Hey community!
I (25m) wanted to come here, present my struggles, and just see if anyone can truly relate, is where I am or has been where I currently am.
As I’ve grown, done therapy, paid attention to my feelings towards others, I’ve come to realize that I have an incredibly transactional, apathetic mind in how I relate to the world. Almost everything I do is driven off of “how does this benefit me.” I feel as though I don’t truly connect with others emotionally, but rather just see other people as only valuable to me when they are directly serving me or validating me in some way. When I am alone, I have little to no desire to reach out to friends or family, I constantly spiral about how I might just be “broken” and am unsure if I need to fight it or just accept. I’ve done a lot of work to decrease my need for external validation and have made incredible strides, but now, without that need, my brain goes “alright well if we don’t need that anymore, why would I ever care for others. I don’t see how that would benefit me.”
Example: Someone I knew (f) was discussing politics, and told me that in the most recent election, “women’s bodily rights and autonomy were under attack” and all I felt was “okay, that has nothing to do with me, so I don’t care and I don’t see how I’d benefit from caring.” Even when I try an empathy building exercise and flip the script on this (imagine my bodily rights attempting to be taken away), I even struggle to understand why others who are unaffected would care for me in that situation.
I don’t know if I’m broken, insecure, just simply don’t experience empathy the way others do, need help or need to just accept, etc. I’m just so lost. Has anyone ever been here before or is here and has any learnings to share? Thank you.
Comments
Although being selfish, there’s not really anything wrong with not caring about things that don’t directly affect you especially since there are so many topics where people say you aren’t allowed to input on specific topics because they don’t affect you.
That mindset becomes more of a problem if you start to engage in behaviors that actively harm or result in the detriment and mental degradation of those around you, so I suggest operating with a “do no harm” mindset where at the very least you try to be civil and neutral.
In regards to the apathy, you need to do things with intentionality and force yourself to do things even if you don’t feel like or want to do it. You can even if you set up a schedule with reminders for you to do things like talk to a family member or friend, to do out to an event, go for a run, and anything else that you know will be good for you.
I am a M34 and feel pretty much exactly as you describe.
I do care about people close to me, but in a way to a point that if anything happened to them it would affect me.
I have always found I can act like I care pretty well, you can even kind of trick yourself into kind of feeling it sometimes.
I’m not sure what I can offer in terms of learnings, I am still travelling the road myself. But there are pros, things that would devastate normal people are not big deals to me. I don’t spend weeks / months feeling sad or down about anything. On the flip side I don’t seem to take quite as much joy as others when it comes to good things.
Anyway, we are all a little broken, there is no perfect mind. It’s about utilising what you have. I enjoy my own company a lot, rarely reaching out to people, but if you are happy like that then it’s fine. Being transactional can have benefits, you won’t stay locked into a relationship that isn’t doing you any good, a lot of ‘regular’ people fall into that trap.
I think it’s quite possible to have an enjoyable life. If I’m honest, my only fear with regards to it would be being alone at the end.