crying and feeling bad we don't get to do it. I'm really torn up about it but I can't really tell why other than she's sad about it.

But. I really, honestly have no investment in this thing, and my mom reminded me of that. Still sad, but less sad? This isn't even restricted to my work either. It just is.

 

This sounds a lot like what my sister and I call "sponging", which is enough of a bad thing that we have a word for it just in case >_>) Sorry if this is reading between the lines, but you sound like you have an emotional hangover after these things happen, which already makes it sound bad and draining even if it theoretically is helpful. Being so emotionally overwhelmed you feel drained by the feelings is bad in general, not just when it comes from runaway empathy.

IDK what practical advice to give other than "you'll probably be more help if you manage to modulate the way you express your feelings anyway" cuz IDK what would really work as emotional modulation for you -- but figuring out ways to act calmer will also make you feel calmer, because brains work on stupid feedback loops like that.

 

This has helped tremendously so far, actually. Like. I've been told from a young age that I'm incredibly immpressionable, so just researching behavior I can choose to practice makes me function better as well as feel better (which is something I've started to recently notice). Is there such a thing as an honest lie? That's how I'd describe it.

A coworker was telling me the other day that customer service doesn't count as lying, and I was like, "yeah cause I really do want to help people, and want them to have a nice day even when they yell at me" and she goes. No??? You just tell them those things so they want to use our services again and you don't get fired for being rude??? I don't get it.

I'm starting to think I don't understand emotion at all. If I have to tell myself to be happy, and then I am, is it real??? I'm not sad before hand, I just exist and it's nice and then people want face and I go. Does that make sense?

I kinda feel like sociopathy is a thing relevant to me sometimes, but I fail all the tests and don't match it's described symptoms when I research it.

 

Yeah like I have low empathy, and I can tell from experience that low and high empathy coping often looks very similar. Low empathy can often end up compensating into people-pleasing because making people happy with you means you've got less friction interacting with them, and like you described just now, high empathy makes you more directly aligned with the needs being performed at you, resulting in the same.

In principle there's nothing wrong with having a "well I do want this person to have a good day even when they're a dickhead to me" response to other people's negative affect and there's nothing wrong with helping people primarily out of the joy of helping, but the trap there is that a lot of times the most productive and overall helpful response has very little to do with whatever they might be feeling. Like, I'm sure you've run into situations where someone gets exactly what they want and they're still mad and upset because they weren't sufficiently emotionally reassured and instead were just handed a practical solution? That's not a situation that can be navigated with empathy alone, and depending on your role as customer service staff or a helper is to provide practical solutions, so being asked/forced to perform emotional reassurance instead is just taking away from your time doing the thing you're being paid for.

Furthermore people's feelings are contradictory. There's a Tumblr post that, paraphrased, goes "I don't want my worst impulses to be policy, but I can still acknowledge those impulses existing -- as a person in a society I want everyone to be treated fairly but as an ape I want to beat the shit out of people cutting me off in traffic", and a lot of people who have hot-running tempers have this issue. Like the actual solution that doesn't feel like a solution in the absence of emotional reassurance, there's also situations where people mistake receiving emotional reassurance for a real solution and won't be able to even recognise when a problem has been solved for them, or in fact when a problem has given birth to a litter of new problems because they just wanted to feel reassured.

Hell, a lot of times people don't know what they're feeling. Telepathy isn't real -- what you as someone with high empathy are picking up on are behaviours and expressions that act as markers for feelings you are familiar with, emotional "stances" if you will, and experiencing the emotions that accompany those behaviours and expressions for you, and then expressing those feelings back. I'm sure your mirroring isn't perfect -- in fact, that's kind of the expression I get from you describing mirroring the emotion back stronger and being overwhelmed in the process. (I'd be curious to know how you respond to someone like me whose main expression of anger is to get very friendly and cheery and overfamiliar with people, actually.)

So, like, yes -- managing people's feelings is and can be useful and can be harnessed into a skill, but also it's not a skill that will help you in every instance even under ideal circumstances where you have emotional bandwidth to be assuming other people's emotional stances all the time. Combine that with how all feelings are valid, but most of them are not useful or relevant, and hopefully my point about how whether or not you're navigating other people's positions from a place of no empathy or a place of all of the empathy, you're still shit out of luck.

What was the point I was trying to make? Ah yes -- emotional intelligence in the form of appropriate emotional response is, in my opinion, very overrated as a tool for actually getting along with and helping people. If you have it, good! It does sound to me that you're probably good at it, but you shouldn't feel obligated to use it to solve all your socialisation issues. It's not a panacea, because people's emotions are stupid, and mirroring stupid back at stupid only results in twice the stupid. Closing yourself off from being taken for a ride by other people's affect is fine.

 

It'd be, "oh good they're not mad. I might be mad at thing (insert thing), they have a lot of patience!"

I can still get the job done with scripts when needs applied, like when I read someone coming in hot but needs a fax done or to look up a book, or who knows what - I just feel like shit after. Not because I feel bad they were kinda snippy or yelling at me, but because I feel that I didn't 'help' good enough. I can recognize that bit a good most of the time, but it's a work in progress

This actually explains a lot, I've seen this and always assumed they were having an overall bad day or wanted something done in an impossible way so when it did get done but differently (or couldn't be done), they felt accordingly.

I tend to take everything at face value, and I'm starting to see assigning people emotions at face value is. Not correct? Unhelpful? I just. I struggle

It also doesn't help that with the very few people I act like myself with, I tend to not be very "socially appropriate" with. Or whatever. My best friend says he likes it cause I'm funny and his family says I'm kind and loud. It's nice.

You also may notice the shortage of "I feel like" and "I am" statements, I'm not good at knowing what I'm feeling, myself