How do I increase my ability for empathy?

[Ninja_pig]

The following is a trip report somewhat relevant to my question. Skip to the end if you don't feel like reading.

A few weeks ago I took ~4.5mg of mushrooms. This was my first ever psychedelic experience and I am still unpacking all of the things that happened. Many things about the trip were unexpected, but what stood out to me the most was how the intensity of my emotions was turned up %10000. I spent a large portion of the trip laughing myself to tears as if someone had found a very ticklish spot on my body and wouldn't stop for mercy. Every moment in between the laughing was accompanied by some exclamation of my sheer amazement of what was going on. I felt like a 2 year old in that I had lost all control of my emotions. Any time someone even looked at me it resulted in an explosion that sent me into a fit of laughing, crying and swearing.

During the trip, I was watching the movie "Speed Racer" from 2009. If you've never seen it, it's about the most eye-candy over the top mix of drama and lights you will ever see. Suffice it to say, I was completely overwhelmed by this move. There is nothing that could have prepared me for the onslaught of emotions that came with every camera change, facial expression, action relay, and family drama. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the whole thing, though, was how I felt like I could feel everything that the characters were feeling. Each gentle caress of a lover, each victory celebrated, each fit of rage. I felt like the emotions were being telepathically transmitted to me so I could feel exactly what each person was feeling. 

This not only went for the people in the movie. During the trip I thought a lot about my friends, and every thought of a friend came with a deep love and appreciation. I felt like after so long I finally understood how some other people think, how they feel. For so long I felt like many of the people in my life did not show their true emotions and instead showed an emotion that would elicit a certain perception from others. During the trip I realized that people's emotions are real and for the most part they are not acting. It was a groundbreaking insight for me. It felt so good to finally be able to cry.

At the end of the trip I felt very emotionally drained and kind of glad that it was over. I also felt like I had aged a few years because I felt completely okay with myself. This is probably due to psilocybin deactivating my ability for self reflection, but it felt good nonetheless.

-end of trip report-

This was a revelation to me because for a large part of my life I have been a pretty emotionally flat person. I am just not affected by things very much. Family member dies, my partner leaves me, my parents get divorced. "Oh well" I say. I have a hard time being affectionate and receiving affection. I can get along with people just fine but when things get emotional I mostly just react with confusion. I almost never cry during movies. I don't like watching horror movies because I don't get a kick out of the things that are supposed to be causing me fear. I feel as though I could lose everything in my life and feel nothing more than a vague sense of pain. Grieving for anything seems like an impossible task to me.

It wasn't always like this. When I was a child I was extremely sensitive. I would cry about just about everything. Sometimes nothing at all. When I went through puberty I think something changed in my brain and suddenly I was all flat. At first I was grateful for this because my uncontrollable outbursts of emotion were actually pretty embarrassing for me. Now though, I think I would rather be embarrassed than unable to feel. I used to think of other's emotions with condescension and contempt, now I treat them with curiosity because I really really really want to know how people feel. I feel like I just don't have that ability though. I listen with utter curiosity to others with as much compassion as I can muster and 0 judgement. The fact of the matter though is just I don't get what they're feeling. I want so badly to be able to share the experiences of others, but I feel like I just can't do it. Lately (in the past year or two) I have been highly introspective and have been trying to figure myself out in order to try to become more emotionally intelligent, but this too seems like an insurmountable task that I am not completely capable of. I can't even feel my own emotions. There are so many times in my life I want to cry but I can't. It just won't come out. What the heck is going on? How do I fix this?

How do I develop my EQ and make myself more able to feel my own and other's emotions?

If you read the whole thing I very much appreciate you.

[A Fellow Lighter]

In order for you to get in touch with humanity, you'd first need to get in touch with your own humanity. Once you know your self you can know the world. The key is exactly your own beingness.

[JonasVE12]

13 hours ago, Ninja_pig said:

How do I develop my EQ and make myself more able to feel my own and other's emotions?

If you read the whole thing I very much appreciate you.

Your body is what generates emotions, and those emotions are felt in your body. When you are in this space of being with another human being, and you have a contraction in your flow of energy, between the head and rest of the body, then you won't feel much of your own emotions, nor that of the other person. When you are with another person, your emotional fields are coming together into one connected field that you both are a part of. The other persons emotions are essentially transmitting from his body and unconsciously picked up by your body. That is 'feeling empathy'. Your body is always receiving energy from people around you and recognizing and reacting to it internally. Often very automatically. Imagine you walk down the street and someone looks angry at you. Your body picks this up and there comes an automatic emotional response. The same with all other vibrations. 

Yet if parts of your body are contracted, your body does a poor job at receiving the input. Just like in an electric circuit, if the conductor would break, there won't come any electricity through on the other side. Those contractions are essentially knots to be unwinded so you can feel more. 

If you release all of your contractions in your body and you open it more and more, you will start to feel a lot more subtle stuff emanating from people, environments, objects, rooms etc. And so your capacity for empathy and feeling increases. 

The key is your connection with your body. How much you are in your head, disconnected from the body. And this highly correlates with your fears, shame, guilt, sadness and anger you hold in your body. Sometimes we are afraid to feel our own emotions. Sometimes we feel ashamed to feel certain emotions. There can be fear, sadness, anger that we are afraid to feel. And once we give in to those and avoid them, we become apathetic in our own body. You escape to your head, because your body is too uncomfortable to live with. If it has been like that for years, you probably forgot what it is like to feel. If you can't feel, I'm really sorry for you. 

It becomes all about getting into your body. Into the parts that you are keeping hidden for yourself. I can not recommend somatic therapy more. Improv theater can be amazing too. It forces you to feel more. Dancing as well, Movement work, Exercise, embodiment workshops, embodiment meditation. Getting in nature helps too. And maybe the most important thing is to expose yourself to more emotions from other people so they can wake up emotions inside you too. And one practice that I liked doing that was very impactful was turning my attention into my internal somatic experience. Into certain body parts, muscle groups, playing around with releasing tension inside the body, trying to evoke feelings from memories, generating excitement, acceptance, love, fear, courage, shame, guilt etc at will in my body. Initially it can help to play around with memories in order to bring specific emotions to the surface. Once you do this enough, you can a taste for where that typical emotion is located, how it feels, etc. And then you can bring it up at will. And the more you learn to flow between emotions inside your body, the more you release your aversion to them because you can shift them at any point. And this helps to open your body a lot. You'll naturally start to feel more and more. The best thing is to combine all of these methods.

Edited April 11, 2022 by JonasVE12

[Terell Kirby]

Helps to see things from another's perspective, but that can be challenging.

Active listening has traditionally been a good method to develop empathy.