Fun fact: I think I had to purposefully construct my sense of empathy.
I was literally like psychopath-sadist when I was really young. I didn’t really enact anything irl besides torturing bugs or imagining cartoon characters in pain, but around 4yo I started feeling like I was a bad person because other people didn’t seem to desire to do those things, in fact hero’s in movies purposefully avoided violence.
So the shame/guilt of feeling like I was a monster, a the desire to be like everyone else, lead me to try and make myself feel pain when I hurt other things. When my mother or sisters would tell me to come kill a spider I’d pinch myself or bite my tongue while doing so.
Then, being a curious kid, I started just trying to imagine the physical sensations of being in different bodies and having different injuries. This eventually spread to trying to imagine different emotions and by and by I didn’t have to force myself to feel it anymore. When I see someone/something get hurt, I don’t have to think about it now, I just feel it.
While I’ll admit it is possible that I’m correlating this purposeful imagination with some possible natural development of my brain creating empathy, considering that until recently I only really felt pain, negative emotions, and physical sensations through empathy, I’d say it seems most likely I built it myself.
Since realizing this a few years ago, I have started trying to feel happy/positive empathy too and it does seem like it’s been working. Though, it’s slow going because I’m hella antisocial lol.
Oh and just in case anyone is worried, I’m no longer sadistic at all. I literally can’t bring myself to kill spiders or other bugs, and there are some scenes in movies I can’t stand to watch. I can unfortunately still feel those old feelings and empathize with sadistic characters/actions, but the saccharine feeling of enjoying causing pain actually makes me physically sick now.
