i've probably blogged this before

I am cursed with too much empathy. While empathy is a good thing, and there's a whole hell of a lot of people who could use to have a little more, an excess of it really is a curse. It's why I hurt so much when D hurts. Not to overuse the word literally, but I do literally feel his emotional pain. There's no detachment there, no ability to put up one of the walls I am so capable of building in other situations.

I used to read some internet forums for parents and families of the mentally ill, back when things were worse. It helped to an extent. But ultimately I had to stop going to them. The level of anger many of these people had towards their sick relatives, even their own children, felt toxic to me. Now people who are floridly psychotic or manic or deeply depressed are often unpleasant and do unpleasant, destructive things, sure. But I would read the anger directed towards these sick people and their bad behaviors and think, "But don't you feel how terrified (or sad or confused or whatever) this poor sick person is? Don't you understand their pain?" Until it dawned on me that, no, most people really don't. Their ability to empathize in situations they themselves have not lived through is extremely limited. (I think I've just argued myself away from my thesis, because I'm not sure these people's toxic anger and lack of empathy is any less distressing to them than my empathic pain is to me. But there's gotta be a middle ground, right?)

The other destructive part of having too much empathy is that you (by which I mean me) tend to forgive people their shitty, shitty behavior far more than you probably should. You get angry, then you think about why they behaved shittily, and you understand their motivations and realize it's all about their own fucked up shit, and then you let it go. Which is probably okay if you are the Buddha or Jesus, but in real life, maybe people really deserve a smack upside their heads. How're they going to stop acting like assholes unless they're called out for it? That's been one of my new missions in life over the past few years, I guess...reaching the middle ground on that. Forgiving but not allowing the shitty behavior to be repeated, and disengaging when it's clear it will be. It's a work in progress.

What brings this all up, Andrea? Oh, been reading about the woman and her 2 year old being kicked off the Southwest flight for the baby being too loud, and responses to that, and responses to the responses. And it all recalled to me a conversation Mr Barma and I had a while ago, about screaming babies and toddlers in public places, especially places wherein they and you are trapped, like an airplane, and how we felt when confronted with such. Namely, not annoyed, but sympathetic for the crying child (who is obviously miserable) but especially for the parent(s). Because there is nothing in parenthood like having a baby or young child that you just cannot comfort in a situation where you *know* it's annoying other people and they are thinking bad thoughts about you and you feel desperate and helpless and embarrassed. My empathy for other parents in that situation? Oh, yeah.

But I guess some people don't realize that if such things as crying children are so distressing to them, they ought to invest in some noise-cancelling earphones and a couple Xanax before every flight and leave the judgmental stinkeye at home. Or develop empathy (more than they have now, less than I have.) Choices in life.

xoxo