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Comment by john_weak | Hacker News Reader

My mother had stroke like 20 years ago. All of my siblings including myself have had moments of real trouble when we talk to her. She's very functional, but there's a sense that she is not putting herself in our shoes, which comes across as lacking empathy. Even when we try to outwardly express distress, it's like she's blind to it. I just realized recently that stroke survivors can suffer impairment to their Theory of Mind, basically rendering them blind to what others are feeling. That sense can be gone or be impaired. This was such a revelation to me and suddenly everything in the last decade made perfect sense. All this time we thought she was just really self-centered or 'slow'. It caused real frustrations and there were times we even broke down because we expect something that's just not there. We didn't know.

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My own mother has never had a stroke, but she has very little awareness of her own emotional states. She is an incredibly intelligent person and works in clinical medicine, but she has always come across as harsh and even cruel, because she has never shown much empathy for emotions more complex than simple fear. I think her deficiency in recognizing her own emotional states contributes to her apparent lack of empathy.

For example, she cannot recognize her own anxiety. She is a pathologically anxious person with OCD, but would never describe herself as so. As such, she has never been able to empathize with the fact that both of her children have anxiety disorders and one had severe childhood OCD.

It was not a great way to grow up, although that kind of emotional neglect is what made me a more resilient person in the end...

I firmly believe now that this is a skillset missing in families/cultures that is totally developable in therapy (recognizing own and as a consequence other people’s emotions).

This is actually a missing education in my opinion.

Absolutely. I use my grandmother as an example of what happens when you take family away from someone.

My grandmother lived between orphanages and an abusive mother who literally beat one of her children retarded with a frying pan.

She was determined to give her children a better life. And she did! She turned to her friends to figure out basic life skills. My mother had an idyllic childhood.

However, my grandma only knew how to survive an abusive childhood. She taught my mother to 'pretend everything is okay' when things were bad, because that's how she survived.

My mother married an angry and cruel man and had children with him - my sister and me. She pretended everything was okay as our father told us we were stupid and worthless, backing up his opinion with violence. Years later, she still doesn't understand why we are distant with her because she still lives in her fantasy world.

Now, imagine taking family away from an entire group of people. All traditions wiped out.

this missing piece also seems to be described under the banner "narcissism", which is a coping mechanism often acquired in childhood to deal with some sort of abuse or trauma

Do you mean required education? Therapy exists but it is not required unless asked for.

I have mixed feelings on it. It can be great for some people. For me, understanding how I feel and act now as a consequence of my parents actions was not helpful. Taking 2-3 months to get to these points also was not a good use of time.

No I’m not saying therapy should be required, but I do say that we miss it as a society on educational level. I’m not saying I know how to fulfill that.

I am in therapy for 2 years now (and not planning to stop for a while), the results I really enjoy and that are visible from outside and clear conseqences are only starting to crystallize. Imagine “learning C++” in 2 months. And that is purely mental. These emotional skills are not easy at all. This is a whole new “riding a bike”, but on all the million wheels of a real human that is you.

Understanding is not the result. The result is your comfort, your confidence, your loving yourself, you being your own perfect loving parent and close friend.

It might help her to take improv classes. You are almost forced to consider what your scene partner is feeling/thinking.

Makes sense. The mind can repair itself given the right stimuli and time.. and the biology of the body will react when perhaps something clicks...

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