The empathy lie

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Being considerate and understanding that people have feelings and being aware of how to relate to people according to their feelings is what I would call healthy

It might fall under the heading of empathy for some people but I just call it being a decent human being

What you have written is very helpful to me, Tamaya, so thank you truly.

I do this too I do this with factual things and emotional things. It is my instinct to articulate the extent of my understanding so the other person knows and can correct anything I've got wrong, and so we have a level of shared understanding to work with. But with factual things it can seem as though I am making pronouncements from on high, and with emotional things it is not always appropriate.

I don't always remember to talk phatically, and sometimes I overcompensate and am too phatic. And then social speech has a lot of built-in messages about feelings that are conventional rather than literal. But I can't say it unless it is truth to me and then it is very vivid. So the language I use can muddy my understanding of the social space I am attempting to navigate by introducing emotional noise, even if it seems neutral to an NT. And at that point what the feck is happening in my head, who knows.


I think this is so lovely.

Your feelings are admirable and I admire also how vividly you convey them in words.

This is a frame of reference that makes more sense to me.


This is the scary bit for me. Trying to get it right because it is important. Failing because I am just quite clueless. And then feeling like I've failed for other reasons, like resembling people I have not admired. But to me the worst thing is cowardice. Fail 99 times, get it right once, it is worth it!

If I fail enough times at something I learn to laugh at myself, and then the NTs think I am so chill, so graceful (it is what I tell myself)

I never think in terms of ND or NT when I'm with people

I'd like to think I've got enough experience of people and life to be able to hold a half decent conversation without pressurising myself into feeling some kind of psychic connection with them

I'm not being a twat, it's just the way I've become as I've got older

It doesn't make you a twat anyway.

Oh not at all. Voice of sanity, for sure.

People are just people.

I think I've got a bit of a funny tangle in my head about it. Something for a rainy day. But I like to see people discuss it. I feel like I can pick up a more adaptive view by osmosis, like

Well I admire people who can admit that they ain't empathetic saints. In fact it makes them more likely to have a sensitive, kind personality.

I remember when my sister announced she was pregnant on text, and I was so upset because I didn't want change, and I feared my aunt would become too preoccupied with the baby, as we had lost our mother three years previously so our aunt had kinda stepped into the role of an emotionally supportive mother to me and my brother and sister. But despite feeling angry and even a bit jealous, I didn't let my sister know I was feeling that way, because I knew she was happy and I didn't want to spoil things or upset her, as it'd mean I'd then just be beating myself up with guilt and shame. So I think empathy came into play there. I'm so glad it did, because I adapted to it, my sister never knew my reaction, and I have been a supportive aunt to her baby. I love the baby (she's about 16 months now) and would hate anything to happen to her.

I am prone to being jealous of my peers, due to comparing myself to them too much. It might be an inherited trait of my mother. She used to compare herself to others too and get all worked up if others were succeeding and she wasn't. She'd compare her home and her husband to other people's homes and husbands, and always think everyone had it better than her, despite their hardships that she didn't have. And she'd compare her children to her nieces and nephews. She'd see them as "perfect", while secretly feeling disappointed that her children weren't her idea of "normal". While she loved us unconditionally, she still seemed disappointed that we'd turned out to be the shy, unconfident, unambitious, emotionally wrecked type and I think she felt like she was a huge failure as a parent. But it wasn't her fault, it was her genes. While her siblings made perfectly normal children, she must have been carrying a faulty gene that gave us all undesirable brains.

Your brain is lovely, Tamaya. Foster was also sensitive, no? Maybe artists and writers have to be. That is what people used to say, anyway. But it is painful and certainly very stressful.

I think it is normal to inherit susceptibility to stress from a parent. From what you've written your mother clearly adored you and seems to have struggled with self-doubt, poor woman. That can be confusing for a child but you've sketched it so clearly... I think this too shows a capacity to see things from another person's point of view.

This was so good of you. Regulating on-the-fly, when things take me by surprise, is something I sometimes find really difficult. But you were able to see your sister's feelings and respond to them compassionately. That is a working model of empathy for my confused brain

^ I had a tear in my eye when I read your post, Kuen. Thank you for your kind words.

If someone ever says to me "I know how you felt" I would take it as a figure of speech

When my brother died and I went home from work early. The next day I was in the kitchen at work and there was a woman behind me (I had my back to her) and I happened to say that my brother had died and that's why I went home early the day before.
Everything went quiet and I turned round and she was crying. She didn't even know me
She told me that she feels things and that she knows how I feel

I didn't speak to her again

She didn't know me and she didn't know my brother or the relationship I had with him or how I felt for him. She has none of this information to hand and she certainly didn't know how I was feeling
All she knew was how she was feeling and how she might feel if her brother who she knew had died

It's utter rubbish

Don't fall for it

I might have felt different if she'd have asked me if I wanted a cup of tea and a chat. But no, she went straight in with the tears, making it all about her psychic ability

And I'm not in the market for snake oil either

I was on emda mdma at the time

It was a memorable experience and if it ever happens to me again when I'm not on drugs then I'll stand corrected

I'm not absolutely totally against the idea that human beings have empathy but I am against the fact that it has been mis-sold and (Imo) misused

I'd like to know how people actually feel when they're using 'empathy' because I doubt very much they're feeling what their victim subject is feeling

Last edited by babybird on 14 Dec 2025, 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

In my head that is narcissism, not empathy. I don't use that word in a casual or derogatory way.

It was about her. If you'd followed along with the interaction she'd scripted, hers are the needs that would've been met.

When I get in my head about this it is the level of delusion that scares me. People think they are good. It is exploitative, but it is not like cognitive empathy; it is a visceral response to someone else's distress. It is very easy for people to tell themselves it is empathy, nurturing, something other than what it is.

I don't know what your brother meant to you or how you felt about it. But I am very sorry. The words are dumb but I mean it.


Would someone who had experienced grief say that? It is such a silly self-indulgent thing to say.

(Edited to remove a few especially self-indulgent things.)

Last edited by kuen on 14 Dec 2025, 8:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

At the same time I have been thinking that when someone does see you, truly, at the right moment, it is a gift. Most of us love giving gifts. Maybe some people love it so much they will package up a bit of coal and tell themselves there's not really any difference.

I agree up to a point. Its the “being aware of how to relate to people according to their feelings” that’s difficult. Does not being aware of how others are feeling, or what mood they are in, make me a less worthy human being? Some might think the worse of me because I don’t much care, either, but one can only use the tools one has. It doesn’t prevent me from helping others whenever I’m aware of the need.