The Empathy Asymmetry

If you visit someone in an asylum, you'll encounter people firmly grounded in non-reality. You can't deny their reality because, obviously, it feels real to them. You must find the empathy to meet them in their perspective; bridging the gap on your end. And, of course, none will return the favor and consider your perspective, much less try to "meet you" there.

The situation doesn't improve when you walk out the door and into the greater world. Still everyone locked into their respective realities, demanding to be met there, while yours seems peripheral at best. The bridging — the empathy — always falls to you. Of course it does!


As a child, my parents pressured me to send letters to my grandparents, who I barely knew. I tried to "catch them up" on my activities, though they'd never shown the slightest interest. I dutifully sent cheerful letters, and it was decades before I registered how strange it was that they never wrote back. Obviously, I was in the letter-writing position. The bridging — the empathy — fell to me.

Of course it does?

Another example