How to reduce empathy?

When one says they'd like to get rid of their empathy (if this experience even qualifies as such), NPCs always chime in and ask "So you'd like to be a selfish psychopath?" or state "Empathy is a gift, turn it into compassion towards yourself and others" or "Yoga, meditation, breathing, therapy". So I'm posting my question here, because lains often offer unique advice. There are two types of empathy, cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy is the ability to rationally understand another person's perspective and thoughts by putting oneself in the other person's shoes. I have no problems with this and, in fact, I find it useful. Affective empathy is physically feeling the emotions of another person. For instance, I will suddenly feel extremely tired despite getting a good night's sleep, and then I notice the people surrounding me are tired themselves. I will see a person getting injured and feel as if I've been stabbed myself for real. I could say more examples if anyone is curious, but those are enough for the time being. I don't know whether what I'm experiencing qualifies as affective empathy, emotional contagion, hypervigilance or whatever it is called in certain cycles, but I would like to get rid of it. Are there any drugs or other methods to achieve this?

Don't. You will regret it. I do. Trauma does the trick. You have to force your mind to defend itself against empathy by experiencing repeated extreme pain. It isn't worth it.

>>47917 Thanks for your input. I also have experienced trauma time and again. And whether my empathy would be greatly decreased or increased by the end of it was less deterministic than a coin flip. But perhaps there's a pattern I missed. What exactly did you go through that decreased it? >You have to force your mind to defend itself against empathy by experiencing repeated extreme pain. It isn't worth it. It's even more painful being so easily swayed by emotions that don't even belong to me. I feel like a victim of the dancing plague. To me, the pain, it is worth it. Mithridates regularly poisoned himself little by little until he built an immunity and avoid assassination. Some would call him a madman, but his method served him well.

Here's something I found. High dose painkillers like ibuprofen or paracetamol may achieve this. They did a study about it: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5015806/ The sample size is small but it makes sense to me that people given a high dosage of paracetamol underestimated not only their own pain but also the pain of others. I've never been on antidepressants but I assume they act similar (?)

>>47916 >Affective empathy Holy soykaf do the normals actually experience this like it isn't just kind of a saying?

>I will suddenly feel extremely tired despite getting a good night's sleep, and then I notice the people surrounding me are tired themselves What makes you assume it was empathy? For me, I can read the emotions of the people around me, and they strongly influence my own. But it would be bizarre to be affected by the emotions of others before I even notice them, which is how you've worded it. The empath would feel full of energy, try to talk to others, hear tired one liners as a response and suddenly be overcome by the gloom of the others.

Amphetamines create more 'drive' then care per say in my experience

>>47916 You don't need to reduce empathy you just need to move it in other ways that make more sense to you. Like instead of caring deeply about whether a dog or useless animal get hurts you care deeply about whether people in a certain community gets hurt. You're a human so you have empathy default and you can't escape it. A wise person would invest in service to communities he think matters in the long-term.

>>47921 >The empath would feel full of energy, try to talk to others, hear tired one liners as a response and suddenly be overcome by the gloom of the others. This also happens to me. But as for your question, I'm not sure what else the experience I described in the OP can be called. Emotional contagion, perhaps. I qualified it as empathy because I *might* have subconsciously noticed the people in that room were tired, so I became tired myself, and then consciously realized I was "mirroring" their tiredness. >>47923 Good advice. Though I'd like to add that seeing other people suffer doesn't necessarily make me want to assist them. In fact, it does the opposite, and I want to avoid them because they're ruining my mood. The times I felt nothing at all were when I was the most virtuous because I could think straight and actually help people in ways that they needed.

meditation unironically works for what you're describing, but tends to frame it as nonattachment. neuropsychologically speaking, affective empathy is known as shared representation (SR) and has a network associated with it, whereas cognitive empathy is known as explicit mental state attribution (MSA) with its own network. people who get affected by others emotions to an uncomfortable degree have an overactive SR network and it is common in borderline personality disorder. this results in higher emotional reactivity, often being interpersonally destructive. CBT and DBT are some possible treatments, however due to the way they oftentimes implement the principles they can sometimes make patients highly uncomfortable. core to these things is the concept of mindfulness which has been bastardized in the west. however, i believe it can still be helpful to read through DBT/CBT workbooks (you can find them on libgen) and identify the specific exercises that cause a reduction in affective reactivity. their goal is to gradually replace the SR overreliance and activity with MSA usage. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23494767/ I cannot tell you whether or not mindfulness meditation can reduce SR usage beyond what is considered healthy, but I am not convinced it can't. the reason being that what we consider to be effective empathy is culturally subjective, there are many emotional people who will not recognize cognitive empathy as true empathy for instance, even if it oftentimes involved making far more interpersonally intelligent and collectively beneficial decisions. however it is unlikely that you will get here through DBT and CBT alone. what you can do is delve into the religious sources of these practices. daoist internal alchemy (articulated in secret of the golden flower) in particular seems especially relevant, as daoism seems like a more comparatively individualistic philosophy than say, buddhism, it also was highly appealing to occultists like aleister crowley who was highly antisocial to say the least. his philosophy of thelema is highly individualistic and focused on personal discipline, control over one's own emotions and gaining power through doing so. >>47918 paradoxically, trauma can cause "hyperempathy" - hyperreactivity of he SR network - because it makes cognitive empathy more difficult. >>47919 this is because trauma causes extreme damage to the opioid receptors as well as the MSA network. people who overrely on SR tend to have a poorly developed theory-of-mind (ToM) as well, it is argued that MSA and ToM are equivalent. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10890822/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7357542/

>>47917 I've only experienced affective empathy when on drugs like lsd or mdma. The only downside I've had to not having innate affective empathy is sometimes my reactions to situations are slightly inappropriate. I don't say anything wrong, but my facial expressions, nonverbal cues, timing, and such are sometimes off. Fortunately, my cognitive empathy is well developed, better than most normal people's in my experience, so I usually pass as a very empathetic and very understanding person even when an inappropriate faux pas is made, and autism is popular now so people tend to think I'm just autistic instead of emotionally stunted and incapable of connecting with them emotionally without drugs. Despite this, I have had two separate people tell me I'm the most empathetic person they know. >>47920 It's usually described poorly because affective/emotional empathy isn't really about feeling what the other person is feeling, at least not always, but rather that their feelings, actions, or situations elicit an appropriate emotional response in you. For example, when you empathize with someone who is having a panic attack, you do not experience a panic attack yourself.

OP here. As to not clog up the thread, this is the final time I will say this: Thanks to all the helpful responders, even to future ones; I (will) read, implement and cherish each one of your answers. In the meantime, some other unique tactics I've found along my own search: >A person begins to unload their distress. Usually a face they make or word they say will trigger an empathetic response. If it's a word, repeat it many times in your head (eg, "struggling-struggling-struggling-struggling"). Within seconds, the word loses its definition and becomes just another sound. In fact, any activity that will distract you but will still keep you engaged in the conversation is beneficial. >Gamify it (eg "I bet they will say the word 'struggling' within 3 minutes.") The release of dopamine from being correct may override the empathetic response. >Try to feel disgust. I assume this is why many individuals feel empathy for dogs and cats, but not insects or rats, who often tend to bring disease. Perhaps eat something bitter during an emotionally charged conversation, in order to trigger disgust, and thus rejection. >Avoid looking at the distressed person's eyes. Instead look at the bridge of their nose or the center of their forehead rather than their pupils. >Avoid mimicking the other person's expression. Keep the face as neutral and unclenched as possible. >Try to think about the other person as clinically as possible and identify any logical fallacies in their thoughts or behavior. I can vouch for the effectiveness of some of these, but others haven't been as helpful. However lurkers who experience a similar problem may wish to try them.

i think evaluating why you feel empathy on an instinctual level and then developing a logical counter to that may be helpful. as far as i can tell, part of the reason why i feel empathy is because it's a sort of baked-in evolutionary urge to assist someone who is suffering due to the social nature of humans as a species. however, in modern times suffering tends to be more of a psychological nature rather than a physical nature, which is generally not immediately treatable, rendering instinctual empathy less useful. it's kind of like what shrinks tend to say about anxiety being a vestige from ancient times when we got chased around by tigers that serves less of a purpose now. in both cases, i can generally suppress the feeling by asking myself if there is any effort i am capable of and willing to expend to mitigate the situation, and if not, there's no logical reason to feel anxiety/empathy (and feeling it might even be harmful), so i can ignore it

>>47916 I'm the complete opposite of you, OP. I don't have (affective) empathy at all: like once i went to visit my uncle in the hospital and i saw a guy screaming in pain, he was trembling and screaming for help asking to someone easy his pain. Apparently he had cancer and the morphine wasn't making any effect anymore. In some point he started to cry and begging to someone kill him already. After some time the nurse called me and i went to my uncle's room, stayed the night with him, sleeped normally and the next morning went to home. I remember that i only started to think more about this because my mom also saw this guy and started to talk about this, me on other hand was all the time thinking about the book i was reading. And i don't think is there a way to you get rid of your empathy, just like i can't get rid of my apathy. We both are doomed to our conditions. The same way that i learned to live with my condition you also should learn to live with yours, trying to be something that you aren't is not good at all.

>>48035 >me vs my mother also worth pointing out that presumably your uncle was her brother, with whom she most likely grew up and spent countless hours, considered a permanent and close fixture in her life, and strongly related to. Too see someone suffering and dying is much more earth shattering if they're that close to you. To mister nurk he's probably kinda just some guy who you're told you're related to and kinda know more or less.

>>48037 The one who was screaming in pain wasn't my uncle, was a strange.

You can abuse painkillers as others have suggested. Although I would not recommend taking a high dose of paracetamol or other NSAIDs as they're literally toxic. You could try dissociatives, stimulants and opiates. Of course there is a chance that you have something like depression, ADHD and / or BPD and, rather than diminish your empathy, they will be actually therapeutic and enhance your sense of understanding and emotional nuance. You can avoid that by frequently taking much more than you should and becoming dependent.