Ask the Therapist
How Does a Person Become Not Caring for Others Feeling?
Hi,
How does a person become not caring for others feeling?
That's a very complicated question. Are we talking uncaring or
pathologically unfeeling? Uncaring can be a simple loss of interest or change in attitude toward the other person. More serious disregard
might be driven by insecurity, personal growth (which sounds backward, but if the person grows away, for better for worse, it's not),
socio-pathic development, re-emergent abuse patterns...any number of things.
To really give you an answer, you'd have to be more specific.
It seems to me that am not able to connect with other people feeling as if I
rather not hear it, as if it would be to painful for me or too hard for me to handle.
My dad was in a concentration camp and I did not want to hear too much of it. If I watch a movie like " Saving
Private Ryan" I cry like a baby.......... Some time I feel as I take on me the other person pain on myself.
I remember in NYC I did work for a guy who had a bad hand like he had polio at some age, he was a sculpture,
I felt for him and my hand was like his for some time maybe a week or so. I never abuse my kids, I never never hit
them or rage and don't use bad words....... but I also don't spend much time with them
and feel lost if they have an illness.
I wonder what will you make of this ( me ). Maybe I did not mature in some area......
You are describing a few different things here. The crying is one of two things...either you are a deeply sensitive individual or, more likely, you have trouble accessing your emotions and they come out spontaneously when you are confronted with someone else's strong emotional experience...that could suggest some depression -- not a diagnosis, just a thought.
The "sympathetic" symptoms you describe (like the sculptor's hand) are what is called a "symbiotic hysterical reaction". Plainly put, that means when you experience someone else's pain, you internalize and manifest or mimic their physical symptoms because you get emotionally overloaded and that emotion has nowhere to go. This relates to the first situation I described...it just shows up physically, rather than emotionally.
As far as you're indifference to others, I suspect it's more never having learned how to experience and be comfortable with your own emotions, rather than some deep, dark psychological problem...and this is just another version of the first two situations. This is very common for men - especially those of us who have grown up in a culture that is focused primarily on intellectual, rather than emotional pursuits.
Try this...get a little notebook and about every half hour or so, stop what you're doing and write down how you feel right then...don't think...feel. Just a word or two, nothing fancy. Do this for about a week. Get a sense of how you feel at different times during the course of your day. After a week or so, let me know how you're doing.
Thank you so much....This very helpful. Sound like you really took your time to read and write me back. I like the
way you explain things. From your respond am thinking that I take things too deep or will not take
it at all.......
And I suppose that I did not mature emotionally. Is the goal to get in touch with my feeling?
The goal is to find balance. Your thought about your
situation is about right -- too much or not at all. The idea is to find
the middle ground, to be able to experience the emotion fully right there in the
moment. I was thinking about you today as I was driving and it occurred to
me that you might benefit from reading a book Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly.
There is also the book Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Masculine Consciousness by Robert A. Johnson
that might be helpful.
