Are some people born with no capacity for empathy?

[zachira]

I would like to know what you think about how certain people have the capacity to have empathy and others have no empathy whatsoever. It seems some people are empaths from the day they are born. Other people are on the autism spectrum which limits the capacity to have empathy yet they are not necessarily intentionally cruel and can learn to do things for others that show that they do care about other people. Some people are born psychopaths. It seems to me that in certain cases, the family is so abusive and cruel, that many of the children have their capacity for empathy destroyed while the children who are naturally empathetic do not lose the capacity for empathy though their capacity for empathy can be disordered, becoming caretakers for abusive people. A main role of a parent is to teach their children to have compassion for themselves and empathy for others. It seems that with some children, it is a real struggle to teach them to be empathetic, and in the worst case scenarios, there is no capacity for the child to learn to be empathetic no matter how kind and caring the parents are. What do you think?

[Riv3rW0lf]

Hi Zacchira !

From what I am observing, I don't think empathy can be taught?

We can model self-compassion to our children by being compassionate with them, so that when they do a mistake, the initial reaction is not fear or shame, but instead patience and mercy. Then they start repeating the behaviors with other children, repeating the cycle of kindness and love.

This can also be modelled by teachers, and other people in the life of our children, so a child in an abusive house, might still grow up and reach for balance and compassion, maybe because a teacher once modelled it for them. Maybe TV even modelled it for them, so they could see something was off with their own abusive parents.

Trauma is so very complex... I think we all have different levels of empathy, but I don't necessarily think it's linked to how abusive we will become or how abused we were... The way I saw it, borderlines are generally highly sensitive children with strong empathy that were traumatised at some point or maybe some development arrests occured, out of anyone's control...

I sometimes thought and that it seemed like my mother has so much empathy, she has trouble knowing who is feeling what between her and the person she is with... It comes off as a lack of empathy, but I actually think she has too much of it? Just a hypothesis. When she hurts someone, she also feels the pain, and she feels it as her own, then blaming the other person for hurting her, all this while the other person just... Stand there, feeling.

I edited my post because H really brought some good points about empathy being shown on brain scan and how some people just have none... He believes you can be born without any empathy... This must be scary, having a child like that.

Second edit : oh wow, I stand even more corrected, it seems empathy is partly learned too...for me it was just genetic for some reasons...I don't know, I need to think more on it.

[Notwendy]

I read a book "The Sociopath Next Door" which I thought explained this situation. I think we tend to think of sociopaths as doing criminal things, but this book presents the idea of that being a spectrum as well- people who know better than to be criminals but still get something out of being cruel to people in every day, non criminal, encounters. It explains about how they are born lacking the capacity for empathy.

My BPD mother does not have empathy. It's shocking actually to see this. This isn't true for all pwBPD. It's more on the narcissistic spectrum, and she's a combination of both. So people can have overlapping personality disorder traits and they are on a spectrum.

I think the book is a good read and also explains that some people can have sociopathic traits, but not to the extent of criminal behavior.

[zachira]

Notwendy,
I am putting "The Sociopath Next Door" on my reading list. A review says that one in 25 people are sociopaths, have no conscience. Perhaps this explains how so many of my charming disordered family members are so capable of such extreme cruelty behind closed doors.

[Notwendy]

Yes, and it was a good explanation for why these one in 25 are not all criminals. It's a spectrum too. It's about the kind of people people who do hurtful things but not to the point where they'd go to jail for them.

If someone has empathy- we don't think like someone who doesn't. We don't see other people in the same way. So we don't imagine this kind of behavior. We automatically frame the behavior in the ways we think and so we come up with some kind of explanation for it that makes sense to us. Or that the person is in a significant role to us. Like who would imagine a mother would do these things? Or your family members, Zachira. We don't expect this from a family member.

[zachira]

Notwendy,
We certainly don't expect cruel behaviors from a family member, yet their cruel behaviors can often contrast very sharply with how the family member behaves in public and with people outside the inner family circle. What puzzles me the most is how my disordered family members can be genuinely generous and nice at times and than other times extremely cruel, which seems to be perhaps explained by several factors, some existing together and some on their own including: extreme splitting with characteristics of DID without meeting the full criteria for this disorder, being on the autism spectrum, having some sociopathic traits, having inherited a bad temper, transgenerational trauma, and above all being an extremely narcissistic family.

[Riv3rW0lf]

I will be putting the sociopath next door on my reading list as well!


Zacchira,
Are you sure those nice public gestures are genuine? ... Sounds like it is only public image management...

[Methuen]

It’s an interesting question Zachira.  It directs us back to the nature -nurture debate. I googled “Is there a gene for empathy?  Results overwhelmingly point to a gene.  As expected, environmental triggers also play a role, as all your examples illustrated so well. I  love how you described the spectrum of complexity through your examples. I suppose that both nature and nurture play a role in this.  I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that it’s possible to have a crime family where one member leaves that life behind and integrates into society choosing a different path, perhaps due in part to their genetic code including the empathy gene(s).  Interesting topic.  In multigenerational families with BPD, is nature or nurture the primary influencer?  And what explains a person who grows up in a healthy loving family where empathy was practiced, but nevertheless lacks empathy to the point of harming others criminally?  Lots of complex influences at play along the way, including genetics and environment I suppose.  What a rich topic to mull over.

[Notwendy]

Notwendy,
We certainly don't expect cruel behaviors from a family member, yet their cruel behaviors can often contrast very sharply with how the family member behaves in public and with people outside the inner family circle.

That's a part of the disorder. The image, the mask. I have seen my mother's public persona. It's amazing how different it is from how she acts with us. I think she would have been a great actress if she pursued that career.

If she's generous, it's with strings attached or the image.

[Turkish]

A 4% rate of sociopaths is above the highest clinical estimates for even BPD. Lack of, or lesser empathy doesn't equal Sociopathology. As with everything, it's a scale.

My daughter has far less empathy than her brother. Despite that it frustrates me, she isn't anywhere near The Bad Seed. Why does it frustrate me? Because how she is tends to be different than how I am, and how my son is, a sweetheart. (I'm not a sweetheart)

[zachira]

I know families with great parents in which a child turns out badly, and then I know families in which the parents are horrible people and they have a child that becomes an honest decent adult. I believe that empathy is an inborn personality trait that to some extent can be supported and taught; in some cases, a child does not have the  capacity to learn to be empathetic.
Notwendy and Methuen describe having a mother with BPD with no capacity for empathy. I believe that the difference with my mother with BPD was that she suffered from severe episodes of dissociation and maybe had DID. It is likely my mother was sexually abused by her grandfather. With DID, when a person is in one personality, the person does not remember the existance of the other personalities. Sometimes my mother had the capacity to be kind and generous, and most of the time I was dealing with an extremely disordered woman.  My mother did not seem to remember any of her terrible meltdowns. After my brother died, mom described to me what surely was her being dissociated most of the time when my brother was ill in his last months, and I feel that I observed these dissociative states. Mom was cruel to my brother, her golden child, in the last months of his life, though prior to that, she genuinely had some empathy for his suffering and was very generous in helping him in any ways she could.

[Cat Familiar]

I’ve pondered the difference between empathy and sympathy. My BPD husband can be very sympathetic, which at first, I took to be empathy. Undoubtedly he was a very kind, sensitive child who was severely abused by his malignant narcissist father.

When we first got together, he told me some stories about his dad and I had chalked it up to typical father/son issues. But when I finally met the old guy, wow! He was really a malevolent piece of work! I’m sure there are stories my husband will never share about awful things he experienced.

Getting back to the contrast of sympathy and empathy—sympathy is understanding and reacting to the need or distress of another. While empathy is being able to put yourself in someone else’s situation and understand it from their point of view—hence the phrase “walking a mile in their shoes.”

Often with sympathy the response may be not truly appropriate, nor appreciated by the receiver. Sympathy is a product of the imagination of the individual who feels it, not necessarily relevant to the subject who is in need or distress.

Whereas empathy involves putting aside one’s own preconceived notions and imagining another’s experience from their perspective.

[zachira]

Catfamiliar,
You are absolutely right that there are big differences between empathy and sympathy. Deep empathy can be overwhelming to feel at times, because it means feeling in our body what the other person is feeling and showing so with our body language. Deep empathy is appropriate in certain situations especially with children, particularly when a parent mirrors the joy or sadness of a small child. With sympathy, we are not feeling the other person's feelings and can be struggling to feel empathy. Disordered people often use sympathy to manipulate people and to sell a false image of being a caring person. I have learned that the safest people have open warm body language and to be wary of incongruent body language, especially when the body language is very closed and cold. The disordered people we talk about on this site, often do not seem to have the capacity to see other people as separate people from themselves. This is particularly true with parents with BPD and/or NPD. The child no matter what age they are would love to be seen by the parent and will always be sad about not having a parent capable of empathy. I judge a person as incapable of empathy when they only talk about themselves and never show any genuine interest in me. I used to spend so much time listening to these type of people and I felt invisible. It is so strange to me that so many people are not interested in others. People have often remarked about how much I remember and follow up on about what they have told me about themselves.

[TelHill]

I believe that the difference with my mother with BPD was that she suffered from severe episodes of dissociation and maybe had DID.

Zachira, That's my mom as well. She looked disconnected many times a week when I was growing up. She came alive to emotionally abuse me. My brother is six years older and he left home for a boarding school when I was 8. It was just her and me at home until my dad came home from work. It made me an easy target. My mom (& dad for that matter) had rough childhoods. They grew up on farms in the same isolated village during a war. The child rearing practices were cruel though dad is normal and empathetic. I know they have PTSD.   She told me she was depressed most of her life and her dad said he had never seen a child like her before. I assume the symptoms started early. Am sure she was SA by some horrible man in the village.

I wonder if bpd symptoms preclude development of empathy towards your loved ones?  If cruel/abusive and immature behavior keep your inner life afloat, empathetic actions are not possible.

Edited to add - Many of my extended family members are dysfunctional and impossible to be around.  The two modes are being emotionally abusive or nice because they want something from me.  I know villagers in isolated places intermarry and rarer genetics traits occur more often.

[Riv3rW0lf]

I have learned that the safest people have open warm body language and to be wary of incongruent body language, especially when the body language is very closed and cold.

Yes, but...

I am pretty sure I would qualify as "closed and cold" while my BPD mother has "warm body language". She plays a wonderful part of having it together and being generous and kind to strangers. It however isn't how she was behind closed doors. I am "cold", yet I remember what people tell me, and truly care for the wellbeing of people around me. I am, however, weary of strangers I meet, and it takes me some time to open up to people. I learned over time that I shouldn't show emotions too much, so I don't, and it makes me a bit odd compared to the average person, especially as a woman.

I think it can be dangerous to assume anything based on general signs. There often isn't, except actually listening to what they see and paying attention to what they do. My brother is incredibly warm, he truly has an aura about him... Yet he just threw someone out of her house because she didn't meet his "community standards", after 7 years living there. Narcissists are generally warm at first... but their actions don't follow their words.

Unless you are talking about people we know well... Still though... My BPD mother believes in her stories so much that there is often no mismatch between what she says and what she thinks and what she feels. However, there is a big mismatch between what actually happened and her overblown reaction. She isn't willing to hear the other's perspective, but if one is willing to hear her, there is no lies, she truly believes herself.   

[Notwendy]

My BPD mother has this cold look in her eyes. I can tell when she's dissociated but there's a baseline quality to it of some sort of disconnect. She's not affectionate or warm. It's different from being cool and aloof. That's just how some people are before we get to know them.

I have wondered about some sort of trauma or abuse. I have asked her sibling if they knew of any but they don't. I don't think it's anyone in the immediate family-but maybe a neighbor or distant relative? People didn't discuss mental illness when she was younger- they just didn't know.

There's no signs of empathy in her. As Turkish mentioned, the number of people with sociopathic traits is probably above the incidence of people getting diagnosed, but we see this with the PD's. Not all people with PD's are to the extent of being diagnosed but their behaviors are still problematic. A lack of empathy is a part of NPD and my mother has NPD traits, but has more of the BPD traits.

[zachira]

Riv3rWOlf,
You are right that there is no absolute code for body language and we can misread body language especially when we don't know a person well. What helps me to read more accurately a person's body language are to look for the incongruences. So although a person may seem to be warm and kind, if the feelings are not genuine, there will be incongruences which can be demonstrated by: 1) a split second expression showing the opposite of how the person appears, known as a microexpression 2) a phony smile 3) actions not matching words. 4) extreme splitting with DID characteristics. Surely knowing a person well in many situations and over long periods of time, is usually is the most assuring way to know what kind of person we are interacting with. A person who mistreats some people and not others, or who is mean some of the time or all the time is showing their true colors.
I hear you with the frustration you feel about how phony your mother can be and how people fall for her pretend niceness. It fits with what I experienced with my mother with BPD and what others members describe experiencing with their mothers with BPD. I see mothers with BPD as being part of the narcissistic club, people who lick each others boots and say to each other what the other wants to hear. These people cannot tolerate people being themselves (being authentic), especially close family members, and they get extremely angry if they are not being told what they want to hear or not being treated exactly how they want to be treated, something so many of us experience with our mothers with BPD and other disordered family members. It is all about splitting, only being able to see people and situations in either black or white, and not being able to hold and maintain a positive and negative image of a person or situation at the same time.  

[zachira]

Telhill and Notwendy noticed disocciation in their mother with BPD. Interesting nobody responding so far sees mother with BPD possibly having more than one personality, with each personality being completely distinct with no awareness of the mother of having more than one personality. DID is hard to diagnose. My theory about my own mother is she lacked empathy most of the time because of: childhood trauma, an inherited problem with regulating emotions including a really bad temper, being raised in a family in which emotions were stuffed, was likely sexually abused by grandfather and had DID which explains why sometimes she could be empathetic.

[Notwendy]

I don't think my mother has multiple personalities though. In this situation, the personalities are more distinct- they may have different names, preferences- like one might want to only wear dresses, the other one, pants. BPD mother is consistently one person when it comes to her other aspects. Her moods and behavior feels like different parts of her and she can change from one to the other quickly, but she still is the same person in other ways. She presents herself differently with different people, but she's still her.

[zachira]

Notwendy,
Thank you for your reply. I also experienced my mother in the ways you are describing yours and the difference is at times my mother was a completely different person, actually capable of empathy and generosity.
Our mothers with BPD are complicated people and the reasons they are so disturbed are something we will never likely fully comprehend, as we were not born when they were children. Healthy people do not present themselves in polarizing ways like our mothers with BPD do, like being cruel to one child while favoring another and then treating complete strangers well until the person does not say or do what they want. With DID, the different personalities are extremely distinct, and the different personalities have nothing to do with trying to manipulate and impress other people.

[TelHill]

Hi zachira,  My mom has acted like she was a different person only once in front of me. I didn't mention it because it was so brief.

We were at the house where my mother grew up overseas for a summer vacation. This happened 40 years ago. Her voice turned light and happy. Her entire face lit up. She said she would cook lunch for me.  That was the first indication that something was all together different. She stopped making lunch for me at 10 and she looked normal.

She was going to make something I liked when she made it before. As she was cooking I could see it was nothing I've seen her make before. It was delicious! She smiled and lovingly placed the dish on the table. She always looked angry when serving meals. She kind of threw the plates at us. Truly always.

I knew it was her but almost like a different person who looked and acted like a warm human being.  The usual mom came back and never saw this behavior and never saw her make this recipe again.  She returned to the mom I knew: criticizing and ridiculing me.
 
I wish things were different for her that the loving and kind person I saw that day would be permanently here.

[zachira]

TelHill,
What you are describing sounds like you observed your mother in another personality. The other personality is often triggered by something. I wonder what made your mother behave like she was a totally different person. I too would have liked to see more of the caring personality of my mother, and I grieve that she could not be that kind of person all the time. DID is treated by integrating the different personalities into one core personality.

[TelHill]

zachira,

I would have liked to see more of it too! It was just once and so out of her normal unhappy demeanor that it stood out for being so odd.  So sad that it was once and done.

We were at her childhood home but we had gone there a few times before.  I wish I knew what triggered her.  I've been very good at figuring out patterns for my tech job. Perhaps emotionally I don't have the same talent?

She's very generous giving me money, food, and items to keep me warm. She didn't have these or had very, very little growing up. We were in an isolated village overseas (her hometown) and perhaps she felt the desire to buy me something. No way to do that where we were so she was nice? I don't know!

I will read more about DID, but wanted to respond first so my post wasn't colored by reading about the subject.

[zachira]

TelHill,
My mother also grew up poor and was also generous with money, food, and things to keep me warm.
I am interested in hearing what you learn about DID.