Is it possible to be too empathic, too tuned in to what others are feeling and thinking, even to point where it impairs your functioning?
Sure, this is America, any excess is possible.
Columbia researchers have found that folks with Borderline Personality Disorder are better than the general population at reading the expression in other people's eyes -- and, gosh darn it, they're not always made happy by what they see.
Too much emotional information can be a real downer -- especially if you find yourself in a crowd of psychopaths or traumatized war veterans.
In fact, an overabundance of empathy may be what causes BPD in the first place.
Take the test to gauge your own ocular reading skills.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
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1 comments:
Yes, it must be hard to inhabit that wayward edge just short of too much & BDP. And then throw in on top of that the variables, like what's on the news that day, or who you have to tolerate in some setting for an extended period, on top of your own problems, let alone what to cook for dinner.
Did Lincoln have that gene, but was able to pull himself back from the edge with memories of his mother's love and support? Carver's stories too live in a shaky world of too much sympathy, where we are just barely brought back through the solidity of an observation, even if it is momentary.
A person who makes an art out of the field she's in, necessarily a sensitive being, is lucky if she knows something solid to hold on to, and maybe such things come across in her work.
One finds the two mentioned above as hair-raising to read, as if we, the reader, were brought to that edge of greatest empathy, and that there in that moment we embrace a logic which hadn't occurred to us, nevertheless recognized as something valuable.
Platonov has a story about venturing out on an edge, The Potudan River, about going there and, hopefully, coming back. Maybe a story like that leaves one with the sense that it's okay to venture out on that icy edge, as if to flex muscles that will one day prove handy. Or of some learning process we got entered into, hadn't imagined, but make the best of, and find worth sharing.
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