Have you ever met someone who has no empathy?

[Wivern]

I was wondering about this today after I met up with a friend who meets this description but who I still value a lot because we have been friends for a long time. It made me wonder how many people are like this which we never realise unless they do something absolutely horrific and cruel. The latter are probably the ones that get noticed but I wondered about the ones who don’t because they just blend in and don’t commit crimes?

Absolutely not - I have a lot of empathy for things that are genuinely out of people’s hands, and feel a great deal of empathy for people in hopeless situations like living in a war zones or with an incurable disease. I distinctly remember bursting into tears at a news report about Ebola around 10 years ago where they interviewed a teenage girl who had lost her entire family in a matter of weeks to Ebola and she was completely alone. I still remember that story and it affects me to this day.

Where I completely struggle with empathy is when people make poor life choices like becoming obese or becoming an alcoholic and don’t take responsibility. I know we’re supposed to believe some people are more ‘susceptible’ to making poor choices due to their upbringing etc. but I just can’t feel anything about that.

That sounds more like an attachment issue. I am the same, my mother hated any form of illness and I responded by becoming incredibly independent but it's part of an avoidant attachment style.

My sister has no empathy. I'm going through a lot of health stuff at the moment and she sent me a robotic text asking how it's going and that our mother told her what's going on. No good wishes, or any sort of normal engagement from a sibling. I responded in a bland sort of way and she didn't respond back. It doesn't matter to me, I went low contact years ago because being in a relationship with her is very hard.

My dad is so empathetic he can't function - he shuts himself down as a defence mechanism and is basically a hermit. It makes him seem very self-centred and unempathetic when the opposite is true. I've inherited the same trait - I feel other people's feelings very acutely and it is torture at times, though I am able to manage it most of the time. I can generally predict people's reactions and behaviours much better than other people can, largely because I can understand their thought processes. It makes me very understanding but at the same time it is hard not to get overly concerned with everyone else's feelings and neglect my own.

My mother has proto-empathy - empathy on the level of an 8/9 year old child, where she can sort of understand how another person feels but she can't process it at all and she has very immature reactions to things. At 70 she has developed some level of skill but it is still nowhere near what you'd expect from a typical adult.

You can imagine my family is an interesting bunch!

Empathy is a funny thing - I was telling a friend yesterday about a situation I'd gone through earlier in the year with a child she didn't know - the child was very sad and scared - and she got tears in her eyes. She has no connection whatsoever to the child, yet she was able to imagine and feel how he was feeling. It's quite hard to live like that - both she and I have defence mechanisms because in a world where so many things go wrong it's like living with raw nerve endings. That said, I feel joy very acutely too and absolutely revel in the happiness of others, so it does have a great upside!

Yes, a woman from church. Almost 30. Absolutely horrible and completely devoid of any human feelings whatsoever. She got a cat and I was seriously worried about its welfare after seeing her behaviour towards one of my cats when she visited me. I shudder at the mere thought of her.

I've just read a very interesting article about avoidant attachment style, and have found it very interesting; definitely food for thought. Thank you for your insight and for pointing that out @Arran2024 .

I agree with pp who said sympathy is much more useful than empathy. Also, that people who go on about being empaths are often just as self-absorbed as people with no empathy.

On the topic of different types of empathy, I'm autistic, and as part of that (I think), I often struggle to understand why people are upset about something they've experienced if I can't relate it somehow to something I've experienced - but I do feel sympathy.

I find animals and people suffering to be upsetting, but at the same time I'm not emotionally distressed by hearing about something like 9/11, or deaths in natural disasters - there's no point to it if they're already dead (unlike ongoing suffering), and a lot of the time it seems like performative 'mournography' that, again, is quite self-focused.

My two children are much the same (both autistic) and my husband (not autistic) is much better at interpersonal empathy, but feels the same way about disasters etc - if there's nothing you can do to help and it doesn't impact you, there's no point being bothered by it.

I can generally predict people's reactions and behaviours much better than other people can, largely because I can understand their thought processes.

I have defence mechanisms ... it's like living with raw nerve endings.

You can imagine my family is an interesting bunch!

You may be describing hyper-vigilance, @Whyarepeople. It sounds like your 'interesting' family forced you to anticipate your parents' needs and behaviours, and your siblings' as well. To an extent, you were parentified by your actual parents' inability to cope with the motional demands of a family.

It happened to me. I'm grateful for the observational skills and human insight it gave me, and at least as grateful for the therapy that helped me develop healthy boundaries.

Yes my mother - upsetting people (mainly me and my dad) without a thought

Yes my ex was like that. People thought he was a great guy because he works in the emergency services in a very skilled, dangerous job. He was simply pretending to be a decent person. It took me a long time to realise he isn't. He even admitted once that he didn't love his children. It's like he understood how people feel, but just didn't care.

I totally agree - I am hyper-vigilant and care far too much about other people's feelings because of the way I was raised. At the same time I think there's an innate element in it all because my sister was raised in the same environment and couldn't be more different. She doesn't even know people have feelings, never mind care.

I had a friend with no empathy. She was regularly saying how mean people were to her, and how bitchy her friends were, out of the blue, for no discernible reason…… exhausting!

Your daughter sounds just like my eldest sister. She is also the victim in her own life, it's always someone else's fault. She treats everybody with contempt and wonders why she has no-one in her life. She pushes EVERYONE away.
My mum (and other siblings) are, however, lovely.

According to my DW (many times repeated) I don't.
She's still with me though.

Who does she turn to when she needs sympathy?

I think a lot of people on this thread are confusing ‘having no empathy’ with ‘being a cunt’. They’re not the same. A lot of people who behave unpleasantly do understand exactly how someone feels when they’re cruel to them. That’s why they do it.

Similarly, a lot of people are confusing empathy and sympathy. They’re not the same.

A cunt! Yep, 🤣 that’s another way of putting it.

Not true. Many autistic people are awash with empathy so much so it’s overwhelming.

It’s incorrect to think all ND people don’t understand empathy or sympathy or compassion. They can.

I actually think one of my PhD professors would have scored quite highly on the psychopath scale!
Great at what they did and successful but definitely lacked empathy, everything seen from how it affected them “oh so and so is very sick that’s so inconvenient right now“, was manipulative and could be ruthless. I guess traits which made them successful but still…..

I'm not linking this specifically with ND people - though I'm aware a lot of autistic writers & broadcasters have spoken at length about their overwhelming empathy.

But. "I literally feel your pain! It's almost unbearable. Waah, make me feel better!" I mean. What. The.Fuck.

I absolutely believe such people are feeling something. I don't believe in telepathy. I don't believe they're 'literally feeling' anyone else's pain. Writhing in agony over someone else's injury is singularly unhelpful.

It would be interesting if neuro-psych researchers could get to the bottom of what's going on there, but 'empaths' generally resist rational questioning - as do 'telepaths'.

Side note: for those interested in empathy and neurodiversity look into the Double Empathy Problem. It explains how autistic people experience empathy differently. It’s not that they can’t have it. It just looks and feels different to how NT people experience it

My mother. Ruined the lives of her children with her cruelty and indifference. When I was taking fluoxitine for severe depression, I had to stop, as although it helped, it turned me into a person I did not recognise ...well, I did actually - my mother . It completely removed my empathy, which was horrible.

i mentioned it further up the thread but I sometimes do feel the emotions as though it’s happened to me. I don’t advertise it because it sounds like I’m making someone else’s pain about me. At other times I don’t feel a thing about something tragic. The only pattern I can see to is so far is that if it’s something that makes sense in the context and expected it is still sad I don’t have an emotional response. If it’s something that’s out of the blue/a shock it can play on my mind and upset me for days. An example is recently passing a car accident on the motorway. There had obviously been a fatality. They were under a blanket and people were waiting at the side of the road some distance away. I felt devastated and kept thinking about this person waking up that morning not knowing it was the last day of their lives and the impact it would have…their workplace, their families, having their things in the house that they never returned to and I cried and cried. A friends father died of terminal cancer and my brain just thought ‘well of course he’s dead, he’s been riddled with cancer and this is going to seriously disrupt things for a while which is very annoying’

It doesn’t make much sense and I’d rather it wasn’t that way! I can imagine how it seems selfish in both scenarios though

Yes loads - it’s frightening how many of them walk among us. They’re not all serial killers but they are capable of harming the spirit. Then some of them might be serial killers but just not caught - loads of them lol! 😬

I said lots not all

If it helps at all, @Scrimblescromble, it is normal to be traumatised by witnessing a fatality. Assuming it isn't part of your daily life, sudden mortality shocks and disrupts your reasonable expectation of waking up tomorrow like you did today. That naturally prompts thoughts & fears like yours.