Vicarious feelings

Post Reply New Topic

My DH keeps saying I can't feel vicariously. I wasn't even aware people could really do that. I don't get sports, politics or even war. I feel no passion for either side so I don't have much interest in who'd win. When we watch movies or read fiction I never identify with any characters, but stay detached as an onlooker. Last time we watched a show where some dudes accidentally drank some urine. Everyone flinched except me. I was like "hey this is a TV show, it's just water in that jar".

I do have some empathy for people close to me and can feel deeply when they're happy or upset. But apparently the normal people can feel for total strangers or fictional characters by the miracle of this vicarious thing.

So what about you? Can you feel vicariously?

I used to, but not anymore.

No.

Observing the motives behind each character is more interesting, I think.

To be honest, I've often questioned whether "normal people" are as empathetic as they appear to be. There's a strong compulsion, obviously, to express feelings of empathy whenever tragedies occur. I can't help but get this feeling when listening to newscasters and journalists that they're just being phony when expressing feeling about another school shooting, or another natural catastrophe.

Like you, though, I do tend to have very deep empathy for people I care about.

"Feeling vicariously" makes about as much sense to me as trying to walk from Honolulu to Los Angeles blindfolded without drowning.

How people "feel" what others are experience has always seemed like the strangest form of make-believe to me.

Yes I do experience some vicarious feelings. If somebody gets injured in a movie, I get a sense of being injured myself. It's often accompanied with a physical sensation which I get when I'm feeling horrified, and it's quite immediate, not the result of a chain of thought. If I see a loved one in real life getting hurt, I can feel that quite intensely. It's possible that it doesn't happen so much for positive things like happiness or enjoying food, which might be something to do with my habit of dwelling on risks and downsides. It makes sense that the feelings I've experienced the most myself would be the easiest for me to empathise with in others.

It's simpler when it's something like seeing a movie in which somebody falls off the top of a tall building. The emotions are pretty obvious. But for more subtle things, I sometimes wonder if I'm always experiencing the same emotions as the person I'm supposed to be looking at.

I can get so absorbed in identifying with a movie character that I feel like I am that person. And I might feel that way for awhile after the movie is over.

I cringe if I see someone get hurt. I can't stand to see things like surgery on TV.

I feel for people if they are being mistreated and it makes me want to do something about it, where if it was happening to me I'd probably just ignore it and move on.

I can watch a football game and really feel for the players on BOTH sides of the game, not just the team I am rooting for.

Yes I can feel vicariously.

Vicarious Feelings

Oh, yeah!! When I first saw the commercial that showed an old lady falling-down, and she said: "I've fallen and I can't get-up", I bawled----I didn't weep, I didn't sob, I BAWLED!!

When I was in 2nd grade, our teacher was walking us out, for recess, and she fell-down----cut her knee, was bleeding, and everything..... Everybody laughed, but me----I felt so sorry for her.

The other evening, on TV, there was a little girl crying----it was all I could do not to blubber right-along with her.

All-my-life I've been told I'm much too altruistic, for my own good.

It doesn't effect me much. I tend to look at stuff like that with clinical detachment.

You know I like you, Ezra.

But let me ask you: Would you be so detached if you dad got hurt?

Then again, maybe you have "clinical detachment" for characters in books and movies, not people you are close to.

Newscasters have to appear detached--it's part of journalism.

They might actually have vicarious feelings for the event which they are covering; or they might not.

When President Kennedy died in 1963, Walter Cronkite, who is seen as being the "consummate journalist," seemed about to burst into tears on the air.

I'm sure, if you're actually at the scene of a school shooting, that you'd feel quite a bit.

I don't believe anything the media reports anymore and I think it's a waste to expend emotion on reports that may not even be true.

But the World Trade Center was attached by planes; that happened.

There are many facts in the media which are true. The problem with the media is not the facts, per se, but how they are portrayed.

I do feel empathy with people, though not really on TV or in films as I know it is not real. However, and I shouldn't really feel like this, I find it far easier to empathise with animals. If I see an animal being maltreated in real life or on TV, I want to intervene. If I see an animal about to die on TV I have to turn over channels, I can't watch it. Watching humans die is not a problem on TV, obviously different the one and only time I've witnessed it in real life with my Dad.