How do I regain my empathy? Lately this year and for most of 2019, I've mostly felt ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. No happiness...

ok but how much did your brother touch you?

Actually empathy is very unhealthy for humans. you never want to feel someone's emotions for them.
All you really want to do is sympathize, so you're not carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.

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Oh right, I forgot to mention. My current feelings can be summed up as,
>I want to feel nothing, so I can be hurt by nothing

>empathy is very unhealthy for humans

yeah this. people put empathy on a pedestal but the bottom line is that it's fucking useless and potentially harmful.

A lack of empathy is a defense mechanism that people with very weak emotional intelligence use as a shield to prevent being hurt. It is kind of a form of denial. That being said, take ecstacy.

HAHA kek. No this is money related. He puts money over family first and any encounters with him money is his principle motivator. Any relationships you form with him he will over-complicate it and do everything that benefits him. In other words, he's a nightmare to do anything with

>hey can we go to dinner at 6
>ok but can you book the table? Oh and can you pick up this person at 4 and drop them off at this location at 5? Plus can you take this for me? And can you take this person back before 6?
>ok, let's have dinner tomorrow if you want me to do all this
>NO this is very important. We can't cancel dinner because I have these coupons blah blah blah

Anything, FUCKING anything you do with him he will be like this. After 2 decades of this shit, I've had enough. And that's just with dinner.

That actually sounds reasonable. You wanna help them but you don't wanna FEEL what they're feeling as that won't help you help them.

Sounds like you’re just being a brat whining on Yas Forums. Just tell him no and if he doesn’t like it he will get over it

Haha holy shit you just read my mind. This is basically it I'm in denial. But what am I denying I don't know.

>But what am I denying I don't know

yeah this. i couldn't even say how long i've been this way. i do know (basically) how i got this way but it still feels inappropriate to be this way, i mean lots of people have been through what i've been through (in general terms) and i doubt all of them lost their sense of empathy because of it.

Then I hope the image signals to any lurkers that see what I'm trying to do and aren't discouraged by my unsuccessful utilization of it. Even I value my alone and private time so constantly having to gather as a group in order to keep other people calm can grate on my nerves too.

Nothing wrong with experiencing schadenfreude about your brother there.

However if you feel like the language you use to help direct or attract people to areas of your internal states is dying because other people don't know how to recognize it or engage it effectively then that is a concern. Mostly because it probably signals the result of a long-term problem finally reaching a conclusion where certain parts of you have just been successively ignored and your own imagination or intellect was able to make sufficient excuses for why they weren't reacting. Just reached this point and so those neurons that kept the lie going just kinda gave up. Doesn't mean you've lost empathy, just that the primary story of care that you believed was true about your reality has died and you're in a mourning phase.

I don't mean mourning as in you are bitching and moaning, just that there is a part of the mourning phase where comfortably numb would be the best to describe it. Eventually that part of your brain will fire up again but try to grow towards a new narrative instead. I'd recommend that when that happens you allow for some patience to help prevent attaching too quickly to a new narrative because those neurons will be starved for the stimulation and could make you over-invest in something new purely because all those neurons will quickly make up as many reasons as you can imagine to justify why 'this next one is the right one'. Giving it some space and time to extend will help you overall because obviously those neurons died for a reason and any growth you can stimulate is a good thing.

Yeah, you want to basically starve the last of those brain cells out. Gotcha.

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That's just a trivial example. More serious examples are him being ungrateful over major assets from my family (houses, rent), exploiting their funds and just generally taking advantage of my parents. He's a piece of shit in every regard and doesn't hide it. My parent's literally BOUGHT him a house and then he contacted a lawyer stating he is the sole owner, has full rights and no one else can touch it. He then proceeded to turn it into an Air bnb rental house.

I mean he technically hasn't done anything wrong but holy fuck is that ungrateful.

The best way to starve those remaining cells of emotional stimulation is actually to consume emotive content that you've never previously understood or berated before. The resulting attempt to make sense of it will kick in your logical brain and it will basically kick out the last of your emotion cells so you can start again.

Usual chick stuff can help too by OVER stimulating those cells and without any real narrative to connect to you just stress the remaining ones out. This song is a good example of the thing: youtube.com/watch?v=aatr_2MstrI

However if you basically want a reason trumps all branch path: youtube.com/watch?v=d2lIhbL4vSQ

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Or just who he was going to become when given the opportunity to do so and thus revealing a part of himself to the family that none of you knew existed.

Tell me user, what did you go through to feel this way?

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Bro.
If it's happened like 20 times, there's nothing wrong if you just don't care anymore.
It's called normalization.
Relax.

And there isn't anything wrong with analyzing outcomes and weighing situations. That's called being reasonable. Not a robot.

I'm pretty sure you're exaggerating, too, because you're sitting here typing up a whole bunch of text explaining how worried you are about being a robot. That in itself means you're fine. You're just rational. It's not a disease. It's not an illness. Rational. R a t i o n a l. It's called being normal. Relax.

But how much successfull are you compared to your brother?

I appreciate your wisdom user but I'm having a hard time grasping your concepts. I'm a very simple person (emotionally). I intentionally do this since my family is the opposite. They like to over-complicate simple things. Why I'm feeling un-empathetic is very simple. Something very bad happened to me emotionally and like what said, I'm probably using it as a weak defence mechanism to avoid being hurt.

That's what I've gained out of this. I'm in denial. I have no interest in emotionally getting involved because I don't want to get hurt. I love the optimism in your words about letting time heal and space for my neurons to breathe, but I don't feel any different. I feel exactly the same (probably worse as time has passed).

I don't think that someone who hates conforming would accept reducing their reality to be shared with others that use the word normal seeing as OP's experience of that word thus far has been indifference, ignorance and abuse of other members of the normal party.

I do agree with the reasonable and rational part. The tricky part though is learning how to reach out and showing people that it does work, which is extra hard in OP's case of having that part of him burnt out.

It does beg the question of why even put it there if it will just experience this process and if it is a natural or inevitable experience is there a way some knowledge or practice could help it become just a part of life instead of some PTSD level trauma memory event for years to come.

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Watch Hellstorm, learn about the greatest man who ever lived and the fight he fought. Hitler will unironically make you more empathetic.

That's the problem, sometimes being a pirate is better than joining the navy.

Sounds more like it. Now he's an actual adult with an actual bachelor's degree we can see what kind of white collar criminal he'll become

Haha. Thanks. But normies say you should be kind, caring etc. I have no desire to invest myself in anyone anymore. Maybe it's not such a huge deal for you personally but to me, it's almost like my well-being is being changed due to how I was raised. It almost feels like I'm turning my back on the people in my life by not caring about them.

You need to take at least one step away from the words you read for them to update your brain if you want to absorb information. Either that or use the simple trick of closing your eyes after you've read something you feel is worthwhile for 3 seconds and then open them. It would take a while to get used to it but it helps introduce a delay to your processing that helps the words spread to more space in your brain before it 'fires up'.

It isn't denial, you are basically super focused on those starved neurons and it is stealing your awareness that you have other parts of your brain that would happily take over for you. Just burn the rest of the emotions out however you need, tire yourself emotionally and you're brain will switch over to a less draining circuit.

Speaks more to the long line of family lessons that all your other family members are trapped by and are cursed to repeat until they learn their divine lesson and you're free from it. Welcome to being intelligent. I declare open season on all the virgin moments your new neurons will bring to your future and whoever you meet and whatever you think.
>Strap in, it's gonna get weird! Woo!

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I studied Nazi Germany a lot in high school and am very well aware of what happened. Unironically if I were alive and German, I would have joined the Hitler Youth

>Just burn the rest of the emotions out however you need, tire yourself emotionally and you're brain will switch over to a less draining circuit.
How would I achieve this? It sounds like you want me to be more pissed and angry to the point where I become like the Buddha and transcend into not feeling anything anymore

the buddha was a fag, he definitely still felt things but hid that fact from his followers

Well you could exhaust them by running every memory that is running in your head on a loop that you are trying to suppress through this cycle of questions:
1. Why me?
2. Why not me?
3. Why didn't I know sooner?
4. Who would've informed me otherwise?

Example
Why am I the one going through this specific bullshit memory?
Why shouldn't I be the one on the receiving end?
Why did I act sooner to free myself of their bullshit?
Who would've let me know how to even do that, if not myself or my ability to create a future me that is inviting me to leave current me behind.

It also works for imagination stuff.
Example case: YOU ARE GOD!
Your possible reaction case to the question cycle
1. Why the hell would I be God?
2. Well... why wouldn't I be God if it is a real thing and nobody else would have a problem with it, because I'm God.
3. Why didn't I know I was God sooner?
4. If I really am God, who would've told me instead if I was looking for validation beyond my own intellect/imagination?

>If you dismiss the question cycle or don't follow it in sequence, letting each question play out in your head, it won't exhaust the part of you that you want to basically tire out so much that it spontaneously combusts in order to save itself from more torture.

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I actually do do that! But I feel a lot worse. I try to be my own psychiatrist and evaluate why I feel bad but I just end up feeling worse since I focus too intensely on the negative feeling. eg:

1) Why me? (I dunno)
2) Why did this happen? (I know! because of this person, man I hate this person. I want to kill this person. I want to rip their fucking guts out with my bare hands, I want to skin this person alive and boil their skin etc)

edgy I know but that's what happens. I deviate and focus so intensely on the negative primal feeling. Sometimes it gets so bad I get light-headed and my vision changes. Then I proceed to drink alcohol which is probably not the best decision. Additionally I feel like I'm over-thinking when I decide to analyse everytime why I feel bad.

What do they even know about "being kind?"
Let me ask you a question:
When you interact with people, do they show immense amounts of concern for your problems and emotions and move mountains to help you fix the issues (I mean, actually help -- not make a show of doing useless crap just to get a pat on the back)?
If the answer is "yes," then yeah: something's off.
If the answer's "no," you're fine. People tell you to "be kind and caring" because they knoe you feel that empathy in wanting the same done back to you. They're manipulating you into giving them what they want, only to ghost you when you expect the same in return. That's not what normal people do.

It was a big deal for me until I realized that I have no obligation to care for people. I do have interest in reciprocation. So, if your mother is bawling her eyes out over the same issue over and over, she's not reciprocating. You've already done your part many times before, obviously. Why keep stirring the same drama pot, mom? I know why, but I won't say because it isn't relevant. The point is that you're not stupid. You know when something's genuine and when something's just being rehashed over and over again.

My younger brother loves posting buddhist teachings on facebook. I want to understand them and sometimes they sound very inspirational but religion of any kind has never interested me. Buddhism is interesting because it's the most un-religious religion around. There's no commitments, a grand book with rules, nothing. It's just about lettting go. I like the idea but I feel this could be mis-interpreted

I had this conversation a while ago where I have more respect for people who are upfront about being an asshole than try to hide it. For example. You meet two robbers. One sticks a gun in your face and says "gimmie everything you got". The other befriends you, act likes your best friend but takes everything you have one day. Now which is better?

Same outcome, your shit gets stolen, but I said I have more respect for the guy with the gun because he made no attempt to hide his actions. He wanted to rob me and said so. The second made all this attempt to manipulate me emotionally and still steal my shit.

Well if ya can't get through all 4 questions and then start again but with a slightly different angle then yeah burning it out that way ain't gonna work. All I'm trying to demonstrate is that you need to find a way to burn off all your remaining emotional stamina.

Basically redirecting that over-thinking part of your brain to your ego would be a perfectly valid way of doing it.

If you've never stimulated your ego before because you found it tacky or pointless give it a shot now and imagine that you were super-powered or God or whatever but on the condition that those who basically pressed you into this point aren't in that world, or were to act as sacrifices for your ascension, or were secretly your divine jailors and they were trying to suppress you all this time through abuse and manipulation.

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But I always come back to the same outcome, I mentally kill off the person and pretend they don't exist. Again, I would rather just ignore them rather than try and solve it. God I feel like a coward. Fucking ignorance man, it really is bliss

Right. I think you and I both regard people that manipulate you into getting what they want as cowards and even evil. They don't just take your possessions; they steal your time. They steal your energy. They steal your life. They make it a personal investment of their time to rob you of yours -- something you'll never get back. I totally get it.

Now, I'm not going to take this any further regarding your family because I don't know them. But, it seems like you're catching on to what's happening.

Then can you turn them into a boss battle your imagination has to complete to get past this level?

It's fine if you want to use the ignore and wait until you're sure it has passed approach but sometimes when you check that mental reminder might sting more than you expect.

Right, it's all about honesty. Why would you say this when you do the opposite? Why are you investing so much time to cover your tracks and hide your true intentions? Some people don't take emotional manipulation so seriously but unfortunately I'm one of them. I hold grudges and become very emotional.

That's why it's like what said. I'd rather ignore those feelings than actually deal with them becuase to me it's too painful. I also want people to be straightforward with me but again everyone's different and some people like playing mind games and manipulating people to get what they want instead of "sticking a gun to their face". They want to be more nuanced or undercover or some other bullshit.

You have to connect with people.

It's not that you're emotionally retarded.
They're emotional geniuses. They know people. They make it their business to know people. It's all they do. It's their hobby. That's why they're going nuts due to the quarantines; their people-hobbies are on hold.

You're pretty much an average human. You give someone a fair shot. They decide to kick you in the pebbles. Okay, fooled you once. You know what to look out for. Happens again? Nah. You're done. Emotions off. It's just called "learning and adapting." You're adapting to a world where people like this exist. That's what humans do. Next, they'll adapt to people like you and then the cycle will repeat until one type of you dies off. I'm hoping it's them.

Genuinely a good cry would actually do you wonders. You essentially want some sure-fire fix but have to accept that it is gonna suck, but once you pull the plug on that sucker you know that once it's over at least its done and you can move on.

I got something that'll work if you're willing but be aware it is the known hard way and plenty of people do say they wish there was a softer/kinder method, but some healing genuinely needs the equivalent of super laxatives to shit that stubborn emotional turd.

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But most people are selfish, only seeking to know people that they can benefit from in some fashion. Either that or you have to be in their 'club' whether its a specific activity, religion, life style or whatever.

To try and illustrate this...

Last year my family went to Japan. We wanted to visit a bamboo garden in Kyoto but unfortunately we were late and it started getting dark. My mum is a very superstitious person and believes in ghosts in the dark etc. It started to rain and it became cold. My brother absolutely insisted we go in the forest. My mum was completely miserable and scared shitless but didn't do anything. We were all extremely pissed since my bro gave zero thought to my mom's feelings. We couldn't just leave because our train was still a couple hours away.

It was horrible seeing my mum miserable. She acted like she was on crack and every sound scared her shitless, the wind, crickets etc. It wasn't until we encountered other tourists that told us there was nothing to see because it was too dark, that convinced my brother to turn back. I will always remember that moment as the moment I stopped thinking of my brother as a human being with consideration for other people

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Might be worth accepting that you're just not synchronized with any of their cycles of awareness and they've neither put any effort into including you or making themselves easier to include.

It's always weird when black sheep realizes it is black sheep but that's what you are.

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what're you suggesting? I tried banging my hands aggressively on my kitchen tiles but that didn't work. I quickly realised I'm not the type that flips tables to feel better. I just ignore it by playing video games or shitposting to feel better. I used to smoke weed but that shit's expensive and I haven't talked to a dealer in years.

>they've neither put any effort into including you or making themselves easier to include.

I think the last part is right. They don't make themselves easier to include but I still think they put in effort into including me. Fuck now I'm confused. The important part is how can someone be so unaware or uncaring to their own goddamn mother? Maybe you are right about the cycles of awareness thing

This was a good thread guys but I gotta run. Yas Forums is mostly cancer but it's the most geniune cancer on the whole goddamn internet.

That's probably reasonable. I'd look at my brother like that, too, if he showed little care for our mother like that in that situation.
But, questions are coming up:
-Did y'all know it'd be that kind of weather coming?
-Does your mother's fear of ghosts and such have any reasonable basis in that environment?
-Did you ask your brother why he did what he did?
-Was the rain so bad that you guys were at risk of health issues?
-Did no one think to bring a jacket or stand somewhere less uncomfortable while he explored?
Like, I get it. Your brother had balls doing that, knowing it'd make him look like a dong. But, the thing with this is that certain kinds of people are expecting you to assume the worst about whomever "victimizes" them, even when nothing really happened or was done to them.

My brother and I had those problems a lot growing up regarding or own mom and still do, even though he knows she's full of crap. But, he can't do anything like tell her to relax or stop being a drama queen because she'll ruin his social life like she did mine. So, he has to take on the role of being her White Knight against scrutiny, so to speak.

It's hard for me to pint his down without attacking anyone in your family, but it's pretty obvious what's going on here. You don't want to make the mistake of being wrong about your mom and ruining your relationship. At the same time, you feel like something's off. Let me tell you something: If you are asking the question in the first place and fee like you can't bring this kind of thing up without backlash of some sort or being made the bad guy, then you're right. Something's wrong.

There could be an entire story between them that you aren't aware of. At some point your own ignorance of a thing has to become something you either submit to or sacrifice so you can be free.

You have a RIGHT to be free of whatever you feel has kept you running in circles. You may go, get better, come back and be able to help them all stabilize. Either way the only thing that matters is you, not the audience of your life or the observation others hold of you. If you want to become more and are ready to start, the time is now.

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I think you're looking a bit deep in this. My mother wouldn't plot against her sons and ruind their social relationship. I just have issues with how could my brother be so uncaring when my mom specifically said "I'm scared of the dark let's not go in". We knew nothing about the weather and I don't think she was lying. There's no family politics going on. She didn't want to go in the forest and my brother said "fuck that I do what I want."

Could easily be that the mother unknowingly made that brother feel neglected, a little like OP, and said brother used the opportunity to act out because his brother was there so he felt safe in taking his shot.

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First thing I would ask you, do you spend more than just a little bit of your time buried in politics?
If the answer is yes turn that fucking shit off ASAP.

If nothing else in this thread then at least follow this advice. Watching groups of people argue and bicker over shit won't do anything to help your faith in there being a group of humans that exist who have any brains whatsoever.

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I really don't fucking know. Either I'm completely ignorant or my family are master politicians. Either way I just don't know what's happening anymore.

Are you guys basically saying to spend some time away from people?

Nah
You can still find people who are avoiding politics. Only issue for you may be that they will more likely lean to the left to some degree. Most Everyone who is right of center is living politics to some degree right now.