Extreme empaths

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

I've got the definitions right mate. And they have been right for three thousand years since the Ancient Greeks invented them.

You are repeating a popular misconception.

Do we need to do this? Seriously? Most everyone I know switches what you said around and considers sympathy/empathy according to the opposite of what you said. Are you trying to take on Mr Webster now, Victor?


Fuck me. You're right.


just looked it up:


sympathy:

Etymology: Latin sympathia, from Greek sympatheia, from sympathēs having common feelings, sympathetic, from syn- + pathos feelings, emotion, experience — more at pathos
Date: 1579
1 a : an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other b : mutual or parallel susceptibility or a condition brought about by it c : unity or harmony in action or effect <every part is in complete sympathy with the scheme as a whole — Edwin Benson>
2 a : inclination to think or feel alike : emotional or intellectual accord <in sympathy with their goals> b : feeling of loyalty : tendency to favor or support <republican sympathies>
3 a : the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another b : the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity <have sympathy for the poor>
4 : the correlation existing between bodies capable of communicating their vibrational energy to one another through some medium
synonyms see attraction, pity


empathy:

Etymology: Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion — more at pathos
Date: 1850
1 : the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
2 : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this

 

[Synarch]

Victor is playing his game. Appreciate it thusly.

 

[Seymour]

Nabbed from the internets:

Synonyms for Sympathy:

—Synonyms
1. concord, understanding, rapport, affinity. Sympathy, compassion, pity, empathy all denote the tendency, practice, or capacity to share in the feelings of others, especially their distress, sorrow, or unfulfilled desires.

Sympathy is the broadest of these terms, signifying a general kinship with another's feelings, no matter of what kind: in sympathy with her yearning for peace and freedom; to extend sympathy to the bereaved. Compassion implies a deep sympathy for the sorrows or troubles of another coupled to a powerful urge to alleviate the pain or distress or to remove its source: to show compassion for homeless refugees. Pity usually suggests a kindly, but sometimes condescending, sorrow aroused by the suffering or ill fortune of others, often leading to a show of mercy: tears of pity for war casualties; to have pity on a thief driven by hunger. Empathy most often refers to a vicarious participation in the emotions, ideas, or opinions of others, the ability to imagine oneself in the condition or predicament of another: empathy with those striving to improve their lives; to feel empathy with Hamlet as one watches the play.

 

[Mole]

Fuck me. You're right.

The interesting question now is - why is there this popular misconception?

And the answer is because you live in a country where the very language has been deracinated.

 

[Mole]

Victor is playing his game. Appreciate it thusly.

It is far better to assume I am acting in good faith.

 

[ajblaise]

From Webster's:

Empathy The ability to co-experience and relate to the thoughts, emotions, or experience of another without them being communicated directly by the individual

Sympathy The ability to understand and to support the emotional situation or experience of another being with compassion and sensitivity


Now... you wanna fuck with Webster? then yur fuckin with me.

 

[nanook]

ridiculous. apparently concrete thinking reduces comprehension.
monkeys with a dictionary.

"Sympathy The ability to understand and to support the emotional situation or experience of another being with compassion and sensitivity."

the question is, where is that ability to understand coming from. from own "non- fleeting*" experience. from being similar to the other person. that's why sympathy is "non- fleeting concern for the other person". *see wikipedia. if you are similar, you will remain similar, for quite a while.

the "understanding" is not coming from synthetic (virtual) co-experience, which is created while reacting to a situation, that is not your own, and from the viewpoint of a personality, that is not your own. that would be empathy. and empathy is fleeting. it's also repeatedly instantaneously available.

 

[Mole]

From Webster's:

Empathy The ability to co-experience and relate to the thoughts, emotions, or experience of another without them being communicated directly by the individual

Sympathy The ability to understand and to support the emotional situation or experience of another being with compassion and sensitivity


Now... you wanna fuck with Webster? then yur fuckin with me.

Noah Webster was a revolutionary who deliberately set out to cut American English off from its roots.

Noah was enormously successful in the USA and has left you deracinated.

And it is your deracination that has cut you off from the meaning of sympathy and empathy.

Frankly, this is why you make fools of yourself all the time. Such as your very own President George W. Bush who said, "The French don't even have a word for entrepreneur".

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

The people in the OP are interesting and I wonder if they also feel people's emotions when seeing them. "Empaths" are people who feel other people's emotions when they're around them. I did some research on it a while back because I do this too to some degree. When I'm talking to someone or watching them or even reading their posts I can sense their mood and tension, usually physical. Sometimes I can actually feel it myself, other times I just know it. In the handful of times I've divulged my observations, people have agreed that that's what they were feeling, both emotionally and physically, but obviously a handful of times isn't enough to make a reliable assessment. I think it's a combination of being sensitive to body language cues (especially it's subtle forms like speech tone, speech rhythm, pace of physical movements, and gaze, which are usually overlooked) and mirror neuron sensitivity -- seeing details, mimicking them internally, and then seeing what emotional state and physical state it produces in you.

It might be type related, but not in the sense that type causes extreme empathy, but that having extreme empathy (emotional, physical) can earn you bonus points in one of the cognitive functions. I think extraverted feeling would be the most likely candidate. But introverted feeling seems like it plays a role too, at least in the stuff I'm talking about.

 

[ajblaise]

Noah Webster was a revolutionary who deliberately set out to cut American English off from its roots.

Noah was enormously successful in the USA and has left you deracinated.

And it is your deracination that has cut you off from the meaning of sympathy and empathy.

Frankly, this is why you make fools of yourself all the time. Such as your very own President George W. Bush who said, "The French don't even have a word for entrepreneur".

lol, good post.

How about the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia? It defines it the same way.

 

[ajblaise]

It might be type related, but not in the sense that type causes extreme empathy, but that having extreme empathy (emotional, physical) can earn you bonus points in one of the cognitive functions. I think extraverted feeling would be the most likely candidate. But introverted feeling seems like it plays a role too, at least in the stuff I'm talking about.

I agree.

 

[Mole]

lol, good post.

How about the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia? It defines it the same way.

I think Aphrodite-Gone-Awry has settled this matter in -

Sympathy:

Etymology: Latin sympathia, from Greek sympatheia, from sympathēs having common feelings, sympathetic, from syn- + pathos feelings, emotion, experience — more at pathos
Date: 1579
1 a : an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other b : mutual or parallel susceptibility or a condition brought about by it c : unity or harmony in action or effect <every part is in complete sympathy with the scheme as a whole — Edwin Benson>
2 a : inclination to think or feel alike : emotional or intellectual accord <in sympathy with their goals> b : feeling of loyalty : tendency to favor or support <republican sympathies>
3 a : the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another b : the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity <have sympathy for the poor>
4 : the correlation existing between bodies capable of communicating their vibrational energy to one another through some medium
synonyms see attraction, pity


Empathy:

Etymology: Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion — more at pathos
Date: 1850
1 : the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
2 : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.

 

[nanook]

its not the job of a dictionary to explain the underlying reality of a word. if you do not understand sympathy, you cant blame it on your dictionary. and if a whole country does not understand sympathy: that has nothing to do with the meaning of the world. you don't have authority to define the meaning of a (international) word, if you do not understand, what it is pointing to. you know, some words point to something real. reality wont be converted into fiction (aka theory), just because false (or incomplete) understanding becomes frequently associated with a word. also the meaning of a word is defined in the brain, whenever a word is concerned with a process in the realm of the human psyche. if your dictionary tells you, that god is an invention, your brain will still treat the word differently.

 

[ajblaise]

I think Aphrodite has settled this matter in -

Even in this definition, empathy is still really the one that's more about "vicariously experiencing the feelings". In this definition of sympathy, it's more about harmony and agreement of feeling than feeling the same thing vicariously. But similar feeling.

So going by the definition you provided, what you said here

Yes, empathy is knowing what someone is feeling without feeling it yourself.

While sympathy is feeling what the other is feeling.

is still really wrong.

 

[Mole]

its not the job of a dictionary to explain the underlying reality of a word. if you do not understand sympathy, you cant blame it on your dictionary. and if a whole country does not understand sympathy: that has nothing to do with the meaning of the world. you don't have authority to define the meaning of a (international) word, if you do not understand, what it is pointing to. you know, some words point to something real.

Quite so.

 

[Mole]

Even in this definition, empathy is still really the one that's more about "vicariously experiencing the feelings". In this definition of sympathy, it's more about harmony and agreement of feeling than feeling the same thing vicariously. But similar feeling.

So going by the definition you provided, what you said here

is still really wrong.

I think you are arguing for the sake of arguing.

And arguing for the sake of arguing is tedious.

And it is tedious because arguing or debating for the sake of it is a defence mechanism.

So rather than arguing and debating you would be far better finding out what you are defending against.

 

[ajblaise]

I think you are arguing for the sake of arguing.

And arguing for the sake of arguing is tedious.

And it is tedious because arguing or debating for the sake of it is a defence mechanism.

So rather than arguing and debating you would be far better finding out what you are defending against.

You do this as well, maybe even more than I.

edit: still though, you should have admitted you were wrong pages ago.

 

[Tiltyred]

Maybe it would be helpful for the sake of discussion to construe "empathy" as it is used in the article.

 

[sculpting]

Perhaps, perhaps not. Playing devil's advocate here; please excuse my fuzzy T, but looking to evolutionary psychology, wouldn't it make sense that instead of a 'disorder' that it might be argued that 'extreme empathy' is a protective mechanism? If anything, extreme empathy might likely keep one from fraternizing with very much that is odd, because to be around much that is odd or abnormal is to feel extremely uncomfortable. Extremely odd or abnormal situations that one would avoid due to extreme empathy are situations that are charged with antisocial behavior, or are resultant from it, for the most part. If I'm avoiding antisocial behavior, I'm probably going to be safer, no? Hence, empathy in this context could be construed as an evolved trait of survival, instead of a disorder. Perhaps not in the median range, for sure, but perhaps moving toward this?

Stretching now: If we were all more empathic, would we have some sort of influence on antisocial behavior in a negatively correlated way> Might discourage antisocial behaviors which would lead to more harmonious environments.

The bold is actually really different from how these physical sensations (aka known as something which might be called empathy) make me feel. I dont seek them or seek to avoid them. Instead I stumble across them. When I find them I dont feel I need to avoid them-instead I feel extremely bound to help the other person. The more alone they are the more I mirror that feeling of alone and seek to help them.

I think whatever it is that Fi does may be a mandate for helping the weakest member of society-the one that falls through the social safety net.

 

[Salomé]

There are other INTXs I know who have this too. The physical state thing I'm thinking could be felt by all INs potentially, and ISs.

What is the connection with introversion?
I know plenty of empathic extroverts.