Dear Addy,

you’re welcome, I am glad you liked the example.

Just today I’ve tried to empathize my friend, but the thing was that her stupidity made me little grumpy so.. Like who reads negative news (Murder and etc) super early in the morning and then be like “It felt like a nightmare”?

As anita said, when you see someone as stupid, it prevents you to empathize with them. OK, maybe you don’t see her as stupid, but you thought her behavior is stupid (to read the news first thing in the morning). But even so, an empathic response would have been something like “Oh that’s terrible” (reacting to the news of some murder). And then proceed with a suggestion “you know, that’s why I never read news so early in the morning – sometimes they are so horrible they spoil my entire day. I prefer to start with xyz…” (here you describe what helps you start your day in a positive, uplifting way).

So you empathize with her feeling of distress, and then you suggest something which might help her in the future. But you don’t push your opinion on her (specially since she didn’t ask for your advice), and you don’t treat her as inferior to you. If you do that, you won’t sound grumpy or condescending…

And for work I had to speak in Indirect way to one of the colleague ” like yeah it’s not like I told you to do it 3 days before. Obviously, you have other important stuff to do” but after that I felt like I did hurt her in some way.

Yes, that was rather cynical. Was it your subordinate to whom you said that? Was she supposed to complete a task and failed to do that, and this was your way of scolding/criticizing her?

I don’t know why attacking like that is a reflex for me

Being cynical and sarcastic is a defense mechanism. I think it happens when our heart is closed (guarded), and so we’re not able to empathize with others. A lot of people use it in communication on social media, specially when they argue with people with differing opinions, because it seems cool. When you use sarcasm, you’re not vulnerable. It’s like a shield. But when you use sarcasm with people with whom you want to have a close, friendly relationship, that’s a problem. Because we don’t want to throw poisonous darts at them. Rather, we won’t honest and open communication…

If you use sarcasm automatically, like a reflex, it could be because you were attacked a lot in your childhood, and you learned to close your heart and pretend it doesn’t hurt. And then you use poisonous darts to defeat the “enemy”. Maybe it’s like you’re saying “you can’t hurt me, I’ll rather hurt you“.

Maybe I buried something so deep for so long that I don’t even remember but it’s still there and I don’t know how to work on that

It could be that you built a shield around your heart, so you can’t be hurt again? And this shield goes up automatically, whenever you feel a certain friction or disagreement with anybody? And you start throwing those “darts” at them?