Anyone new that comes into my life, even if they become my “friends” or hell, even a girlfriend, I couldn’t care less about them and don’t value them. If they have kids, I don’t care about their well-being either. Basically I could not give less of a fuck about anyone. I don’t care about my friends or family members at all. If they are sick, I don’t care; if they die, I don’t care. It’s not even that I don’t “like” them; it’s more apathy than anything else. Don’t care whether they live or die. They don’t care about their children or their well-being. Here are my “emotions” towards people. I either tolerate you, or I’m purely apathetic. Or I just straight up don’t like you.
But I’m going to be in more social situations around people I hang out with – friends, family, etc. – and I need to fake like I care about them.
How do I do that?
You’re continuing to make progressively more alarming posts. I wont fully reiterate statements I made previously. I will say, you’re continuing to add ingredients to a plethora of terrible recipes. Please seek professional help and ask these questions. Lemmy is not a stand in for psychiatric advice.
You really should seek actual psychiatric assistance promptly before someone gets hurt. Your life can improve significantly to the point where you actually enjoy it.
You’re wrong. You do value them, or you wouldn’t bother putting in any effort to create or maintain these relationships.
Caring in order to benefit from the relationship is still caring. The reason for caring doesn’t need to be altruistic for it to matter.
Caring in order to benefit from the relationship is still caring.
Is it really? Sounds more like caring about the rewards of the relationship than caring about the people, and it’s selfish and just generally shitty.
Say you walk into a coffee shop and the guy who takes your order has a heart attack. If your reaction is “Is anyone going to make my coffee? Do I get a discount for the inconvenience?” THAT is caring about the transaction, not caring about the person, and it’s not the same AT. ALL.
Bad example. Most people don’t care about the person that serves them coffee at all. You also wouldn’t change your behavior to improve the relationship between Barista and Customer.
People are selfish, and almost everything they do is selfish. However, most people are smart enough to understand that being openly greedy and selfish is not the optimal path to getting the most they can for themselves. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma on a population scale. If everyone agrees to mostly get along, everyone does better individually.
The only exception to this tends to be very close family like a parent, a child, or maybe a sibling. Even those aren’t guaranteed though, lots of people treat even their close family poorly and don’t care about them.
That’s exactly why I picked the example. Even if I don’t know or care about this person, my first reaction would be, Are you ok? Do I need to call for help? Should I start CPR?
If you’re worried about your coffee, that’s not caring, that’s being an asshole.
Again, bad example.
In emergency situations, the vast majority of people do absolutely nothing. There’s a reason why during first aid training one of the most significant things they teach you is to call out a specific person, and get them to call 911, and double check that they actually do it.
I’ve quite literally seen a pregnant woman fall on an icy sidewalk outside a building, and a dozen people walked by before I got there to help her.
You see it all the time with car accidents too, someone crashes, and way too many cars try to drive around so they don’t get stuck in the traffic jam when the emergency crews arrive. Maybe one in 10 people will actually stop and try to help.
You vastly overestimate how much people care about strangers.
You vastly overestimate how much people care about strangers.
People somehow find a way to remind me of this every day.
Have you read about “mirror neuron”?
We learn sympathy by mimicking. With practice, you can actually learn sympathy. Simply by copying “pretending to care”, you will eventually become caring.
It is how we learn. We learn by observing and copying.
Try to making your smile and you will feel happier. Eventually you will feel happier for no reason.
Same with sympathy. Try to care about people simply by copying others. You will care about others just by “caring”.
Young children, girls and women learn from their caretakers, sisters and mother’s how to take care of babies. They learn by observing and practicing. As you are mirroring the acts, your neuron actually fire the same signal as if you are taking care the infants.
Just by copying the act of sympathy, your mirror neuron will fire the signal for sympathy. Eventually you will find yourself care for others. The same signal is used in your brain. You don’t need to force yourself.
Same as racism and hatred. If you copy racists, you will become a racist. If you copy hateful behaviors, you will become a hateful person.
Best advice I can give you is find an excellent therapist or psychologist so they can help you to figure out what’s wrong with you. What you are saying is not normal.
Attend sales seminars, or try waiting tables. You’ll learn real quick.
Maybe try and figure out how to actually care?
Caring for someone is an action. Take time to do things for people, to learn about them. Block out time in your day to think about what is happening in your long and the people in it. Some people refer to this as prayer, reflection, or meditation. Start with 10 minutes 3x a week to truly do nothing but think.
I’m not asking you to develop an emotion, but the time you spend on this and the things you do would be considered caring.
I don’t actually think that you need to fake like you care about people. That is disingenuous. You can set time limits on how long you are willing to socialize. Let people know that you can come to their event but you need to leave by a certain time and stick to it. Leave when you promised yourself that you would, be that kind of friend to you. It’s okay to be a “mysterious” person and limit your social life. If you want to come off as a nice person you just need to be that person. That doesn’t mean that you should be a social person just be the person that you want to be for the allotted time. You tell yourself that you are only going to go for an hour and you really only need to be “that person” for an hour, you can do this. It takes a lot of practice, actually it’s all practice, but as you settle into who you really are it just becomes who you are.
Be yourself or take acting classes.
