Noelaus3

I once listened to a podcast on the neurological impacts of alcohol on the brain which is an area of professional and personal interest for me. The gist of it was that over time alcohol (which is a tiny molecule that goes everywhere in the body) shuts down the empathy centre of the brain. That explains everything to me. He literally cannot see things from my perspective due to damage to his brain.

Beth38

I have thought about this quite a lot: and in the beginning I probably missed the aspect of being in a relationship with someone (because feeling lonely is a consequence of all breakups), but as time has gone by, I do miss her. Not the uncertainty, the chaos, the anxiety and the destruction that comes with drinking - but I miss all of the lovely things about her and the lovely things about our relationship. Trailmix, I agree about normalising things in a dysfunctional relationship - it's like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water, adjusting to the ever rising temperature, until it's too much to bear. And eventually it was too much for me, and that's why we're no longer together. And while I do miss her, I don't miss her enough to want to rekindle our romance and get sucked into the same drama. But I can still see all of her good, kind qualities, as well as her struggle with alcoholism and the consequences there of: most of which affect her. Sure, I've sustained some heartache and some damage during the course of our relationship and the breakup, but I get to walk away from her drinking. She doesn't.

trailmix

That's very true. It's never a happy situation and it can feel like you are "giving up" on a person sometimes, because alcoholics like most people, usually have a good side and underneath all those negatives you mentioned can be a very nice person. But setting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm is never a good idea.

I am sorry you got hurt in all of this. You have strong boundaries, that's something good that you now can be certain of.

Beth38

This is so true, Trailmix. I often feel like I have given up her, but then I need to remind myself that I needed the choose me and not get burnt in the fire, as you so aptly described!

Purplrks3647

As an empath I learned the hard way what happens when you’re an unaware empath.

The quote about empathy without boundaries is so true…people with toxic personalities, with or without an addiction, seek out those of us empaths without boundaries…then they attach themselves and suck the life right out of you….then make you think it’s your fault.


I’ve been by myself and focusing on me for several years now….if people find that selfish, so be it.

Live

I have 2 meditations that help me very much. One of them, as I breathe in deeply I say in my mind "compassion for myself", the exhale is "compassion for others" It is important to tend to self first. And with that, I find I actually have more to give.

Beth38

What's the second one? If you dont mind sharing.

Live

The other meditation is also based on even deep breathing and it does take a little more practice. The goal is to have an empty mind. no thoughts running in our heads. It is incredibly calming and I consider it a form of self hypnotizing myself to sleep. I may toss and turn and feel restless when I go to bed but then with this meditation, I calm and fall right to sleep. no nonsense running in my head to interrupt a peaceful state.

trailmix

I posted this in F&F of substance abusers, but thought some here might find it interesting as well.

There was a study done on alcoholics and empathy. In a nutshell, there are, basically, two kinds of empathy - Cognitive empathy and affective empathy.

The latter is where most alcoholics are.

I try to stay away from picking up on others feelings - as in feeling them. Although I can identify them in other people, i don't need to actually tap in to those feelings (although I can if I want to - but haven't felt that to be helpful). If you cut your finger and cry, me crying along with you isn't helping you (or me).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1111/add.15941

"We found that, in comparison to healthy control groups, individuals with AUD had impairments in cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy. These results suggest that individuals with AUD may be able to share in other people’s emotional states, but may have difficulty understanding them. More research is needed to more clearly understand potential differences in cognitive versus affective empathy deficits in AUD, however, as only six studies examined these subcomponents of empathy".

Basically:

Empathy can be separated into two major facets.

Cognitive empathy refers to the ability to recognize and understand another's mental state (part of theory of mind (ToM) or mentalizing) while

Affective empathy is the ability to share the feelings of others, without any direct emotional stimulation to oneself

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6410675/


As an illustrative example, sharing the excitement of a close friend's job offer is fundamentally different from understanding that your friend must be having thoughts and feelings, and what these feelings might be. These two aspects of empathy rely on different brain structures and take different developmental pathways, with affective empathy developing much earlier than cognitive empathy