I agree with you that people are usually uncomfortable with others pain, and "I hope you are better" may express that. The discomfort is our empathy. The discomfort is our helplessness. There is usually nothing we can do to change your reality, so we offer you a wish, a prayer, a hope, and know it is pretty much worthless. What is "my prayers are with you" going to do to a person who lost her beloved? Resurect? And yet it comes from the heart, not from a selfish mind. But people do feel angry sometimes at those well wishers, just for the very reason that all that wishing can't make things right, and that can be understood too.

If you help someone and it makes you feel better, does it mean that your ONLY motivation was selfishness?

When I was young I believed that was the case. I argued for a year with my ethic's professor that that is so. He won. In great brief: the test is in what comes first, what impulse? Is it "this person/living thing needs help" or is it "I can do something here to make myself feel grander" ?

Have you seen that story on the news whem a dog got its head stuck in the wal?. You could see in the poor dog's eyes its panic, its fear, and then hope when people came and started helping. And did you feel happiness when the dog was freed. Yet, it's all happened some time in the past, to some dog we don't know, we weren't there. We had NO part in it. There was no selfishness. That is empathy in action. Or at least this is how I see things. You have a right to see them differently.

But, there are people, usually those close to us, who get worn out by our constant state of no-improvement, by hearing the same story, by being helpless to do anything, and they start avoiding our pain, and that IS selfish, but I don't believe people here would ever tell you, "we heard your story already, aren't you better yet?"