Is it important that my family has empathy? Kind of. So they can help me solve my problems when I have some. Do I though? In extreme cases, if I’m super happy or super sad. Cos I don’t want to be the denominator to my family what they are supposed to be feeling. Because they have their feelings, and I have my own feelings. Sometimes it’s our life. Otherwise I understand that they don’t feel with me. I feel empathic towards their “not feeling with me”. I understand that they are busy. They had their own times when they had to worry about student stuff: money, exams. They shouldn’t have to worry about it any more. They do help and support me. But they don’t have to have the same feelings as me, if I feel anxious about something.
What is empathy? Feeling for the other person. With the person.
Mostly with my father. Cos he has the whole “grandma bashing papa” thing. It’s not really empathy, it’s more like standing up for him. Cos I don’t like when people talk bad about people I love.
Lack of emotions. When my grandpa died. It’s not that I didn’t feel any, it was more blocked off. Same as when my father had an affair and my sister was crying like hell, but I wasn’t affected. Maybe I chose not to feel it. Maybe I didn’t think that my emotions mattered because there were other people with stronger emotions. But I don’t remember that well.
When my parents argued, I wanted harmony. I wanted to push my wishful feelings onto them. I tried to make them stop, but not out of empathy.
In the future: important but not the most important because isn’t an empathic person just like a chameleon, always taking on the environment. Maybe when kids are bigger, not when they are just kids.
Because I never lived through things like you did, so I will never understand. Because you’re just so different, you think different of yourself, analyse yourself so much. In other situations I try to be. If empathic is the same as comforting. Comforting is not feeling the same, when you feel empathic you are a wreck yourself so what help are you to the other person. I don’t say: “I understand you. I get it” I say: “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.” I’m more solution-driven. Empathy is not to understand. To understand it’s just facts. I can’t be empathic because I’ve never experienced the same thing.
[explained that there is something like Intellectual/Imaginative Empathy] Ah, so I have intellectual empathy.
I was like that when you felt left out, not part of the family when everyone was talking in German, or when I wasn’t spending time with you over the weekend. Maybe it was not as bad as I imagined. You felt left alone. How I feel every time when you ignore me.
I felt understood when we had our situation about teams. It just feels good when you’re ranting and somebody understands what you’re ranting about. Somebody understands your point of view. It feels good when somebody has the same opinion of you. Cos you create a bond or what-not, I don’t know. I don’t dive that deep into my own consciousness. I prefer to swim on the top. Who knows what kind of monsters are down there?
Communication is an exchange of information, conveying of feelings, lifting the mood.
I don’t care about the moments I feel misunderstood. No, I care. When you misunderstood me and you don’t let me explain. You don’t care. That makes me feel a tiny bit frustrated. Cos nobody listens to me. Cos they don’t try to listen to me and understand me. It’s important to me only when I care about the other person. It’s not important if I don’t care. Because I’d like them to care about what I think too. Cos I care about them. So I’d like them to treat me like I treat them.
I was empathic towards you when your bike got a cigarette burn cos something was hurt which was yours.
When you wrote your email, I wasn’t empathic, because it’s not how I would do things, I was against it. I think I can’t be empathic when I disagree with the person. On a fundamental level. Because I don’t want to think of what they are thinking or feeling, or why they made those decisions. If they chose differently, they wouldn’t have ended up there. I understand because I know you, but I don’t understand because it would never come to me. By my definition, I cannot be empathic because I don’t agree with it. I can enraged or sad when I agree with you. But sometimes I can be empathic even if I don’t share the experience. In one, in my opinion you made a bad decision, in another case, you didn’t make any decision at all. In one it was self tormenting plus bothering another person. It’s probably talking from an arrogant point of view but to me that was senseless bullying. I didn’t want to be empathic with you.
I disagree with your mum’s life choices but I can empathise with her situation. Cos I have my own mum who always wanted to do more things.