New insight today watching Dr. Phil. An alcoholic mom who abandoned her three children and now wants them back in her life, hasn't overcome the issues that caused her alienation from them.

What she lacks and is void of is empathy.

Dr. Phil tells her three adult children that empathy in psychology is one thing that cannot be faked or mimicked.

For all the people in yours/my TBM or elsewhere world that are empty vessels, it's best to keep your boundaries. Because empathy is either there or it isn't. When it's the people that should be there for you but are incapable of it are the very ones you need to distance yourself from.

I know with some of my own family, I feel safer drawing and maintaining boundaries. Not because I wanted to per se, but from necessity.

Knowing that a person cannot fake or mimic empathy is a revelation, because if someone were to try they give themselves away as the bad actors that they are.

I think a lot of members are excellent at speaking of helping others, but only a few members are capable of showing love.

I had several missionary companions that were so scary. One minute they bragged about how much they loved to run over (hit) a dog that happened to be asleep in the road and the next minute they were gushing over the atonement of Christ at an investigator's house; complete with crocodile tears.

(anono this week)
It's funny but, People who understand people are the ones who don't seek out to be around other strange people so much, they avoid them
when ever possible. Many people who been in Retail, or social service work for the poor, or teaching in urban schools, for years on end
knows that fact and tend to get burned out. They lose their faith in humanity. To increase in wisdom is to increase in sorrow.

Understanding this principle in psychology gives me new insight into my TBM RM niece who was beyond rude at my brother's funeral last fall, her father.

She is an author who writes novels of psychopath killers. Of people without empathy. Now I'm beginning to see her in a new light as someone without any genuine empathy in her own right. She has tried faking it since my brother's funeral and has come off as a very poor actor.

At bro's funeral what she found funny while she eulogized him was when he dangled someone by the ankles out of his apartment building window during their mission, until his companion swore his renewed allegiance to TSCC. She thought that was hilarious, never mind if he'd been dropped he could have died.

I was mortified.

Amyjo Wrote:
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> Understanding this principle in psychology...

Yes, I learn a lot from some of Dr. Phil episodes also.

I think you are right about empathy, and I think TSCC is full of people who pretend, like Messy's companion, to have some, but then don't, really.

The cult is full of pretenders--crying about the Atonement. You are right too, it is difficult to distance yourself but that is what must be done.

I'm sorry about your brother's funeral. How sad that someone so disrespectful was speaking. I hope you can with time, just remember him in your own way and forget about the niece.

"...when he dangled someone by the ankles out of his apartment building window during their mission, until his companion swore his renewed allegiance to TSCC."

Is that how many keep their testimonies??

And the niece thought that was ..funny??

It's funny when at my work (w/many mormons..), that talk to us, about something churchy, meeting-related, family-related as if we were mormon, and then they get a look of horror when we say just how weird that as.. and they realize that they just might be (or we, nonmormons) are weird.

I can't bring myself to accept Dr. Phil as an authority on anything other than self-aggrandisement.

Many of us who spent time in the mission field either practiced or witnessed fake empathy. I'm sure there are many other examples.

I doubt the OP needed Dr Phil's help in recognizing the niece's toxicity.

It wasn't the toxicity I recognized but the utter inability to overcome toxicity when someone has sociopathic attributes.

If someone like say yourself who by your own admission practiced fake empathy you cannot fake it according to psychologists. You may think you can, but you give yourself away.

Often how people can detect liars is by their body language. They may be smiling but can tell by their eyes whether they're telling the truth or not.

It's also interesting that of the ten posts you've made under your pseudonym rocomop that in the three months you've posted as rocomop, half of them have been to troll my posts. Is this a sock puppet for your other user name?

Trolling is against RfM rules. If you believe that having someone disagree with you constitutes trolling, report it and let the mods deal with it.

To be clear, I disagree with both the characterization of Dr. Phil as a reputable source of wisdom and with the notion that when empathy is faked, it is immediately discernable. These are simply points of view, not personal attacks.

It is clear to me you are not a mind reader. So stop pretending you can read mine regarding my POV about my niece.

I trust Dr. Phil as a licensed psychologist any day over what you have to say about empathy as a discernible personality trait.

And shadowing me on half of your ten posts since you came to the forum in the past three months does beg the question what's with the obsession? If you're shadowing me, five argumentative posts in three months to comments of mine hardly constitutes stalking. But when it's half of what you've posted in three months then a pattern emerges which shows you to be something besides an everyday poster.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2019 08:07AM by Amyjo.

Amyjo Wrote:
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>
> I trust Dr. Phil as a licensed psychologist any
> day over what you have to say about empathy as a
> discernible personality trait.
>


Dr. Phil is NOT a licensed psychologist. Does that change anything?

He has three degrees in psychology including a PhD in clinical psychology, and was licensed to practice for a number of years, although not currently. Because someone is not currently licensed does not mean that their opinions are without merit. And he nearly always makes referrals to currently licensed professionals for evaluation and ongoing care for the guests on his show.

So do you not like Dr. Phil, or Amy??

Just curious.

For Amyjo, who I don't think I ever responded to, something clicked w/what Dr. Phil said to help her and give her understanding re: her Mormon past.

So to give her grief seems pointless to me, regardless of if you think or don't think that Dr. Phil has credentials

I think when people are so consumed by their own issues that they can't address the needs of others (even their own children,) it's not necessarily a complete lack of empathy. IMO it's more like a gaping emotional deficit that leaves them wholly unable to think of others for as long as they are in distress (which could be many years.) It's like asking a drowning person to do something for you. She can't. She's drowning. It's all she can do to keep from going down.

To me a complete lack of empathy is something else, sociopathy. The authors that I've read on sociopathy (Dr. Stout and others) say that the more functional sociopaths, the ones who learn how to live pretty well with the rest of us, learn how to mimic human emotion. They learn how to "pass." To what degree that they can consistently mimic empathy, etc. is unclear. Perhaps they cannot do it 100% of the time.