"Actions do speak louder than words"

Brian Lynch

What has been fascinating in my  study of human emotions is how everything has come into question.

Like what? Such as conventional wisdom that if someone treats you badly or does not recognize your distress, they are not empathetic.

Now what is empathy? Usually, it is the concept of “putting oneself in the shoes of another.” It can be distinguished from sympathy as empathy can imply great concern for another or, and this is crucial, simply understanding the feelings of another.

For example, I can be happy and you can be happy and I can be empathetic to your happiness. We usually tend toward thinking it only has to do with “bad” feelings.

Then, what do I do with that empathy? I can be “sympathetic”, sympathy being that I “feel with you.” I care or am concerned about your feelings or I can abuse you. Yes, just because I can be attuned to your feelings, just because I am empathetic, does not mean that I care about them! It is “this guy is a sucker, let's take him!” It is an interesting and disheartening thought that to take advantage of your emotional state, it seems logical that the person must be attuned to your emotional state!

These distinctions are surprisingly recent, within less than the last two hundred years, that is the distinctions between sympathy and empathy.

So with that background, I said “we”, which is generally felt that if someone does not recognize our distress they are not empathetic. From what I just said that may be entirely not the case. I will offer several possibilities. 1), it is that they indeed do recognize our distress, but as I just said, they are after something else or 2) they are suffering from so much distress/shame/fear that they are incapable of sympathy, of expressing in word and action their concern. Or 3) they simply are not empathetic or sympathetic.

Now, why would the third possibility happen? Well, it is not settled by a long shot, but the possibility exists that some people just cannot feel sympathy or empathy. Autism, for example, seems a clear example of someone without this capacity in various degrees. A less severe form of Autism called Asburgers Syndrome is very much a problem in “reading” other people’s emotion. This is to say nothing of the origin of what we call psychopathology or sociopathy.

Given that high-order investigational tools, such as PET scans and Functional MRI have only been available for some 10-15 years it would seem logical that we might find that there is a continuum throughout humans concerning the ability to feel others' distress or other emotional states.

But that is biology. What of the environment and the phenomena of empathy?

I return then to the first two possibilities: Let’s say I tell you of my distress and you tell me to “grow up”, you get angry, or you go away.

The purpose of writing this is to point out that we just do not know why the other acted as such. It may be that they do “feel for you” but due to overwhelming “empathy” in the form of remembering their pain they simply are incapable of responding. Or they may be “after something else” which will leave us feeling manipulated. But even at this if they are “after something else” and are “manipulating” it does not mean that they do not “feel your pain” but simply something else is more in their “interest.” They simply do not have the knowledge or learning to handle their interest in you and what their needs are at the same time. And indeed their interest in you might be quite nil. Will not most of us not betray someone dear simply for a greater interest? We will as long as we feel isolated.