Category Archives: Empathy

Brain, Empathy, Health, Health Care Reform, Memory, Mental Illness, Poetry, Psychiatric Unit, Psychiatry, Seclusion and Restraints, Trauma

Useless Psychiatric Mediation and a Poem

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(Before I write this blog entry, I want to send this message:To certain people from Middlesex Hospital who read this and are following developments in my case against you please be aware that I know who you are and I am watching you. You do not and will not get away with what you did nor with what you are doing now.)

That said, let me tell all the others of you out there what happened at the mediation- meeting-that- wasn’t, this morning at Middlesex Hospital.

As you know, I have been wanting this meeting for a long time, but when I got there not only did I discover that they were playing the game of “Oh, I had no idea that you wanted a mediation meeting, I didn’t know what this meeting was about at all…” but that the CEO had actually cancelled on last Friday the people that he had arranged to meet with me.  So in fact the only people who came were administrators, not anyone who had treated or dealt with me on the unit itself, except the doctor who saw me for the last 11 days of my 6 week stay. He may have been the director of the unit, but he was hardly the main doctor I saw, despite what he claimed.

Anyhow, the meeting was extremely  — well, first of all, it was largely a waste of time, because NOTHING was said of interest to me. Except that Dr Grillo, the unit director, after I read what follows, actually had the gall to claim that restraints were  entirely appropriate…He said nothing whatsoever about what they did to me. OTOH, I can understand why. After all, he had already been told that we were writing the Department of Justice and the Joint Commission regarding his unit, so he must have felt supremely threatened. Naturally he could not have admitted wrong- doing. Not that any god, excuse me, doctor that I have ever met has ever admitted doing anything wrong or ever apologized. God forbid, a doctor apologize! No, that would be too hard and too demeaning for them to ever do.  Better that they go along and permit torture and abuse than that they admit that there was wrong done to a patient on their watch, much less that they personally even made so small a thing as a leetle eensy meestake…

Well, I know what they did to me and I know it was abusive and wrong, and so far, except for Dr Grillo and that lot, NO ONE I have ever met outside of Middlesex Hospital has ever ever agreed with him and said, Yes, in fact the use of restraints was proper and necessary, and they were right to do what they did to you.

So take that, you watchers from MH. I hope you tremble in your boots for torturing me so. Because you never apologized, and wouldn’t’ meet with me to talk about it, it serves you right whatever happens now. I came down there today , and it took all the courage I   could summon up to do so. I came down there, after two nights without sleep, just to meet with you and talk about what happened on April 28, 2012. But you couldn’t be bothered to deal with me, and so now you will deal with the DOJ and JCAHO. And too bad for you if that means that heads roll and some of you lose your gd jobs. I do not care any more. I tried, I tried to reconcile and talk with you about it, but you didn’t have the courage to do so, you wouldn’t deal with me, and so now you can deal with the powerful ones, and not me. Now I don’t give a damn what happens to you.

Meanwhile, this is what I was going to read to all of you, and what I did read to the hospital CEO and the administrative personnel, and what the advocates are sending along with the letter to the DOJ and JCAHO.

STATEMENT TO N-7 TREATMENT TEAM & CEO OF MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL et al.

Although I have a longer statement, I first want to read you a poem that I wrote about my experience here. It is only half a page long, but like any decent poem, it says a great deal in few words. The expression “Long pig” means a human being intended for eating.

TO MY PROTECTORS

I came to you fractured,

splintered to syllables,

all-fired to incinerate

the house of my body

where the devil lived.

But I was not nice,

not nice, not nice, no,

I was not nice enough

for balm and kindness,

or to win back my art

or my writing supplies,

so I upended a trashcan

on top of my head

and uniforms nailed

me, naked X, to a bed.

It gouged my brain.

Freight train. Tank.

Two years: still blank.

Nurses, doctors,

thieves: you knew, you

knew. You made of me

pulled pork, long pig

X-posed and pinioned,

not quite a specimen

for your knew the subject

and your objective  :

your satisfaction showed

as you struggled to hide

your smiles.

I was admitted to North-7 in extremis: confused, psychotic, and traumatized. Exquisitely vulnerable, my sole comforts were doing art and writing. These were also my strengths. Yet instead of using these to help me, you consistently employed them against me–withholding supplies as punishment when you felt I was not behaving nicely and worse, using loss of them as a stick when they were most needed. The first time this happened was on April 9th, nine days after I had been admitted. I had been using glue sticks freely to make a large collage for several days. Angry at me for yelling at her, one of the senior nurses whom I won’t name, decided to withhold them. She would no longer give them to me until, as she put it, “the team puts them on your treatment plan.” This frankly felt like such gratuitous punishment, and so unnecessary, not to mention counterproductive, that I could see nothing in it but petty revenge. Nevertheless, not myself and not in control, I screamed, “Fuck you!” and ran to my room. Luckily, Christobelle from OT, the one person who consistently treated me not only with understanding and kindness but with respect and dignity as well, came in shortly thereafter carrying two gluesticks. I do not know whether she knew of these new restrictions or not, but I was grateful.

On another later occasion, I had been using my soft felt-tipped markers, which my old treatment plan permitted me until 10pm. That treatment plan had been changed, however, and the new, more relaxed one said nothing about markers, so it seemed to me that I was now allowed markers in my room just like anyone else. However, around 10pm, someone called Bob came in demanding them. He threatened that if he had to ask, quote, “a 3rd time you’re in for trouble.” My pulse ratcheted upward. Uh, oh, uh oh. Why was he doing this? Was he deliberately baiting me, trying to pick a fight? He could so easily have discussed my understanding of the new plan. It wouldn’t have been so hard to figure out a compromise. After all, they were just Crayolas, not carbon steel knives. I was sick of the power plays, and sick of the way staff just wanted to control me instead of talk to me and of how they insisted on domination at all costs. Well, this time I was not going to give up without a fight, and it seemed that a fight was what Bob was itching for. Instead of negotiation and attempting to find a compromise, Bob reached out to grab me, which I construed as an assault. I screeched, “Don’t touch me!” Someone else grabbed me from behind. I kicked and punched. Someone told me later it was Ruth I kicked. In my journal I wrote this: “she was furious enough to lie and scream that I caused an uproar ‘every single night and I’m sick to death of it!’…”

I fought them then, clawing and screaming, trying in vain to resist, my body flailing as the chart itself notes, my heart hammering. Why were they doing this to me over a few markers?! I wanted to scream. Why were they being such bullies? They were hurting me! But of course there were several of them against the one of me and they were much stronger than I at 102 pounds so naturally they overpowered me. They literally dragged me to the so-called time-out room and dumped me on the floor, ordering me to calm down. Then they closed the door. No they didn’t lock it, but they kept me from leaving by leaning against the door.

You know, I don’t know why you bothered calling it a time-out room. No one could use it at will. And when you put me there, I didn’t ask to go – I was forcibly dragged there — and I didn’t want to stay: you kept me there by force so it was the same thing as seclusion, literally and legally. Time-outs have to be voluntary, you have to be able to come and go if and when you want to. When it is forced, it is by definition a seclusion. Period. That cold barren room was not a time-out room. Who did you think you were you kidding?

And listen, did it never occur to you that it was always your treatment of me that generated my behavior, yes, the negative behaviors as well as when I was in control? You could have found out what was going on by talking with me. Instead, you decided to dismiss everything I said and did as manipulative and acting out so you didn’t need to listen to me. Perhaps you thought this disregard was kept secret from me, but I knew it   at the time and it caused me enormous anguish. All I wanted was to be treated like a human being. All I wanted was to talk to someone and be listened to. But all you did was make assumptions. You never checked them out with me to find out if they were true and they almost never were. Assume makes an ass out of U and me…But mostly it does terrible damage when the assumptions are wrong. I was so afraid, I was so terribly afraid, but you never knew the half of it. All you did was to dehumanize me, ignore my pain and order me to shut up and be quiet. I know I was difficult for you to quote unquote “handle.” Hell, I was difficult for ME to handle. But I do not have a personality disorder. Ask anyone who knows me. Ask my family. Ask the psychiatrist who saw me from 2000 until 2009, ask the psychiatrist I see now. But you decided that you could detect borderline traits (somehow transmogrified into the full-blown disorder upon discharge…) despite the presence of an active psychosis. By decreeing that I had such a disorder, you put me in an utterly untenable position, because then you had a justification, so you thought, for taking nothing I said at face value. To me it felt like nothing less than soul murder and I will tell you that this particular form of soul murder makes a person want to die. It makes a person want to bash their brains out in public just to get someone to acknowledge them and take them seriously.

April 28.. April 28, 2010. You wrote in my chart your interpretations of my behavior that day and of what happened. Yes, your nursing and physician notes were supposed to be objective but dispassionate as they may have attempted to sound, all observation is but interpretation. I repeat: All observation is interpretation. Now I want you to know what happened from my point of view. (I know that some of you have been snooping around, reading my blog just as you did during my hospital stay, but you will have to sit through this anyway…)

At around 7:30pm, so the evening nurse reported in my chart, I “walked into the dayroom” and if one can believe this, without any provocation I “began shoving and turning over chairs. I then, quote, “picked up the patient trash can and put it over my head.” Staff ordered me to what they called the “time-out room.” Nursing notes report that I refused and, I quote, “went to bed instead.” Because I had not followed her direct order, the nurse wrote that “security was called and patient required security to carry her to time-out room as she refused to move or walk.” No, I simply lay on my bed, mute, trembling with terror when the phalanx of guards roared in.

Despite my lack of resistance, the guards physically took hold of me – unconcerned apparently with my known history of rape and of recent trauma — and took me from my bed where I was calming myself in the least restrictive environment. They physically carried me to the seclusion room and together with staff they forcibly prevented me from leaving.

This is what I wrote in my journal: “It was (freezing in that room) and they wouldn’t give me a blanket so I didn’t stay long…This only led to more goons pushing me back… this time strong-arming me and forcing me to a seated position on the mattress before quickly leaving but not locking the door.”

The nurse wrote this: “Patient refused to stay in time-out room… Patient attempted to shove staff, kicked at staff to get out of room. Patient was instructed several times to sit on mattress and stop pushing at and kicking staff. Patient refused. Seclusion door locked at 7:55pm.”

At this point both records state that I stripped off all my clothing. But the official records record only that fact, and that I then “was changed into hospital garb” and that I immediately stripped these off too. In my journal I wrote something else in addition that is rather revealing: Left alone in that room, I decided, and I quote, “they’d have to give me a blanket if I was [naked] so I quickly undressed and just hid under the mattress for warmth. This caused a stir for some reason and I was forced to put on hospital pj’s and lie down on the mattress. This would not do, not without a blanket which they continued to refuse me.” So once again I took them off and got up and tried to push through the woman barring the [temporarily] unlocked door. She called for reinforcements and they came. In fact, they came en masse.

“At this point” my journal continues, “they again subdued me and told/asked me why I was fighting. I said [it was] because I needed someone to talk to. That was all I wanted, just someone to talk to. One guard seemed taken aback. All these personnel hours wasted when all I wanted was a half hour of one person’s time? It seemed to strike him as ludicrous as it did me….

“Why don’t you just ask to use this room when you feel anxious or upset?” he then asked me.

“I do, I have!” I replied

“Well?

“They always say it has to be reserved for an emergency.”

He seemed completely flummoxed by that reasoning but there was no arguing with Policy so he fell quiet. Finally they decided to leave, telling me to be quiet and lie down.

I did. I did. But I was cold and I begged for a blanket.

“Sorry, it is too dangerous. You will have to sleep without one.””

Why was it so dangerous when I was on one to one and had an observer at all times? It made no sense. And why wouldn’t they just give me a sweatshirt and socks then? Or turn up the heat. How did they expect me to sleep, I was too cold!”

But this last categorical refusal was just too much. No, no blanket, no nothing. Just shut up and freeze. “That was it, I’d had enough! I dashed at them head-first and they parted, only to grab my arms and try to stop me. Someone twisted my right arm and held it behind my back, but I knew how to get him to stop it, so I tried to bite him and he briefly loosened his grip. I twisted my own arm back to me and my left pinky, held, closed tightly onto something, hooked so tightly it wouldn’t budge. My legs, the right one, grabbed the thin leg of a woman behind me, making her lean back off-balance and lose her grip on me. Then I switched to holding both my legs in a death grip around the legs in front of me. It didn’t matter one iota that [I had taken off my clothes again to get a blanket and] was naked…Anyhow, they eventually overpowered me.”

As one guard shoved me onto my stomach on the hard floor, his knee in my back, he muttered in my ear, “You bite me, I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget!” Then he mashed my cheek hard against the dirty linoleum till I was breathing dust.

I knew he was capable of hurting me, they all were. I also knew that people can die during prone restraint as the Hartford Courant and others have documented. Adrenalin flooded me, my pulse threatened to rocket out of control but I knew I had to calm down. Very deliberately, I forced myself to lie still, barely breathing.

Fortunately, when I stopped resisting, they released me and let me sit up. Someone gave me a sheet to cover me. The room cleared, except for a tech who was on 1:1 with me. She apparently was now allowed to talk with me, and for this I was supremely grateful. We conversed calmly. The door to the seclusion room had been left open, a big relief.

However, people were still talking in low voices outside the door. I heard someone trot down the hall, heard the open-and-shut of a cabinet door. I asked my 1:1 what was going on. “Don’t worry. They are just getting you some meds or making up a bed for you.”

“A bed?” I said. That gave me a bad feeling…Then I understood what was going on.  “Uh, uh. They can’t put me in restraints, I am calm and it is illegal to restrain someone who is not a danger to self or others. You know that.” I repeated it loudly, loud enough so the other staff could hear me. I began to tremble, but forced myself to remain as composed as I could, mustering all the arguments I could against the use of restraints. A nurse entered the room then and asked me to come down the hall. Did I need an escort or could I walk there by myself. “Oh I can walk by myself. But you can’t put me in restraints, I am calm.” I was barely able to speak. I felt dizzy and short of breath but I tried desperately not to show it because I was afraid that if she knew how terrified and upset I was that it would actually give them justification. Nevertheless, I followed her to the empty room — my heart went cold, I could feel urine leak — I felt like “dead man walking” when I saw that in fact they had fastened four-point restraints to the bed.

I entered the room filled with staff members and guards. I told them over and over that I was calm and willing to take PRN meds. I said I knew they were punishing me and that they knew it too. No one contradicted me. The nurse in charge ordered me to lie down on the bed. I protested. She threatened that if I didn’t “they would assist me.” I was terrified of another assault. In fact I was so terrified just of the physiological consequences of fear itself – the flood of adrenalin and painful tachycardia — that I made myself get it over with. I lay down on the bed. Gritting my teeth, I said nothing even when they pushed aside most of the sheet that covered me.

I meant to remain silent. I meant to remain completely still in order to shame them. But when they pulled my wrists right over the edges of the bed, shackling them painfully below the level of the mattress, and spread- eagled my ankles to the corners of the bed, I broke that silence and objected — vociferously. I was appalled at their barbarity but my protests did nothing. I fell silent and let them do what they wanted. Finally satisfied, they trooped out, some of them actually smiling, leaving me alone in the room. I fell asleep quickly, a narcoleptic stress reaction. Nevertheless, no one returned for an hour. They extracted a pledge of obedience from me before taking off the shackles.

“When they released me,” I wrote in my journal, “my back hurt so badly I could barely walk and…my scapula muscles felt as if they had been separated. ‘I plan to sue you for doing this to me.’ I said as calmly as I could as I left the room. Nobody reacted.”  As I wrote in my journal the next morning, “I woke in severe pain, the muscles in my chest felt torn from those that connect it to the shoulder… the pain went clear through to the scapula.”

That was not the end of it. Once you treat a human being in such a fashion, all bets are off as to how she behaves from then on. I no longer cared what you did to me after that. When you threatened me with restraints a few days later, I dared you to do it. I egged you on and so you did. My capitulation showed subsequently when I stripped naked multiple times, even voided on the seclusion room floor and smeared urine on the walls. You reduced me to an animal. I hope you were pleased with the results.

From what I witnessed, many of you — on the nursing staff at any rate– took no pleasure in your jobs. You apparently didn’t want to work in psychiatry, and wanted nothing more than peace and quiet and an easy day’s work. When one of you actually screamed at me, after that staff assault occasioned because I didn’t hand in my crayons on time, that you were “sick and tired” of listening to me every night, that was stupid and nonsensical. How can any hospitalized psychiatric patient be expected to worry about what makes a nurse comfortable?  By rights it should be the other way around.

I think what it comes down to at the North-7 secure unit is that you expected patients to meet your needs and make you happy and you tried to force us to. In my case, and in at least one other patient’s that I witnessed, you even tried to physically assault us into doing so. But what a farce. Patients in the outer unit warned me to get out of there; they told my friends they were worried staff would hurt me. They were right. By the time I was discharged, I had almost no memory of what had happened over the previous 6 weeks. It is only in the last couple of months that anything has returned to me. Yet every single day since my discharge, when I least expect it, something triggers a thought or bodily memory of my stay here and instantaneously my heart starts hammering, I get dizzy because I can’t breathe, and I tremble and cry just thinking about it because I’m right back in that seclusion room and April 28th is happening all over again…

Now, I don’t expect to recognize any of you. How could I? I still don’t remember much except those episodes I wrote about, and some little snippets here and there. I am told that some of you will be nursing staff on N-7 and some my so-called treatment team. Well, if you were my treatment team and you just turned a blind eye to what went on, for that you are just as guilty as if you accomplished the acts yourselves. Of course, the worst of it mostly took place in the evenings, in relative secrecy and when few were around. But if you knew it was happening nonetheless and If you approved, well, then, I have nothing to say except shame on all of you.

I felt helpless and utterly alone. Frightened beyond belief. No one defended me, no one helped me or came to my rescue. No one except Christobelle Payne. Christobelle treated me with compassion and kindness. She always made sure that I had gluestix and magazines for my artwork, even when your every impulse was to withhold them as punishment. I cannot tell her how grateful I was and how grateful I remain to her for treating me so humanely. I have never forgotten the oasis of kindness she provided in your North-7 desert.

Apparently no one else on the unit understood how to behave humanely or to treat patients with respect, or no one else gave a damn.

Punishment is the nature of what you did to me. You lost your tempers and you punished me.  The result was that you permanently damaged and traumatized me. I believe you did what you did absolutely on purpose and I believe you did not care what the consequences would be to me.

Some of you deserve to lose your jobs because of it and because of what I’d venture to guess you have been doing for a long time to other patients.  Perhaps you will. You all need to be thoroughly retrained, if that is even possible. Certainly the secure side of the unit needs to be completely reorganized and re-staffed. But that is not my job. You’ll find out what will happen after the Department of Justice and the Joint Commission do their thing.

I hope you remember me and what you did to me for a very long time. Unfortunately, I know I may never be able to forget you. I wish I could, believe me, I wish I could.

Empathy, Schizophrenia

“Am I a horrible person?”

5 Comments

I received this comment a few days ago, and I wonder if anyone — somebody, please? — has a response for the person who wrote it. This wrenching question seems to me to embody one of the most painful and awful choices that siblings and even parents of people with severe mental illness may sometimes feel they have to make in order to save their own lives and their own sanity….Or not. What do people think?

“I have a schizophrenic brother, he became ill at 27,
and it was a terrible time. My brother is now 54 years old, my parents have long since died. I have no
relatives that care about him or me. I have to tell
someone I don’t know where my brother is, he was in a
group home and was told he could no longer live there
this home was horrifying. I tried all my life to help
my brother, I had no life, I finally just had to let
him go, I pray god is watching over him. Do you think
this makes me a horrible person?

4 Answers from comment section:

#1 Wow.
I want to respond – though I’m sure how. It can very difficult to find the right words sometimes.

You asked: “Do you think
this makes me a horrible person?”
No. I do not. Caring for someone with mental illness is a very difficult road to follow. It can take so much out of you and from you…that there is simply nothing left to give.
If you are unable to care for yourself properly, meet your own personal needs (physically, spiritually, & mentally) – then how can you expect to do it for someone else?

I can’t imagine what a difficult choice this was for you.

Best wishes,
~V.

#2  I ask myself this question as well. My wife is suffering with a serious mental illness. Her diagnosis is major depression with psychotic features, although bipolar has not officially been ruled out. I’ve been writing about my experiences as a care provider. It’s not easy. I don’t want to quit or walk away from her, but it’s not necessarily easy to keep going. I plan on continuing to blog about my experience as the family member who is trying to help, so that people like this reader can hopefully find some encouragement.
And I don’t think that this person is a horrible person at all.

#3

Hi Pam,

No, I do not think that this person is a horrible person at all for detaching from her brother’s problems. Whether we like it or not, we have to find the solutions to our problems. Her brother has to do what we all at some point have to do: reach out for help. He has the ability to do this. I’m sure of it. And I know it isn’t easy, but it is possible. Sometimes the best form of help comes not from family members, but from virtual strangers who have dealt with similar problems or are in the helping professions. The people who are closest to us can carry emotional baggage and this can both get in the way of helping and result in hurt feelings. But the people who are not so involved in our personal lives can often give a fresh perspective and can be genuinely helpful. This takes the pressure off all concerned. Ideally, family members should be able to provide some support, but not if it robs them of their own well being. I agree with V. if you don’t take care of yourself, how can you be of help to anyone else?

#4  The person writing to Pam described themselves as having “no life at all”.  This sounds depressing and sad.  They sound like the quality of their life is so bad, that they couldn’t take on the burden of seeing to the quality of their brother’s life.

I see in my family that my sister is weakened by a slight touch of the schizoaffective disorder that I have, and perhaps my brother as well.  But I am also confident that they would not desert me, as fragile as they might be.  This gives me strength and confidence to live, because I am dependent on the kindness of others, be it the government, or my husband, or my parents, or my siblings.  I cannot provide a roof over my head or feed myself.  I cannot work for a living.  If it weren’t for charity from the people who love me, I would be homeless.

I don’t think this person is horrible, I think that they are in pain, and they have burdened themselves with even more pain by turning their back on their brother.  One of the ways to have a fulfilling life is to do charity, is to be giving, and to go the distance for someone other than yourself.  How proud this person would be if they had saved their brother!  Suddenly, they would indeed “have a life”.  They would have been a hero.

This writer has traded their brother for a large helping of guilt.  I don’t intend to increase or decrease the feeling of that guilt.  But I know that if I had my brother’s life in my hands, I would not trust him to God, I would do what ever I could to tend to his welfare.  My meager resources would be used, my emotions might be stretched, my patience would be tested, and yes, the life of another human being can be a heavy load, but I would take that load and offer if it were the only thing I had, the living room sofa!  I know that social services would come to my rescue, although it may take a long time for them to be mobilized.  I know a schizophrenic in my area that had to wait two years for a government funded apartment.  But the apartment eventually came, and now he is safe and secure.

Doing what is right can be hard.  Following your heart can lead you into a wilderness that is unforeseen and perhaps, terrifying.  But I know my heart, and it would never tell me to turn my back on either my brother or sister.  In fantasizing about helping them, I can only believe the final result would be satisfaction.  And knowledge that the heart has won.

Empathy, Nutition, Veganism

Empathy and Lack of Empathy (edited)

2 Comments

Before I start, I want to tell you about a wonderful site on the web, and recommend a visit there: Check out http://www.compassionatecooks.com for info on a plant-based diet and man’s cruelty to animals. Also, wonderful nutrition info you simply cannot find in one place anywhere else is here, easily accessible especially if you go to the podcast and begin with #1.
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President Obama has said that in his search for a Supreme Court nominee, he is going to be looking for something with empathy. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt of assuming the shorthand to mean that he wants the nominee to have the capacity for empathy. But what did he mean, or by extension what do we ourselves understand by this word “empathy”? The German term, coined by the German philosopher Rudolf Lotze, or Theodore Lipps (sources conflict) in the mid-nineteenth century (einfühlung) or the literal English translation, “in-feeling” was originally a term of art appreciation. “Empathize” was coined in 1924 came closer to the meaning it has today.

 

In explaining his vote against Chief Justice John Roberts, Obama wrote:”[w]hat matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases that are truly difficult…In those 5 percent of hard cases, the constitutional text will not be directly on point. The language of the statute will not be perfectly clear. Legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision…. in those difficult cases, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart.”

 

Definitions of Empathy abound and here are just a few. Wickipedia: “Empathy is the capability to share your feelings and understand another’s emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes,” or in some way experience what the other person is feeling. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.” (Italics mine)

 
Hannibal Lector in the Silence of the Lambs had empathy, a terribe empathy, and he used it to horrific advantage as he was able to intuit volumes about a victim, having gotten, as we say, into the person’s head. He also had no comscience, since he seems to have had no regrets, he perhaps even enjoyed having inflicted pain and horror upon the persons he murdered in such grotesque fashion. But he did so because he understood just how much pain he would be causing them…Note, later I thought about this and wondered if it is true that he actually could experience the semi-vicariousness of empathy and still be so willing to inflict torment on others.  It seems to me that if he truly understood — in the sense of feeling for and with the person — how he or she suffered, he could not possibly cause such pain. Also, is not implicit in the notion of empathy some indication of compassion? Well, you see how difficult the subject turns out to be!

 

To continue with others’ definitions: Carl Rogers wrote:  “To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the “as if” condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth.”

 
Khen Lampert (2005): “[Empathy] is what happens to us when we leave our own bodies…and find ourselves either momentarily or for a longer period of time in the mind of the other. We observe reality through her eyes, feel her emotions, share in her pain..”

 

 

There is something else that precedes empathy, which seems to be innate to the human species. Emotional contagion according to Wickipedia is “the tendency to catch and feel emotions that are similar to and influenced by those of others. One view developed by John Cacioppo of the underlying mechanism is that it represents a tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally.”

 

 

Sympathy or “feeling with” on the other hand, used to mean what empathy has now come to mean. “In Eng., almost a magical notion applied to it at first; e.g. in ref. to medicines that heal wounds when applied to a cloth stained with blood from the wound. Meaning “conformity of feelings” is from 1596; sense of “fellow feeling” is first attested 1662. Sympathize “to have fellow-feeling” is recorded from 1605. Sympathetic “sharing the feelings of another” is from 1718.”

 

 

Now, my concern is not actually Obama’s use of the word, though I frankly believe he simply meant “humanity, or humane spirit or humanism” or something like that. It is rather with my own ability to feel empathy that I am concerned. I know that many people get anxious when I tell them I fear I cannot feel empathy, because to them it marks me, or might if true, as somehow less than the warm, caring and compassionate human being they take me for. Now, how I feel being whatever it is, I firmly believe that what I wrote back in 1984 remains as true today as it ever was then, that love, and forgiveness and compassion are decisions of the will and acts that flow from them, rather than pure feeling-states. In fact, I venture to say that the feeling itself is less important, if important at all, than the act.

 

 

Take Mother Theresa for example. After early spiritual experiences, she apparently led a life almost entirely bereft of the feeling of God’s presence in her life, a state of bleak lack of further spiritual connection. She was close to despair more than once. Yet she came to be regarded as a saint for her acts of humble compassion and altruism and few ever knew how desperate she sometimes felt. So good was she seen to be, such an example of true Christian values, that she may soon be declared an official Saint of the Roman Catholic Church

 
There is absolutely no implied analogy here, nor any claim that my acts resemble those of Mother Theresa in any imaginable way. I mention her only as an extreme example of someone who was clearly an exemplar of compassionate goodness, but who nonetheless felt different on the inside from what people always assumed. This does not, and should not, detract from the value of her acts, nor their purity as acts of love and kindness and selflessness. No, in my book they only point them up the more, for being driven only by her will and her conscious decision to act on what she knew she had to do, rather than on the easy impetuosity of emotion. The decision she made to give her life to the poor and sick of Calcutta must have been hard; it is always easier to act when emotions run high. But that only makes the fact that she did, and continued to make that self-sacrificing act her life for decades afterwards, all the more breathtaking.

 

 

Now where was I? Mother Theresa seems to have felt empathy, though of course we cannot know this. All we know is that she acted compassionately and humbly and with extreme kindness always. We want to think she felt empathic, but have little evidence to prove it (or disprove it) in the end. I think this is why I brought her up. There is no comparison between us, of course, my problem being the evil I cause rather than the good she spread. However, I rely on a display of compassion to others, which is deceptive, as I am ashamed of my evil essence, do not in fact wish to pollute and contaminate as I do. I do not lie and tell people I am harmless, but I try to act like a good person, to be seen as empathic and sympathetic, always ready with an open ear and a willingness to listen at all hours of the day or night. I do good things, go out of my way for people, believe that it is the acts of love, of compassion that is important, because I must: I cannot feel either!

 

 

I do not know why this matters so much to me, but I believe it has a great deal less to do with empathy than with something far more selfish: I treat people as I know I want them to treat ME. I want to be listened to, I want to be assisted when I need help and so forth. So I do it for them, hoping someone else might also do so for me. Not in return, mind you. No, I know the world does not work that way. But perhaps, in some fashion, I might “earn it”? And if not, well, I did not deserve benign treatment anyway, being evil and malignant from the start…In short, I practice the golden rule, perhaps, but a very self-serving kind of one.

 
But the difference between this and empathy is huge. I ask a fundamental question that is in fact the reverse of the essential one asked in empathy: Not how would I feel if I were that person, if I were that person with such and such happening to me. But how would that person feel if she were I? It is a subtle point, a subtle distinction, but a crucial one. On the one hand a person shows a capacity for true empathy — how does that other person feel? — and on the other merely demonstrating that he can recognize a feeling state in another person because he has felt something similar in himself and he can imagine himself feeling that way again.

 
Many years ago, my father put together a book on the subject of empathy in which he, revealingly, made precisely this semantic error, defining empathy as “how would that person feel if he were I?” I tell you this only because I believe that my own lack of empathy stems from his, from his inability to teach me to feel what he himself cannot feel or understand. My mother was not particularly close to me growing up, because she felt that I somehow felt superior to her, which was far from the truth. Nevertheless she took into her head that notion and could not get it out (her worst accusation to me, when angry, was “You are just like your father..!”) with the result that I felt shut out a lot, forced not to feel or reveal any stray feelings that might still arise (Note: the bulk of my emotions had long since been squelched or shut off in my extreme effort not to be hurt or let anyone ever know they’d hurt me, or know anything else I felt, for that matter…) ** She did feel compassion and empathy, but nonetheless her effect on me in this respect was minimal, her effect on me was  hurtful. (Not in every way, mind you. She was a good mother in general, though she failed me in some crucial aspects.)

 
** Note that relations with both parents are vastly improved at present, that I love both deeply. I write of the past truthfully, but without rancor or even regret.

 

 

In any event, the result was that I had neither mother nor father to teach me either in words or by example or in action what empathy was, and it was my misfortune to be too shy and perhaps too ill already to meet or interact closely with any other adult who could substitute for them. The result of that, I fear, is that I cannot actually feel empathy, and without empathy I cannot feel real love. But hell, I don’t even feel affection, not really. I never ever feel like reaching out and putting a hand on anyone, or hugging them spontaneously…If I have ever done it, it has been stiffly and without feelings of desiring to or without “getting any good feelings,” only feeling reluctant and even repelled.

 
Did I say I could not feel affection. I must correct myself: I feel deeply affectionate for my cat Eemie, and this despite all my earlier avowals that I wanted to get rid of her for fear that I might kill her…I dunno why I said that. I think, no, I know it was because she was not sleeping alongside me anymore and was, for some odd reason, ignoring me, just sleeping in her spot behind the bookcase and eating secretly and sleeping at night by herself, so that I felt abandoned, and all she ever did to announce her presence was to knock things off the table when I was asleep, and break them!

 
But since I got out of the hospital in February, things have changed. Eemie is back to sleeping next to me, on top of me, or in between my feet. She crawls onto my lap when I am typing or reading and tries to get me to stop everything and pet her. And she ankle-dances around me all the time, as if she cannot bear not to be near me. In short, I no longer feel abandoned by her…

 

Which leads me to this: What can I do about all the above? Well, I do not know exactly. Dr O never quite believed, or never believed at all, that I felt neither empathy or love. I am not sure why…But I believe she was wrong not to do so. I think I feel it is unsafe to feel empathy for other humans. In that understanding, I have been visiting CompassionateCooks.com and listening to the podcast Food For Thought that comes out of that site. It is wonderful and informative and everyone should listen to it, for the nutritional information alone, even if you continue to eat animal flesh and secretions. After spending literally all weekend gorging on the 20-45 minute podcast episodes, I have decided that the cruelty-free vegan lifestyle is something I must try, that I can learn to feel empathy for animals first, and if I can do that, I will surely be able to feel it for humans. Because once I can really appreciate that pigs screaming when their throats are cut for slaughter, feel the same pain and fear that I would, and feel it with the empathy that might make it so painful to people, then I can’t imagine I won’t appreciate the pain/joy/sorrow etc that other human individuals may feel under the specific situations facing each. Maybe then I might have the capacity to feel affection and even love. I am 56. Can I hope for this before I die?