Is it normal to feel completely indifferent to strangers' lives?

[AmusedTaupePlayer]

Hi all,
Bit of an odd one, but I’ve been thinking about this lately and wondering if anyone else relates.
I’ve noticed that unless someone is part of my life — family, close friends, maybe a few colleagues — I just don’t feel anything about what happens to them. Whether it’s good or bad. Someone winning the lottery, getting cancer, becoming homeless, whatever — I can understand it matters, but on a personal level, I feel nothing. Take homelessness — I get that it’s awful and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but emotionally, I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me. I don’t feel moved by it.
It’s not that I’m unkind or malicious. I just feel emotionally neutral about people I don’t know.
I suspect more people feel like this than let on, but whenever I’ve hinted at it, people react like I’m some sort of sociopath. So if it’s that common, why is it such a taboo to say out loud?
Is this just how emotional bandwidth works? Or is something off?
Genuinely curious — would love to know if others feel the same but just don’t talk about it.

FFS, just because it isn’t how YOU respond to a given situation, doesn’t mean it’s performative when someone else does. That word is so bloody insulting. How hard is it to understand that people are not all built the same way? Yes, some people do genuinely cry for other people they’ve never met. Thats what empathy is, maybe just count yourself lucky you don’t suffer from it - it can be exhausting.

People definitely make a virtue out of their performative empathy and it's deeply irritating. It's not actually empathetic to make everything about you. It's the opposite.

I really don’t know why people are interpreting being empathetic and caring about the plight of others as crying and being dramatic over it for the rest of your life. No one can do that, but you can still feel a pain in your heart for those suffering then go about your Tesco shop.

I said, once, that I was repulsed by the OP’s op. That’s not bullying. It’s an expression of my opinion. This is a forum for the exchange of opinions.

Not everything that isn’t sunshine and roses and #bekind at all times is bullying. The OP is free to disregard my opinion. Everyone on an open chat forum puts themselves in line to receive positive, negative and neutral feedback on their contributions.

I have never in my life met someone like that. Maybe you have just been unlucky.

But a lot of it is performative. People have to be the saddest, feel the most, be the most affected. Have you seen some of the SM posts after a tragedy? For many it's not about the grieving family, it's about the poster looking caring, being grief stricken, showing what an specially empathetic person they are. It's grim.

saying it’s annoying and performative is no worse than calling people with low empathy repulsive sociopaths though. It goes both ways! People are entitled to dislike and be irritated by certain traits other people and voice those opinions on a thread about the topic. If it’s fair game to insult people at one end of the spectrum then it’s fair game to do it the other way too!

Are you neurodivergent/autistic or have traits? I'm similar to you in terms of those feelings and I'm undiagnosed but recognise plenty of mildly autistic traits in myself despite being personable, having friends and a professional career.

Fair enough. I would never call someone either lower levels of empathy repulsive or sociopathic though.

Well, unless they actually were a sociopath which some of them might be as it is a linked trait - I’d need other evidence first though!

Like a normal functional human being. Posters here say they don’t feel emotions when faced with a news story of child abuse / death. I don’t think that is very functional personally…..

I think the performative grief vulture types are exactly the types that get wrapped up in online campaigns about other people's sick children, to a harmful degree. Not naming names of sick or deceased children but you know the ones where the grief stricken parents post on social media, go to court etc and the mob yell at the doctors outside the hospital and they're called 'Baby X's army'. I find that much more unpleasant than someone who just focuses on their own life.

Said it before but I'm very wary of people who self declare how empathetic they are in the same way I don't trust people who feel the need to tell me that they're honest.

I think real empathy is a bit like love in that 1 Corinthians passage commonly used at weddings. It's patient and kind rather than boastful and self seeking. The performative sort of empathy is a poor substitute for the real one.

This is completely different from normal emotions. I would argue that the grief vultures types are actually closer to OP in that they make it all about themselves. That’s not just a person with normal levels of empathy and emotional responsiveness.its very me-me-me like the OP also is in her own way.

But most empathetic people don’t go around declaring it. I’ve admitted to it in this thread because that is what we’re discussing and it’s an interesting topic so I wanted to contribute.

In fifty years of living I’ve never once in real life declared myself to be “empathetic”, or “an empath”, or anything of the sort.

We live in an era when having too many feelings is not deemed to be a good thing (as evidenced by the disdain on this thread) so I think most of us try to keep it hidden.

Until recently I would have thought you were weird. But it turns out that there are a lot people in the UK who are incapable of empathy

All I know is people and the world get fucked over by people who don’t care about others, not by people who do.

An example of empathy is listening to someone tell you about something and "understanding" whether this person is asking for you for solution-based help, to cry/laugh/scream along with them or whether they are asking to you to just hold it together and listen to their perspective. Caring is responding to that "request" as best you can based on that person's needs rather than your own. Maybe you decide (consciously or otherwise) not to care, or only care a bit, because your needs (e.g. to ignore/switch off, to let out your own emotions, to reassure yourself of your moral highground, to try to fix things) take priority.

I quiet cry a lot, when reading or watching the news, sports, dramas, documentaries etc. Crying, for me, is a way of releasing pent up anger around injustice and cruelty, despair, guilt and hopelessness around suffering, anxiety, relief, hope, joy around resolution or triumph. I cry very rarely when someone tells me their personal bad news because it's very rare that that is what a person going through something bad is asking of me.

Me too. I am an empathetic person (but not an ‘empath’). I don’t declare that in real life anymore than than I tell people I am ‘nice’ or ‘authentic’ - because I’m not a self-absorbed jerk 😁 and doubt anyone is that interested.

But why don't the people who care 🙄 do something then? Or is it enough to feel sad? Why don't the empaths on this thread run for political office so they can make a proper difference. According to Pp there are far more empaths in the world rather than those odd people who don't cry for everyone and everything. Surely that makes the empaths far worse - feeling so deeply but doing sod all about it.

Can I also just check - people aren't conflating empathy and sympathy? I must say, I've never seen an empathy card in a card shop.

I think you get very good at masking - holding in your own feelings while in public, or helping someone, and then need to find some quiet time alone later on to process.

"Why don't the empaths on this thread run for political office so they can make a proper difference?" I don't really understand what "an empath" is supposed to be, but are you suggesting empathetic/caring people are those who are likely to get far in politics?

Why not? Evidently they far outnumber those in the population who aren't empaths.

I really hope so. This thread has been a bit disturbing.

Statistically, it’s people at the opposite end of the spectrum who do most well in politics and business., Eadier to tread on people if you don’t feel their pain.

I don't know what "an empath" is. Do you just mean people who experience empathy? A very rapid google seems to suggest "an empath" is a sort of excessively sensitive person. Whilst you would have thought that giving a shit about others would be a desirable quality in a politician (at least before power corrupts), I can't imagine "an empath" would get past the first post in a political career!