I Don't Know

I had a call with Mr. Stef (www.freedomainradio.com) on his weekly Sunday call in show that was VERY difficult for me.

Empathy...it is incredibly difficult for me. Well, that's not exactly right. I have an incredible capacity for empathy as we all do, but it was not something that was allowed during my childhood. Empathy for others? That means a LACK of empathy for my parents. My parents had a sort of "My way or the highway" appraoch (more my dad than my mom) through many aspects of what they taught me. Not everything of course, but it should be NOTHING. If I wasn't agreeing with my dad politically, RAGE ensued. What is that like for a child? Terrifying. Much easier to just comply.

So here I am having emotional reactions that are entirely non-empathetic, but AFTER I already feel empathy. I have the TRUE emotion first, followed by the FALSE emotion. Erg! But, this is entirely predictable.

So what does this mean? Well, its tough to deal with of course. Its INCREDIBLY easy to want to self attack. Oh you are so cold! You don't even care about other people! This was your natural reaction, so it must be that you *naturally* just don't give a shit.

NOT TRUE. My history leads to this conclusion logically. I felt the true emotion...which is my true self. Then, I felt the past experience emotion, which is based on what my parents have taught me, which, as I've determined, is mostly absolute rubbish!

The QUESTION...why didn't I notice? Well, I am still very much looking into that. The ultimate thing is that I don't know. . I do not know the answer as to why I've lacked empathy in so many instances in my life. I have theories, but a major part of philosophy is understanding that when the answer is not obvious, coming to conclusions is unwise.

That's what I'm going to go with for now...we'll see how this develops.