Remembering Empathy

SELF

Making the commitment to feel again after a lifelong barrage of internet negativity.

I don’t know exactly when it happened.

All I know is that at some point I began to recognize that I felt more like a piece of unfeeling stone than a living, empathizing human being.

I remember that, prior to entering university, I could watch a video on the internet of a regular, average person talking about a painful experience they had gone through and be roused to tears myself, even if I had never gone through a similar experience myself.

Likewise, with films and art, scenes that were supposed to make me cry would do so, even if I had already seen that film before.

It was game over if I stumbled across a video of animal cruelty being exposed or of rescuers risking life and limb to save the life of another creature.

There was never any thought that this part of me might somehow become obstructed, that it would get shut down.

What was more confusing was that it didn’t disappear in my personal life. I could still empathize with people I knew.

But when it came to caring about the plights of others that were not in my immediate circle, there was simply nothing there anymore.

I’ve struggled these past few years to understand what has happened to me and to try and regain a bit of that empathy superpower that defines us as social creatures.

Peering back at my life story after having overcome social media addiction has helped me gain some insights.

One of which is that I had forgotten how young I had been when I first became exposed to images of horrendous violence on the internet. Middle school, I think, was the first time I remember seeing videos of militants beheading captives or photos of the aftermath of some sort of cartel hit-job.

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