I had an interesting insight today. It is about me and my empathy skill. Before studying psychology in undergraduate level, I always consider myself as someone who is very empathic. I could feel how others in my surrounding were feeling, their moods, the atmosphere. And it was real feeling, like I could really feel the sadness of others. I could put myself in that person situation. Maybe that what made people think I was a kindhearted person (well, the timeline was third year JHS up until first year of college).
Yet the past few years I feel myself changing. I am no longer the kind-hearted me. Well, I do not hurt people deliberately, I do not mean real harms to people, but I feel my empathy is decreasing. Most of the time I let myself be controlled by my emotions, a strong one like anger or sadness that I forget I am still with people. There are still people around me. This make me say something stupid to them without thinking what kind of effects the words would have upon those poor people. The worst of all, I often say this hurtful stuffs to people closest to me.
Guilt is eating me alive, truth be told. I feel guilty about a lot of things. I feel terrible after snapping at my dad or my mom just because I was cranky that day. I do apologise to people because they deserve it but it does not do me anything. Well, fairly enough, it eMy ases my guilt a little bit but not much. I still have the guilt, I still feel bad, I feel like I am hurting because I see them hurting because of me. I let my emotions rule me so I go around with self-entitlement and self-centredness and let people around me down with my words and behaviours. They truly do not deserve to be my punching bags for my shitty behaviour.
But then again I think of the reasons I am writing this. I notice I want to still portray myself as a good person, as someone who is decent, while writing this post. I am trying to write this as candid as possible yet ever words and sentences are evaluated right away after they appear on screen. Am I still a good person for doing this? Am I doing this for praise? Am I seeking for validation that I am a good person and am not evil? Have I accept myself as a whole, that consists of good sides and bad sides? Am I, deep inside me, still care about people and can still feel? Have I turned into a stranger even to myself?
I think I am also cruel to myself. I often throw harsh judgement upon myself, just like what I did on the previous paragraphs. I was not judging my writing but I was judging myself. It was not the words that I evaluated but my intentions and my thoughts. Severely, harshly.
You know, my mentor – he’s a clinical psychologist – said that I am a robot. Based on his judgement, I cannot feel and lacking emotional richness. He said it will be hard for me to become a psychologist because I tend to be insensitive of emotional cues and I could not truly feel. I was, or am, cold, based on his judgement (see, don’t I look like I am denying facts here?)) How worse a person could be if they cannot feel?
I think a lot about his appraisal of me, especially because he is a trained and a great psychologist. He is a smart guy who has a unique approach to empath with his clients. Yet his approach works and enables him to connect with his clients, also with people around him. Me, judged as the insensitive one and the robot, have no confident left truthfully to judge people. Because I’m afraid what I think about them is wrong and misled. I am afraid that my evaluations do more harm than good to others.
When I think about my mentor’s words about me, I sometimes question it, am I really that way? Am I as worse as his description of me? However typing this make me feel like I am trying to play victim. Well, here we go again, a cycle of self-hate. It has been a long time since the last time I feel like hating myself. Yeah anyway, welcome.
Not only I am questioning my mentor’s judgement, but I also question myself for the feelings and thoughts I have. This is done not to torture myself even more, but to seek deeper answer about what is actually happening inside of me. What is causing me the turbulence this time. My first question was why do I feel defensive against myself while writing this? What was I trying to protect myself from?
The answer to both questions is simple. I am afraid and in fear that I will turn into someone who can be labelled as bad, that someone mentioned by mothers to their children for them to be away from. I really am afraid to become a bad person. I want to be good then I reject my other side. That does not do me any good, it only rebels to me and making more appearance now due to it. I do not want to be a sociopath, if what my mentor said about me being a cold-hearted person, a robot, is true. I really don’t want to hurt or use anyone for my own benefits. I mean, I was that kind of soft-hearted person that will let people do whatever they like first before minding my own needs and I don’t even know what my motives was. Was it something I done because I wanted pure happiness of others? Because I wanted to please them so that they liked me? Because I wanted them to think good of me? Fuck, this post is not going anywhere.
As you can read on this post, I am in a quite messy condition right now. My thoughts are all over the places. I like to use my brain capacity to contemplate stuffs like this instead of generating a grand research idea or whatever productive.
Go get it, Sha. I know you will be better. Better days are coming ahead. Don’t give up on yourself.
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