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The Power of Empathy

6 years ago459 words

Here's an interesting video supporting the idea (which I've thought for a long time myself and tried to explain before) that the best way to improve someone's unpleasant mood is to empathise with them rather than merely sympathising with them; to show that you feel their pain rather than to try to cheer them up: [LINK]

I've not updated this in a while because I've been going through another depressive episode. I've started several posts in the last two or three weeks, but finished none because of this. There's the constant feeling that my life will be over soon - or that it already is and I just need to take some final action to end the epilogue - and that makes it very difficult to focus on anything much at all.

I'll talk about that more in another post though, maybe... though the details aren't something I haven't written about before, really. The thing with B still gets to me every day, eats away at me. It's difficult being completely rejected by the most important person in your life, especially with a history of isolation and rejection and nobody else to fill the huge hole with. More than the loneliness, though, it's the negative feelings about myself that I've been left with. The feeling that I'm repellent, that everything I do is unchangeably inappropriate and I should just seal myself away so then I never hurt anyone again.

I've always tried to communicate to other people the power of empathising - some of the earliest posts on this blog talked about it - where instead of giving advice or suggesting that someone look on the bright side, we instead show that we know how it is. When we tell someone to do things differently, it reinforces the feeling that they're doing something wrong, and hinders recovery. But when we come across as an ally, they feel less alone, and feeling not-alone helps so much. It's really interesting seeing that that experiment in the video found this to be measurably the case.

I can't help but wonder though whether I was as empathetic as I could have been with people in the past, particularly B... Perhaps not. Maybe things would have gone differently if I had been. I always tried to be, but... I suppose there are many factors, anyway. Lots to dwell on.

Anyway. I'll end this here for now. Perhaps I'll be able to write about things in more detail soon, even if I'm repeating myself. I don't know.

I haven't done any creative stuff since the last post either. And I've been neglecting academic work. It's easy to do that when I feel I don't have a future anyway. Hmm.