Do you tear up when experiencing the misfortune of others? Do you express sorrow when experiencing the good fortune of others? Well, maybe this pearl can help you to understand what “That Caring Feeling” is, what causes it and how it might help you to experience more love in your life.
Who Cares? Well, maybe you should! “That Caring Feeling” is a proof that we are capable of caring. It is that welling up tearful feeling that we get when experiencing caring for others—it is the humanity that bonds us all. You probably experience it daily, but may not realize it. “That Caring Feeling” stems from our people-related relator style and its sorrow symbiotic emotion.
Definitions
The dictionary defines “caring” as: feeling and exhibiting concern (compassion) and empathy for others. As far as “That Caring Feeling” is concerned the emotional feeling part applies, but the empathy and compassion parts do not. Empathy and compassion are rational emotions triggered by our brain’s rational memories while “That Caring Feeling" is purely emotional, triggered by our amygdala’s sorrow memories, which we have little control over. Rationally understanding someone’s situation is not the same as emotionally experiencing someone’s situation.
What is “That Caring Feeling”?
I have tried to figure out for decades why I felt sorrow for someone’s good fortune. I thought like most people that I should feel joy when witnessing someone’s good fortune and feel sad when witnessing someone’s misfortune, but that’s not what happens with “That Caring Feeling”. We experience “That Caring Feeling” when witnessing any situation or any entity (including ourselves), actually caring about something. When we sense others caring about themselves or others it triggers the amygdala’s sorrow emotion. The sorrow triggered doesn’t care whether it is a happy or sad situation, that’s the relator style’s job to figure that out. It’s sort of like when the joy emotion is triggered by either a negative or positive connection, which the socializer memories have to figure out.
Again, when we are experiencing someone’s love or sorrow for another, we experience the same feeling of sorrow, but without the pain (loss) of sorrow. This is the essence of “That Caring Feeling”—the fact that we care at all. This is also probably why we “cry tears of sorrow” when experiencing someone’s misfortune and “cry tears of joy” when experiencing someone’s good fortune or love for another. But for “That Caring Feeling” to occur, our sensory, sorrow and relator memories have to exist in our brain. After the relator memories sort out the reason for the sorrow a new set of sensory/emotional/relator memories are stored in our brain. And the more of these experiences that we have the higher the probability of having “That Caring Feeling” in the future. In essence, “That Caring Feeling” is a test for the strength of our sorrow and thus the strength of our relator style and the ability to express bonding love with others.
When we are NOT weak in sorrow and the relator style we possess many sets of sensory/sorrow/relator memories that trigger “That Caring Feeling”. When we possess few of these sets of memories it is difficult to care. As you know, our director and relator styles are completely opposite, making us doubly strong or weak when both strong in one and weak in the other. Thus, it will take much longer to develop “That Caring Feeling” (it took me 50 years) when we are a strong angry/director and a weak sorrowful/relator. Fortunately, we can experience “That Caring Feeling” once we allow ourselves to amass enough sets of sensory/sorrow/relator memories. But to do that we need to get past our self-serving life and accept the fact that others are just as important as we think we are—we are all just trying to lead the best life we can with what we have to work with and out genetic personality has a lot to do with it.
Examples of having “That Caring Feeling”
When YOU are caring about yourself or others:
► you can experience those “tears of sorrow” when you care about your own misfortune.
► you can experience those “tears of joy” when you care about your own good fortune or love of others.
► you can experience it when you notice that someone cares about you and tries to help you.
► and of course, you experience it when you truly care about the misfortune or good fortune of another.
When OTHERS are caring about themselves or others:
► they might experience it when they sense someone reacting to his or her own misfortune.
► they might experience it when they sense someone caring about his or her own good fortune or showing love.
► they might experience it when they sense someone helping another.
► they might experience it when they witness many others helping in an emergency—think about how you felt watching 9-11 happen or when you experience first responder’s reactions.
► they might experience it when they witness someone being helped by another—making you want to help too.
► they might experience it whenever they emotionally react with sorrow!
When someone is NOT sincerely caring:
► you won’t experience it when someone falsely cares about another.
► That Caring Feeling is a wonderful tool to test the sincerity of others (and yourself)
► if you are watching a movie, show, etc., and you don’t get that caring feeling when you should, it means that the actors aren’t very good and/or just don’t care and/or your caring feeling could be stronger.
You probably experience “That Caring Feeling” more than you realize—and the more you recognize that you are experiencing it the stronger “Your Caring Feeling” will become along with its loving relator benefits.
I hope that by understanding and strengthening “Your Caring Feeling” that it will allow you to become a more positive part of our humanity and experience more love in your life.
