Empathy?
How can we describe what empathy is. Is it an understanding of others, a sixth sense yet to be mapped by today’s scientists, or purely - just a myth?
As I have got older, although not necessarily wiser, I have begun to understand my own complexities and, I suppose, gained an insight into my own psyche. As an attempt to rationalise my own thoughts and what you could describe as feelings, I have decided to write them down in this journal.
One of the biggest events in my life has been my affliction with epilepsy, a neurological disorder that as my doctors have clearly stated to me in the past is still very much unknown. However, it is gathered that the seizures most often experienced by epilepsy sufferers are caused by an “overloading” of the neural receptors in the brain.
But what causes this overloading?
This question has often puzzled me, as I have often had the sense that there was more to my epilepsy than I first realised.
As time has gone on I have begun to understand more and more about people around me. Is this because I have become more observant? Well, yes I suppose that is true. However, I have now begun to believe it is more than just observation by sight and sound that has brought about my greater perception of people.
Often when you really listen to a person you can hear the slight variations in tone as their thoughts change about the subject of which they are speaking. The thought of a loved one or talking about an argument often projects clearly in the voice, and it is these same underlying thoughts and emotions that are projected in the voice can also, I believe, be subconsciously emanated by the body and received by the human mind.
Now I am not talking about the reading of people’s thoughts or projecting my thoughts into others. But the perceiving of something far more basic, the underlying emotions that drive us all in our daily lives.
As a person I have been, although sometimes to my ruin and the upset of others,...