PoAC: Mechanisms of empathy

Empathy is the ability to feel emotion being expressed by someone else - to weep with those who weep, and laugh with those whp laugh. It's the gift, or curse, that has some people crying at the funerals of near-strangers or dissolving in tears while Dumbo's mother rocks her baby through the bars of her cage. It's a two-edged sword, because it isn't always possible to control it.

At four o'clock this morning, as I rocked a fussy baby, I was thinking about how my particular brand of empathy functions. The trigger: a story of a woman with a healthy pregnancy and no indication of problems, who nevertheless lost her baby in the course of labour and delivery. It occurred to me that I wasn't really crying for the baby or the mother. I was crying because that scenario represents my worst nightmares of the last year. I had projected that fear that is inherent to parenthood from the moment the stick turns blue. Knowing that fear as well as I do - as every parent does, I think - allowed me to empathise with a situation I've never encountered - the loss of a child at any stage.

Then I thought about other scenarios where I've empathised in the same way - by projecting my experiences over the ones in question. When the daughter of some friends was very ill in hospital, I was picturing Elizabeth there - not hard to do, as they're the same age and they're friends. When a friend loses a pet, I'm transported back in time to the decision to put down my very sick dog. Happy occasions do this too, though not as obviously. Weddings have me going through the mental photo album of my own wedding. The birth of a baby to a friend has me hugging my children and picturing them as newborns.

How do you experience empathy?

EDIT: I'm thinking a few people have misunderstood. I do not not care about the people I empathise with, and my empathy is not about relief that I don't experience that situation. I genuinely care about them and their concerns - more, obviously, the better I know them. But that caring is independent of my emotional reaction to their situation. The emotional reaction has more to do with my projections than with their situation. The caring is about them; the emotion is about me.

Does that make sense?

Most useless M&M character ever. . .

Paintfinger! Paintfinger's superpower is to shoot paint out of her fingers! Queen of the Graffiti! Bane to gang tags everywhere!

(Credit: Elizabeth was telling etherlad and sassy_fae about her new "paintfingers." "Fingerpaints!" I corrected. etherlad pointed out that if they were paintfingers, they'd be fingers with paint shooting out of them. And another silly superhero is born.)