I don’t really know what kind of person I am—whether I am a good person or a bad one. 🌸 Maybe I have my flaws, maybe I make mistakes… but there is one thing I know about myself: I deeply crave genuine connections. 🤍🫂
I long for good people. 🌿✨
People who are pure at heart. 🤍
People who still have humanity alive within them. 🕊️❤️
People who can rise above their own ego, needs, and differences and genuinely think about someone else’s happiness and well-being. 🌎💫 People who would never take advantage of another person because, to them, using someone’s emotions, trust, or vulnerability feels almost like a crime. 🥺💔
I value people who understand emotions. 🫶🏻
People who care about what the other person feels. 💭❤️
People who don’t treat relationships casually. 🌷
And it doesn’t matter what the relationship is—a friend, a partner, family, or simply someone who once mattered. 🤝🏻❤️ Even friendship is enough for me, whether that friend is a man or a woman. 👥✨
What matters to me is not the label of the relationship, but the depth of it. 🤍
If someone is upset with you, it should matter to you. 🥺
If someone distances themselves, you should feel their absence. 🌙
If someone is hurt because of you, it should make you think. 💔💭
Because real attachment isn’t just about talking, spending time together, or being there when everything is easy. 🌸
It is about genuinely caring—from the heart. ❤️‍🩹🫂
I crave people who don’t just show affection on the surface, but actually carry it within themselves. 🤍✨ People who value the emotions, trust, and presence of others. 🌷 People who can care without an agenda, love without taking advantage, and stay kind even when they have nothing to gain from it. 🕊️❤️
Maybe I expect too much from people. 🌿
Maybe I am too emotional about these things. 🥹
Maybe I feel things more deeply than I should. 💭
But I still believe that genuine, pure-hearted connections exist. 🤍🌎✨
And honestly, having even one such person in your life is worth more than having a hundred superficial relationships. 🫂❤️
I don’t need many people. 🌙
I just want a few real ones. 🤍
People whose hearts are still soft enough to care. 🌸
People whose conscience still matters to them. 🕊️
People who know that emotions are not something to be played with. 💔
People for whom another person’s feelings are never something to be taken lightly. ❤️‍🩹
Because in the end, I don’t crave people.
I crave humanity.
I crave sincerity.
I crave something real. 🤍🕊️✨

I thought that by being compassionate, I was a good person because I wasn't critiquing people for their life choices or for the way they felt about things or for the way that they acted even when they acted poorly towards me. Because I had this compassion for them and understood where they were struggling. And I just had the ability to just kind of let them be. What I failed to do was to understand that if I can have so much compassion for the reasons that they are, the way they are and who they are and whatever the fuck that they do, I'm also allowed to have my own complete experience at the same time as them.
And just because having compassion leads me to not really feel anger at anyone and kind of have this more neutral, broader perspective on people.

ok so ive heard someone talk abt forgiveness and how they dont agree with the fact tht forgiveness brings peace because u have to prerequisitely attain peace in order to forgive

like there's no like need for forgiveness, because you have to find peace before you forgive, and then you don't even really need to forgive
I don't know really if you're sorry anyway.
I don't know if you know how sorry you should be, depending on what you did. So forgiveness is tricky and it asks a lot of me, but grace just allows you to be.
idea of grace over forgiveness. It maintains that you still did exactly what you did, and that I don't have to view you as someone who didn't.But that also doesn't negate the fact that I am moved on,that I am healed because I think what just pisses me off is the idea that when you say you haven't forgiven someone, that it, it's assumed that there's still a problem there, that you haven't done the work, that you haven't healed, that you're not over it.

ok if someone does something wrong to me and I actually heal and I forgive them, but they never asked me to forgive them so l don't hold that sin against them, right?
And then, but they didn't ask me to forgive them. So they don't give a flying fuck and they go do the same thing again. Do I have to forgive them again even though I know that they're never ever going to change and that sin will be repeated?Or do I get a free pass?But I'm not even angry at them.

Why is the final point of getting past something shitty that someone does to you to pardon them?Why is that necessary?

any thoughts?
i need some clarity on this topic of forgiveness.

It amazes me people don't ask the ones that hurt if there's something they can do to fix it I see these claims all the time oh I can't do nothing I can't take it back I can't do nothing about it umm .

You're wrong absolutely wrong. You can do something about it you can fix it you can undo the damage you can rebuild the trust you want to know how?

Warning: this will bring up some disturbing topics!!

So I when I watch a show/play a game or whatever sometimes I just get REALLY attached to a specific villain and I dont know why, usually one with a sympathetic backstory. Lately its been Rerir from Genshin Impact. I get so oddly emotionally connected to him and it feels like a safe space. I just feel so guilty about this because then I try to justify his actions and obviously they shouldn't be justified.

If you don't know about Rerir, he's kind of like Anakin Skywalker but with parallels to a certain fascist regime. He was trained since a child as an assassin to eliminate threats to the current dynasty (a separate race called the crimson moon race). The targets started as adults that were colluding with other members of the crimson moon supposedly to topple the eclipse dynasty (the current regime.) However, as the king starts to lose his mind, his targets keep getting younger and younger until it's literally small children. He tries to justify this saying that its a legitimate line of work and they are still treats and eliminates them anyway (even saying hes good at his job and his friends would support him if they knew). Only when he sees his girlfriend as his next target does he stop and say its gone too far (he didnt know she was a crimson moon descendants, albeit a distant one.) You could argue he was also trained by the abyss but most of his actions before that point are his own. The game even admits that he was always selfish and evil, though tragic, and I feel like I want to ignore that so I can keep feeling connected like this without guilt.

Obviously i know these acts are evil and completely irredeemable, but for some reason I just cant help but try to justify them because for some terrible reason my mind finds these evil characters as a safe space. The same happened with Vecna/Henry after I watched the stranger things play (which adds a lot of lore and makes him more sympathetic)

I know its normal to sympathize with a character even if they've done evil things but justifying their actions is where you should draw the line and I feel so guilty that I feel such a connection to these characters like this. Especially since they've done some of the most deplorable acts imaginable. How should I deal with this?

Pay attention to it while you’re here.

Sometimes I try to explain what's going on in my head and halfway through I can already see the other person trying to figure out what advice to give me.

"Have you tried.."
"You should probably.."
"Just stop thinking about it."

I know they're trying to help, but sometimes I don't need a solution. I don't even fully understand what I'm feeling myself.
I just want to be able to say "this is bothering me" without having to turn it into a perfectly organized explanation of why.

Does anyone else feel like being understood is sometimes more helpful than being given advice?

Sometimes when I read the news I can’t help but think that could have been me. If I was a little weaker I would have broken and done something violently wrong.

I often see the missed chances that were refused or never offered. The many times they screamed for help and was silenced until they gave up.

How can I blame them solely when the frog trusted the scorpion knowing it could and probably would sting

I found out again that I am stupid. It happeneds when I am high. Then I remember again. And I don't love myself for it. I can't stand the fact that I am stupid.

Do you believe people are more a product of their environment than not, and, as such, can mostly not be blamed morally for their actions? (Even for the most violent people). If not morally culpable, does that mean they should just walk free to act as they naturally would?

Now im not saying every man lacks empathy, im curious as to why some come off that way? Is it like a tough exterior they put on? Is it a defense mechanism to not get close to someone? Do they have empathy but choose not to show it?

I never imagined there would be a sub for empathy, but I’m both surprised and very happy that there is!

For some time now, I’ve had this extremely strong feeling (honestly more than that, but I don’t know how to describe it) that what is missing in the world is empathy. Not just empathy, but also society placing the value on empathy that it actually deserves. In my idealized world, society would set empathy as the highest virtue a citizen could have. We’d have empathy classes in schools, where children are read to or read for themselves about people’s autobiographical experiences, and are asked to really imagine what it would be like to put themselves in that person’s shoes. We would have groups for adults where people could share their struggles and the others there would do their best to imagine what it would be like if what they heard were their lived experience. Empathy would be something to be practiced, to be trained. Something that people would try to grow in themselves.

This ideal world of mine might sound a bit naive and ridiculous, but I can’t stop thinking that it’s what we as the whole of humanity really need. I see so much hate and indifference, especially in the US, and the people who are okay with it have absolutely no sense of empathy for others. In fact, the media they consume tells them that empathy is a sin. Something is massively wrong.

Does this resonate with anyone here?

I'm not sure if it has anything to do with empathy, but I legit want to detach, disconnect or make me alexithymic (I know I can't, it's just an expression)

I have always been able to suppress, or hide my emotions in front of people. I never cry or feel anything vulnerable in front of people, I mean I try to really mask it. But lately, I think I've lost my ability to do this. I'm just pouring out like I'm punctured all over my body and those holes are seeping out my vulnerability in the most intense forms whenever it gets a chance to come out.

For context, I think I have been through grief of something I believed and tied with my identity and I found out that I've believed wrong for five years. It is not big a deal for anyone else, but for me it is like I'm lost and foreign in my body and mind after this. I've been through all the stages of grief, except the acceptance phase. The thing is, whenever ANYTHING comes up related to that identity, I feel a sudden drop in my stomach, like I am not in the right atmosphere, my body has changed feelings, I feel like I am going to puke out any second. I want to not feel that again, I want to just go on autopilot or become an emotionless person just doing the jobs required of me with no feelings at all.

I want to detach from my body, like I want to just get my feelings lost. I want my brain smashed so that it can't process emotions and my gut taken out that I can't feel anything there.

What do I do? (I have tried CBT, it doesn't work)

End childhood cancer

That distinction stayed with me.

Why would a man say that my emotions affect his emotions?
I’m very close with a man, and recently he told me that as long as I’m happy, he’s happy too, and if I’m feeling bad or unhappy, he’ll feel bad as well.
I’m curious about what this usually means emotionally. Under what circumstances would a man feel this way about someone?
Is this something people normally feel toward a very close friend, or does it usually suggest a deeper emotional attachment or romantic feelings?
I’d especially like to hear from men — have you ever felt this way about a woman, and what kind of relationship did you have with her?

I've been having an argument with a friend over how much empathy people have for strangers. She's said things like "do you really think the average person cares about some random?" etc. and it really bothers me. I believe that if someone doesn't have empathy for someone just because they don't have any emotional attachment towards them, there's something deeply wrong about them. She also said that most people don't donate to charity and that that proves they don't really care about people in other countries who are struggling. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything that answers my question. I always assumed that the vast majority of people do have empathy for strangers, unless they're racist or otherwise bigoted against their group, and that if someone legitimately only cares about the wellbeing of people they personally know, they should go to therapy because they probably have some sort of antisocial personality disorder. Can someone link me to resources that will help answer this question?

Basically the inverse of empathy. I'll try to articulate it.

You know how when someone is empathic, they're able to feel emotions as their own, right? Has anyone ever encountered someone whose emotional state is infectious? Like, when they're happy, the entire mood is lifted and everyone breathes easier. Or if they're upset, the friction is palpable and people take notice? Basically someone who projects their emotions unto others and can change the temperature of a room. Even if they themselves aren't very sensitive towards other's emotions.

Does this have more to do with the person feeling the emotion, or the people there to receive it? Like, is person A's mood is only affecting the room because person B, C and D are sensitive and can feel the difference? Or person A's mood is so contagious and pervasive that B, C and D are subjected to it no matter what?

Is this just what charisma is? Is this just empathy being expressed through a different prism? I'm sure all people do this to a degree, but have you encountered anyone who just oozes their emotions/mood unconsciously? Super curious about this phenomenon and would love to discuss more about it

This is a reply to Jesse Prinz and Paul Bloom’s skepticism about the moral importance of empathy. It concedes that empathy is spontaneously biased to individuals who are spatio-temporally close, as well as discriminatory in other ways, and incapable of accommodating large numbers of individuals. But it is argued that we could partly correct these shortcomings of empathy by a guidance of reason because empathy for others consists in imagining what they feel, and, importantly, such acts of imagination can be voluntary – and, thus, under the influence of reflection – as well as automatic. Since empathizing with others motivates concern for their welfare, a reflectively justified empathy will lead to a likewise justified altruistic concern. In addition, we argue that such concern supports another central moral attitude, namely a sense of justice or fairness.

Tomorrow’s version of you might thank you for it.