No need to cry about it
What is your problem?
I’ve always found it odd that very young children cry. I think “What have you got to cry about? You have no responsibilities. You can play all day. You’re intellectually a simpleton, so there’s little chance of getting bored and the littlest things can keep you entertained. You have no concept of morality, and the normals haven’t even infected you with the misery they live with yet, so you can quite literally do whatever you want. Compared to this, the rest of your life is going to be a disaster zone. Wait until high school! Wait until mortgages and bill repayments and supermarkets and annoying coworkers. Wait until you’re mopping up the sick and poo of your own child, and wondering why they’re always fucking crying. Wait until you’re old, and your body and mind both start decaying before you’ve finished using them, and you keep putting baking soda in your tea and your cat in the dishwasher. These, your carefree days of childhood, are the good times. It’s all down hill from here. And yet, there you are – bawling like a, well, like a baby.”
Then someone was kind enough to point out: “they have no other way of communicating.” Of course! It’s obvious. Silly me. But that is true primarily of babies, and it does beg the question as to why psychopathic babies (God, is that even a thing? A little cherub from hell come to devour your life savings and personal freedom.) don’t cry. Psychopaths are good communicators, or at least they’re good at communicating their needs to others and getting those others to provide for them, so why don’t they cry? That’s not rhetorical. Hey, I don’t have all the answers!
Still, once we get into late toddlerhood, most kids have been talking for a couple of years and are getting quite good at it, and especially at asking questions. And we’re still in “Everything in life is great” territory, so what’s with the crying? Note that we’re talking genuine tears here, not tantrums or other such manipulations. Why do they cry with emotion?
Now, having met and spoken with at least one person claiming to be an “empath”, the answer to this puzzle might be teased. I am still skeptical as to the existence of empaths, i.e. people with an abnormally heightened empathy such that they can almost read minds (or certainly hearts, if hearts be the organ of emotion). To me, it all sounds a bit Star Trek, a bit Deanna Troi. But I’ve met and spoken with a self-proclaimed empath, and since I’m the one claiming to be something most people believe only exists in slasher films, who am I to judge?
Worst counsellor ever.
According to the empath, most people are noisy. She doesn’t mean that they’re loudmouths (although I would attest to that also being the case), but that they’re emotionally noisy. Apparently, most people give off a kind of aura of emotion and for this empath at least the aura manifests itself as noise. Maybe the ‘noise’ is just metaphorical and other empaths choose to use more visual or tactile descriptors of auras, or maybe it’s all bullshit. I don’t know, but what I do know is that I am apparently not noisy. I am very quiet. Being around me, says the empath, is calming. Being around me is like when she’s alone. She can just be who she is, and focus on her own mind and her own emotions, without a constant onslaught coming from other people.
I have never denied that I have emotions; all humans are by their nature emotional beings. But I have noticed over the years that mine are more level and altogether less bumpy than others’. I don’t get wound up easily, I don’t jump with fright, I don’t go to pieces under stress – indeed if anything adverse circumstances excite me and get me fired up. Knowing this about myself, and have it be recognised by this empath unprompted, does give a clue as to why, even in infancy, a psychopath may be far less prone to crying than others. The frequent crying of even children old enough to speak may not be nearly as much of a puzzle to others as it is to me; and indeed, given the apparently different emotional worlds we inhabit, this, I suppose, is to be expected.
Critter, 
James, 
Christopher Flore, and 1 other are discussing. 
So, New Year’s Day, 2018. I spent it in the company of my mother for the most part, playing board games. It was nice to reconnect, nice to not have anything else to do but play a few games and enjoy spending time with the woman who birthed and raised me. It’s not often that there’s literally nothing else I’d rather be doing than what I’m currently doing, or that there’s nothing else that really has to be done.
nowve666 23:15 on January 12, 2018 Permalink |
ROTFLMAO!!! So you didn’t cry as a baby? Do you remember? Have you asked your mother what you were like then? One reason babies cry is physical discomfort. They get things like colic. They wake up hungry with wet diapers. They get diaper rash. And they might get lonely if they are left alone in their crib. They cry when they are startled with loud sounds. And I understand they need their mothers to “mirror” their facial expressions and get upset if their mothers don’t do it. Also, I understand most babies have empathy. So if another baby outs crying, the baby who hears it can start crying out of empathy. Obviously, we didn’t do that, I guess. Why do you call babies little psychopaths?
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James 05:42 on January 13, 2018 Permalink |
I don’t remember being a baby, but there are videos of me. I didn’t call babies little psychopaths; I was referring to babies who are psychopaths later in life, and was wondering if they already were psychopaths even as a baby.
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nowve666 09:01 on January 13, 2018 Permalink |
Oh. OK. I read this very late at night. I don’t blame babies for crying a lot. After all, finding themselves thrust into this world. They don’t even known where their bodies end and the world begins. They can’t coordinate their arms and legs or even see in the beginning. They suddenly depend on an outside person, the mother, usually. She controls when they eat, when they are warm or cold, when their diapers change, etc. Then they begin crawling and then walking. Everything is really difficult. Fortunately, it’s not in the nature of a baby to be a quitter. They keep trying until they succeed. As for “the normals haven’t even infected you with the misery they live with yet,” I knew at an early age that adults were full of shit. I assumed most of what they told me was a lie. One of my earliest memories was distrusting what I was told. It’s not that they were necessarily lying. But they seemed to be deceiving themselves. I distrusted even things that later turned out to be true. For example, I was told New York, my hometown, was the biggest city in the world and the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world. I immediately thought, “I’ll bet everyone says that about the city they live in.” I was also told over and over that childhood was the best time in my life, just like you are saying. I thought, “I don’t believe it.” Guess what. I grew up and discovered that childhood was not the best time in my life. I enjoyed adulthood much more. Sure, there are hassles. But there is also more freedom.
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Christopher Flore 15:30 on January 13, 2018 Permalink |
Their parents’ struggle. I’ve always been interested about them crying, i figure sometimes they are born and don’t cry and other times they cry into the world, the other part is if the birth itself isn’t smooth but the two go hand in hand sometimes. There is a need to cry when there is sometimes btw and it takes the sadness out of you.
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James 10:55 on January 14, 2018 Permalink |
Good point. Thanks for your comment, Christopher.
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Critter 07:51 on February 14, 2018 Permalink |
“…And we’re still in “Everything in life is great” territory, so what’s with the crying? Note that we’re talking genuine tears here, not tantrums or other such manipulations. Why do they cry with emotion?…”
Crying with emotion over seemingly trivial stuff just happens to be a useful way for a developing brain to find ways to make those emotional responses be useful by the time they reach adulthood. That behavior is just a sign of impulse control and emotional regulation developing in a young brain. Good thing that process starts early isn’t it?
“According to the empath, most people are noisy. She doesn’t mean that they’re loudmouths (although I would attest to that also being the case), but that they’re emotionally noisy. Apparently, most people give off a kind of aura of emotion and for this empath at least the aura manifests itself as noise. Maybe the ‘noise’ is just metaphorical and other empaths choose to use more visual or tactile descriptors of auras, or maybe it’s all bullshit.”
I honestly don’t belive in the whole empath consept. Although to her credit, people probably do have the neurological equivalent of both a signal amplifier and noise filter, both somewhat adjustable, otherwise it would be extremely hard for people to adapt to different social environments. If that happens to be the way the brain does works, then empaths probably has a noise filter dialed to minimum and an amplifier dialed to max. In that sense, I would have to compromise and agree to empaths being ~ 50% right, lol.
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James 09:59 on February 14, 2018 Permalink |
Hi, welcome back (assuming you’re ‘Typical Critter’ from before)
The noise filter concept definitely seems intuitively like it must exist. If you had the same level of focus in a large crowd as you did in a small group of people or in a one-to-one exchange, the stimuli would likely be overwhelming. As it is, a lot of people find large crowds stressful, but it must help a lot not having to listen to everyone’s conversations or keep track of what everyone in the crowd looks like, smells like, what they’re doing, what they’re wearing, various non-verbal cues such as body-language, expression, gait etc.The fact that we mostly don’t do this would strike me as evidence of a filter in action. Indeed, people I know who are most on edge in crowds (generally there is a past trauma behind that) report that they’re unable to tune everyone out; if they’re in a restaurant, they have to keep an eye on all the customers, staff and anyone else who comes through the door.
“That behavior is just a sign of impulse control and emotional regulation developing in a young brain. Good thing that process starts early isn’t it?” Is that rhetorical? I don’t see much or indeed any use for crying over spilt milk or dead puppies. The emotional responses are not useful, they’re wasteful. While weak neurotypicals waste time leaking salty water out of their faces and grimacing, psychopaths (and indeed pragmatic neurotypicals) are working out how to solve the problem they’re faced with. So I would have to say that no it is not a good thing children learn how to be emotional wrecks from a very young age.
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Critter 17:39 on February 15, 2018 Permalink |
I have one anecdote when it comes to people who claim to be empaths, they seem to have a tendency to overinterpret things when it comes to other peoples emotional responses.
“…While weak neurotypicals waste time leaking salty water out of their faces and grimacing, psychopaths (and indeed pragmatic neurotypicals) are working out how to solve the problem they’re faced with…”
Most adults don’t get an emotional breakdown every time life throws shit at them, lol. Teaching children the basics for how to sort out their problems by themselves is kind of what parents are supposed to do. Kids aren’t as emotionally stable as adults because that makes it easier for their brains to develop. Pragmatic neurotypicals are just people who have figured out how to overcome fear, not give in to anger, not take themselves too seriously and especially not take everything people say too seriously either, but rather pay attention to their behavior in the longer term.
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