Bad at caring about/sympathizing with people??

So the dealio is basically: I suck at caring about people when they're distressed. I'm usually pretty good at comforting people and giving them advice to deal with their situation, but somehow I just can't muster up any sadness or genuine sorrow when it comes to that person's dilemma. It's more of feeling that "oh your situation sucks, sorry that that's happening to you :(" than anything else, and it's gone to the point where I start getting super annoyed when someone is being too sad about something, especially if they've been stuck in that situation for a long time (i.e. depression, body dysphoria). Sometimes I even feel irritated that the thing someone is complaining about is somehow Not Sad Enough to be complained about, kind of like in a 'your suffering can be so much worse, gosh why are you being such a baby' kind of way. I guess it's because I've experienced a lot of things that someone is complaining about, such as depression/body dysphoria/abusive parents/etc, but I know that people still have a right to be upset about anything that's affecting their lives heavily, and in a lot of cases the situation really is shitty for them. I've never snapped at anyone for talking too much about their Bad Feels, thankfully, but I'm afraid that I might, and I really don't want to hurt anybody because of my own apathy and annoyance.

So basically three questions: 1. does not sympathizing with/caring about someone when they're distressed make me a bad person? and 2. how do I go about trying to care about someone's situation? and 3. how do I prevent not being annoyed at/snapping at someone for complaining about their problems?

 

well, the answer to question one is: no, it doesn't make you a bad person.

i'm not really sure how to answer the other two questions, but i'm a similar way, i think. i'm capable of feeling genuinely sad about things happening to people i'm close to and of getting feels about fictional characters, but i'm mostly numb when it comes to people that i'm not as close to. like, intellectually, i can recognize when people i'm not close to are in a bad situation but it usually doesn't affect me emotionally.

and that is something i personally deal with it by deciding to mostly try to help the people i'm close to instead of the ones i'm not, since the way they feel means something to me and i know them well enough to know what will or won't make them feel better. i don't know if that'll help you since your problem is kinda different, but that's what works for me.

 

Oh right, I should specify: I feel this way to all of my friends, whether they are very very close to me or just simple acquaintances. I think it's better if my friends are being affected by someone rather than something or a multitude of things, because then I can be angry about the person hurting them instead of dawdling around and being
':((((((((' at them. I do experience a good amount of worry over the people I care about, but usually that just turns into 'why are you venting to me about your crap day, now I am worrying and my day is going to be a crap day' instead of actually productively trying to help them.

 

as someone who is frequently punched in the feels by his own empathy, let me assure you that being empathetic is not necessarily all it's cracked up to be. secondly, I've gotta say that I don't think your lack of empathy matters, really. because, although you may feel annoyed with your friends for complaining, you don't show that to them; you instead do exactly what someone who's more naturally empathetic would do, without the push provided by empathy. your feelings don't matter, your intent and actions do, and both of those are good. I would even go so far as to say you care more about your friends' well-being than someone more empathetic would—at any rate, you certainly put more effort into caring for them. and I would say that the fact that you're aware of these tendencies and work to prevent them means that you won't end up hurting your friends, so I don't think you have much to worry about, honestly.

 

1. no.
2. this is gonna sound weird but i distinctly remember someone here on kintsugi posting about a way to train yourself to have emotions at will. but i can't remember who and searching words i thought i remembered from the post isn't turning anything up. anyway, if you really want to be concerned and sympathetic in appropriate situation, apparently there is a way to make that happen!
3. i guess the usual way you prevent yourself from snapping at someone?

also, hi, are you me? i get that, even with the people i'm closest to.

i'm also going to second @Chiomi 's post, because while it's not wrong to want to feel sympathetic, it's also not wrong if you don't. the most important thing is what you do when people are distressed, because that's what affects them. finding out what helps your friends, and then doing that, will benefit them a lot more than having the "right" emotional response to their distress.

anyway, i want to reiterate that you're not a bad person because of this--you said you don't want to hurt anybody, and you're looking for ways to make sure that you don't. so you're cool.

 

@anon person This thread?

 

@oph yes, that's the one! thanks.

 

Joining in to say that, no, empathy and sympathy are not all they are cracked up to be. I basically live in nigh constant states of emotional distress or upset and it's...exhausting and just painful. They can be helpful, but just the same they can hurt you and people around you.

You meanwhile seem to be aware of your potential flaws and you want to avoid hurting people and what not. That I think is more important than anything else. You can be the most unfeeling person in the entire world and so long as you did your damnedest to do good that would be ok I think?

 

TL;DR: Take care of yourself first. Acknowledge their pain, help them find resources, make sure they understand that you are not capable now, or ever, of giving them the kind of support they want, if it's emotional etcetra. Be up front. But don't let them suck you in.

1.) In my totally, unprofessional, very self-serving opinion: No.

2.) I like the airline safety rule, oxygen mask on you first, then everyone else. If you never progress and people around you die from oxygen deprivation? Refer to line one again. Still not your fault. If everyone is able, they should be wearing masks so you shouldn't have to do anything except maybe, "Hey, so, uh, you put that strap on wrong, lemme help?"

That help is in the form of, "hey man, your situation sucks, here's some resources." If they ignore or say those didn't help it's time for, "You need to see a fucking therapist. Here's a list of pro-rate, by income and volunteering people with Ph. D.'s behind their names. Do you need me to call them for you? Not today? Tell me when if you need it. And for fucks sakes, I'm not psychic, I need to know if you want me to help you, but I cannot, will not or even refuse to give you emotional support because you are triggering me too...like three minutes ago, I gotta go now."

3.) Again, refer to line one, if they try to guilt trip you. You just gave them all the resources for self help that you have at your disposal. You have no obligations to keep going. This is where I pull out, but not before pointing this out to them.

I frankly do not care if this makes them spiral further into their collapsing black hole, because at this point I'm in MY Oxygen Mask Mode with full-on Fire Retardant Suit, and it's not going to help anyone if we all get sucked into the bone crushing mess. At that moment or several into the future, they probably will think they bad thoughts and want to do bad things, and it's not my job anymore to make sure they are okay. That's where a professional comes in. (Speaking from personal experience here. What little "I care" dries up really fast and permanent for an individual, after a time.)

If it's a child or someone who is clearly not doing well, and my definition of not doing well probably differs significantly, then reach out to a local non-profit, shelter, 211 crisis hotline (A personal throw-out there, that shit works.) that specializes in children. I mean, I'm assuming (Oh, hey, making an ASS out of U and Me. Hi.) they can do searches online themselves if it isn't going to sap whatever/whichever/however they fuel themselves.

And that's important too. I usually try at least to leave with a warning, "Dude, don't do anything stupid. Just because I can't give you what you need doesn't mean others are the same, people care. I'm just not one of them right now. Or ever again, but dude doesn't need to know that.

Library computers are free to use...if they don't have one close by, I've heard that major grocery stores, and even McDonald's now has a crisis hotline.

 

1. Nah.

2. You don't necessarily need to intrinsically care. I don't, and I'm a pretty damn good friend / advice-giver / support source for the people I choose to extend those things to.

3. I handle this by being blunt/open about the fact that I don't really feel the empathy/caring that people often expect of their friends. This would be harder to do after-the-fact, as you'd have to do now, but I build it into my friendships from the start, which weeds out people who wouldn't be okay with that. When friends complain to me, they understand that I'm not particularly upset or emotionally invested. I like helping/supporting/advising people, so I do, but for me, them not expecting the performance of emotional investment makes a big difference in how tiring or annoying it is to hear them complain. If I am getting annoyed/bored, I tend to scale back my support and the time I spend with them until they're more stable or I'm less annoyed, sometimes making excuses about it if I think they aren't in a good position to hear me say "yeah your complaints are really irritating me right now so I'm going to half-ignore you for a while" (for instance, with friends who constantly worry that they're annoying the people around them or that they're too high-maintenance, I would be more likely to lie about that, because I find the outcomes are better that way).

 

holy shit are you me, bc wow we have same thing. I know the basic cues to make sympathy noises and offer reasonable things to help, but it's not out of "oh no this is making me feel for them, or feel bad about their situation" it's more of.. they're upset and making noise about it and that's annoying or frustrating so I try to make them stop as fast as possible.

ironically that winds up with me having a fairly decent record of being helpful to my friends somehow?? but then again people I don't know well can't tell it's basically a script I'm working from in my head so they'll stop, and friends understand it's the best my limited empathy ass can manage, and the fact I do the script long as I do is specifically because I like them a lot so they feel cared for.

two birds one stone even if I feel a bit like a bastard sometimes when I question how awful I am for not feeling it at all.

 

Glad to know that the answer to the first question is generally a loud, resounding 'no', because I had pretty much the same thought process but still wasn't very sure about my own answer. Also glad to know that so many people have had similar experiences with helping friends in distress while lacking sympathy for them, because omg, there are other people who feel the same way >:0

I think now I can pretty much make peace with the fact that I don't really have the capacity to feel bad for friends who are having shit happen to them, even if I do sometimes feel like an ass for either being very stoic about it or pretending to care and making the little sympathy noises so the friend wouldn't think I had abandoned them or anything. Thanks everyone for the advice and the shared experiences, they really helped me gain a better understanding of myself and how to help my friends better even without directly feeling how they're feeling :D. I think that focusing on the giving-advice part rather than the expressing sympathy part of the comforting really helps for me, since then I can offer solutions for my friends and feel like I've done a good job of support at the same time.

 

To the rest - good. To this part...

...the only thing I'd caution against with this approach is that a not-insignificant portion of the time, friends actually do only want comfort. They don't always want advice, because they may not currently be in a headspace where receiving and implementing advice is possible/desirable right at that moment.

I sometimes end up offering ways to solve problems that friends don't actually feel up to solving right then. It can make me extremely frustrated that they aren't carrying out/focusing on this clear and beneficial thing that will help their situation, and can make them feel useless/worse than before/not-listened-to because they just wanted someone to say "ugh, that sucks, I'm sorry to hear that, poor you, that's so unfair" for a while. So it's important to learn to recognize when friends are only looking for sympathy/comfort versus when they're open to advice/discussion. Often, when they only want to be comforted, you can let them talk and just make agreement/sympathy words/noises where appropriate. You can pay a little less attention when you're starting to get annoyed/bored.

Anyway! Focusing on advice is a good strategy a lot of the time, but needs to be counterbalanced by recognizing when that isn't the best course.