Quote:
Originally Posted by CopperStar
Yeah but it's a pervasive cycle that almost anyone can get sucked into.
If other people don't care about your needs and feelings, then you basically have two options.
1. Be a doormat and submit to the notion that it's okay for you to spend energy and make sacrifices for others, without receiving the same in return.
2. Be strategic and focus on your own needs and feelings, while other people do the same.
People who go with Option 1 tend to equate being a doormat with being a good person. These are going to be your codependent types, most of the time. They'll also suppress their own needs and feelings, but those needs and feelings don't just magically disappear, they just become a subconscious thing that leaks through, which results in the martyr complex, which ironically can manifest the same as NPD or BPD.
People who go with Option 2 tend to rely more on logic and nature as the framework for their morality and ethical codes. Their downfall tends to be in the rigidity of it, as well as the over-simplification of things that are actually quite complex and subjective. This sort of thinking can also easily lead to manifestations of NPD in the end, even AsPD in extreme cases.
But when you are looking at the WHOLE thing, all together as one big picture, it is easy to see that it always starts with feeling like nobody cares about your well-being, yet you are expected to care about others' well-being. Which forces you into a decision to either be the doormat or put yourself first.
So you can't determine whether or not someone has empathy until you have shown them genuine empathy in the first place. Until you have given them an option where they can care about others while feeling secure that their feelings and well-being will be valued and respected, also. And that is what most people do not do. They don't show empathy first, but they expect others to be doormats, and then cry "evil" when that doesn't happen. It makes for quite the ironic joke of a situation where it's all a bunch of self-righteous, hypocritical fools spouting off at each other in the end.
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Empathy is being able to see, feel and think about the other person. IF you do not have empathy, they can do actions to another that is cruel. But not having empathy, is the cause (i guess). Even if someone is being an a-hole to you, you can still be the fair and empathetic person. But if the a-hole does not want to calm down and be fair and empathetic, then you know, right? People without empathy are vindictive, cold and choose cruel actions. Actions that they would never want to be a recipient of. So it's the actions that give them (no empathy) away. I am new to the vindictive cycle of NPD and ASPD. I am see some people in a new light, no empathy as the cause. It is disturbing! I thought they would calm down, but they are just getting worse not better.
I joined here for strategies actually to calm down a situation. I have not heard anything to help people with low empathy to stop, calm down and chill out for a way. This is over the Holidays, when people are suppose to be in a good mood and all . So it looks as if they are enjoying the vindictiveness and it is very disturbing.
Do you have any advice?