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Originally Posted by allme
Thanks for the explanation but I don't think I am fully grasping it. Sorry  So can you give me an example of where we may show lack of empathy and an example where we are able to feel it?
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I suppose if I think about myself then an example of where I have shown a lack of cognitive empathy could be when friends don't respond to text messages (a big trigger for me). Instead of understanding that they may have many possible reasons for not responding I often react by becoming anxious and hostile towards them. Usually this is contained in my head and I've learned not to act on the feelings but even recently I decided someone hated me and that the friendship was over when they didn't respond the same day. I later found out they'd genuinely lost their phone so there was no way they could have replied.
As for feeling emotional empathy, I spend a lot of time wondering if I've hurt people's feelings and trying to look for signs of how people feel towards me. I often see anger and hostility in faces unless they are quite obviously smiling directly at me. I also have a tough time handling any kind of mean humour and have reacted with rage sometimes at even quite minor teasing that others would have probably laughed off, both when it's directed at me and others. I seem to be affected by the emotions of those around me excessively and sometimes find negative emotions hard to deal with. Even positive emotions like people praising me sometimes make me feel uncomfortable (that doesn't happen very often lately though).