cold

For me, it depends... for the most part, seeing someone upset does make me upset and If I can relate to why the person is upset, then I tend to feel it more intensely. But there are times when I can also feel uncomfortable with this, because I lack the social intelligence needed to say something helpful or supportive. I may want to say something nice to cheer them up, but I just don't know what to say.

If what they're crying over effects me too then I might. It really just depends on the situation. Most of the time I have a hard time empathizing with them and just wish for them to hurry up and stop crying. I'll still stay with them and hug them if they need it, talk to them, and let them cry on me but I wont cry.

i dont start cry when i see other cry but i do feel bad when i see people cry.

But if i know what has happened to them i can get a bit emotional. and i dont get emotional if they only got hurt by droping a ketchup bottle on their toe or something like that.

i normaly cry when i watch really sad movies.

It doesn't make me cry, but I do feel empathy when I see someone in agony, yea, depends on the context.

I always feel sad when I witness a grown adult crying over losing someone/something important to him/her.

only if the mother cries, depending on the situation.

Sometimes. It depends on the emotionness of the cry. If it's a screaming, hysterical cry I'm too busy thinking 'ok calm the fuck down'. If it's a blank cry, the kind in which you know there's nothing but emptiness now in the person's life, that they're so far gone they can't even feel the tears on their face, they cannot be comforted by anything anymore, not even their own crying, well now, you'll make me cry in mourning.

I have a counselor that cries when I cry. It's awkward.

I'm sorry but i must admit i found that last part hilarious .

And on topic... I don't know, can't really say at the moment .

No.
Only exception being my mother and my grandfather when he lived, due to both love and so compassion for them, and shared grief (reason why they were crying).

Seeing distressed animals can easily make me cry though.

Yes, sometimes (if I can relate to why they are doing it). For example if a character in a film is crying.

I guess it's like yawning...
But I don't.

... But I cry when I don't get my favourites in the Eroges!

no, i'd rather they stop and just tell me what's wrong.

It's kind of strange in my case because when I'm out in public I always have a flat expression on my face and lack emotion, but when I'm alone in my room watching TV it seems I get really emotional. Like a characters emotions feel like they're directly coming to me. Like if a character feels sad, happy, embarrassed, or whatever I'll feel those emotions. It makes watching TV hard since it's like their words are attacking me. Oddly it doesn't apply to anime though. Only regular TV shows.

No it isnt wierd when someone crys and there near me dosent matter who they are "popular" or "loser" i have to help them. The problem i get is when someone pretends to cry because i still feel the need to help calm them down. I've just never been able to see anyone cry without it affecting me.

Read:

http://www.amazon.com/Highly-Sensitive- ... 576&sr=8-1

... and/or watch:

Interesting video, jezabel. Though, I think that it's possible to be sensitive to the emotions of others without being a highly sensitive person overall--I mostly say that based on anecdotal experience from my own life, however. I am extremely sensitive to what other people are feeling and react strongly to the emotions of others, but, people aside, I have very muted senses. Drugs have little effect on me, as do environmental differences (can't smell, hear, or see for beans; taste is quickly going too), I have a high pain tolerance, and I'm largely unaware of details in my environment. I also hate being alone...though I do end up alone most of the time, but that's depression for you. I think maybe I just am very sensitive to changes in the behavior/emotions of other people because I had/have very mercurial parents and learning to recognize the small signals that indicate an oncoming mood swing is just a survival trait, or something along those lines. But, after watching that, I'm pretty sure I can recognize the highly sensitive people in my life and can see why we get along, at least when it comes to dealing with people.

I'm actually a bit jealous of people who are sensitive to their surroundings--I can sense the dismay I cause other people by acting like a bull in a china shop, but, much like the bull, I have very little control over making a mess out of things.

My idea of mental constitutions may slightly differ from yours and maybe that would explain how we perceive psychological categories differently. Let's see. All psychological phenomena build a spectrum of which each trait can be imagined as a continuum. People differ in all kinds of areas, hence naming psychological constructs like depression, schizophrenia, autism or any specific personality disorder involves agreeing that certain conditions are strongly interrelated and typically occur together in a systematic way, meaning that empiric evidence suggests a cumulation of a joint appearance of these traits which is not pure coincidence. Yet this does not exclude

1) overlapping. In fact many disorders show huge overlap, for instance Borderline, Narcissistic and Antisocial Personality Disorder. Some diagnoses are heavily influenced by cultural differences in perception, ADHD for instance. Likewise there are varying degrees of depression. Leaving the bipolar spectrum out it's ranging from Dysthymia to Major depressive episodes, which can again be categorized as mild, moderate or severe. I assume you know all of this.
2) the possibility that certain conditions are not covered by DSM IV or ICD-10, which are classifiction systems that are being used for diagnostic purposes. These systems are under permanent construction and they are influenced by a lot of ideological thinking. For instance not too long ago homosexuality has been treated as a psychological disorder much like depression and schizophrenia. The conception of ADHD has frequently and thouroughly changed throughout the past 20 years. This is sometimes, but by no means always due to new evidence/scientific findings. In ADHD, which is subject to much controversy, the changes had nothing to do with new (biological, genetical, hard) evidence.

I guess everyone knows several depressed people. How much do they really have in common? I assume they are not identical persons. Diagnosing psychological disorders does respect that to some degree: most often you read that for example 5 of 8 conditions have to be fulfilled for a diagnose, which shows that people may share some traits to some degree, while they still differ with regard to other traits.

You can of course be a very sensitive person, just like any given person can have certain traits without fulfilling the rest of the criteria for a diagnose which involves this trait. The concept of the highly sensitive person is rather young and the fact that it's not in the canon yet in my opinion hugely derives from a lack of discrimination from other constructs. More importantly it lacks the support of a wide audience, both political and scientific, which is most often the ultimately driving factor for a construct to become 'baptized' officially - or rejected as in the case of homosexuality.

It also depends on what you want to do with a diagnose. I have always despised labeling for the labeling itself, I have never belonged to any kind of subculture and I strongly believe that every human being is unique. The purpose for me is to understand myself better and to deal with my problems. If I find a huge overlap with this conception and a bit of guidance, which actually helps, I don't give a damn about the rest of the DSM IV or the ICD-10 and stick with what is actually helpful.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Thanks for the insight. ^^

You're welcome. By the way I always like reading what you write. I can relate to a lot of it and it's usually beautifully written.

Aw, shucks, that's nice of you. What can I say? Words are my friends. My only friends.

That's an interesting way of putting it. I find that in a lot of cultures that the concepts of mental illness and diagnoses don't really exist, but they have traditional ways to deal with similar issues. Also, yeah the DSM is quite imperfect, all they seem to me are broad guide lines rather than an exact science. It can not be dealt with in the same manner as math or physics.



Pretty much the same.

Since we're on the topic of crying I wanted to mention that lately for some reason one of my eyes has been tearing up. A tear will fall down my face for no apparent reason. It's kind of strange since this has never happened to me before. I wonder what could be causing it.

That has happened to me too. Might be some kind of eye stress, dust, or cold weather.

Unfortunately mental health institutions as well as practitioners continuously fail to instruct the public about the real nature of the DSM, which is not a mystery given the fact that medial editing and 'flattening' of scientific issues is common for all sciences - and usually at the cost of scientific precision. If it goes really bad the minimum of what reaches the public is simply misleading or false.
Many people have a wrong idea of what the DSM is meant to be. The DSM's true purpose is not to tell you that your mental arm is broken or that you suffer from a psychic flu (you see the analogy to your math/physics example here). It is twofold: The first purpose is an agreement on categories which can be used by scientific research in a meaningful way. If you want to study depressed people, you have to make an agreement on what defines depression first, in order to guarantee control in your studies. Having schizophrenic, undepressed people in your sample for example would screw your results on depression.
The second purpose is to give mandatory and helpful guidelines to practitioners for figuring out what kind of treatment theory and scientific research have shown to be efficient with regard to different disorders. You may not want to take Metylphenidat if you suffer from panic attacks for instance.
Diagnosing in psychology does not only mean that a person is being associated with one or several categories, if it is done properly it also means that the person is dissociated from other possibly closely related diagnoses, which can be tricky at times.
The DSM itself is not inherently and inevitably normative. What people make of it however, even professionals, is often normative. It seems to me that it's the nature of human thinking to develop a normative 'order' (e.g. a<b<c) whenever categories are established, present and perceived as such, even if these categories are qualitative.