I feel apathetic toward other peoples suffering
I’m a 17 year old girl, for context. My entire life I’ve struggled with properly feeling my emotions. Sometimes I feel things so strongly, other times I feel nothing at all. I tend to feel happy when I should feel sad, or sad when I should feel happy. But most troubling is how little I feel for other people. I don’t actually feel anything when my friends and family are sad or hurt. No matter how bad of a situation they’re in, I can’t bring myself to actually feel upset for them. When other people are suffering, I pretend I feel bad, and I say I feel bad, but really it doesn’t affect me at all. I don’t get upset when people get injured or they lose someone in their life. I don’t get upset about political violence. I’ve never been upset by fiction, when a character dies in a movie or book or whatever. I don’t get upset when people I know die. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life and I’ve never cried over any of them. About a year ago my aunt passed away. My mom broke down and yelled at me asking why I didn’t cry or act like I cared. I didn’t know what to tell her. I obviously didn’t want my aunt to die, but I couldn’t really feel anything.
It’s not that I don’t feel emotions, sometimes I feel so many emotions it’s overwhelming. I just have this weird lack of empathy for other people that I can’t seem to control. I really do like most people, generally. I’ve liked almost everyone I’ve ever met actually. There’s no one I really hate. I’ve forgiven everyone who’s wronged me and I like to follow the philosophy of loving everyone, I just don’t feel bad for people in the same way others seem to. I don’t want them to hurt, but I can’t help but see hurt as a neutral, or a given. Hurt is part of life. I hurt, all the time, so I don’t get so upset when other people hurt. It’s just one of the things about being alive. There’s nothing I can do about it. When something happens it happens and you have to deal with it.
Id never say any of this out loud. I try my best to make myself be empathetic or to try to pretend like I care, but I can’t help but feel like empathy is something I’ll never properly feel. I feel such a guilt about it, and I worry it makes me a bad person. There’s been too many occasions in my life where everyone around me is devastated and I just feel nothing. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it possible for me to be a good person if I don’t know how to feel for other people? Can I learn to feel sympathy for others or is there something fundamentally wrong with me?
Posted Jun 12, 2026, 11:51 PM UTC · locked