Empathy Can Be Built, Botox Destroys Empathy, How A Killer's Brain Differs From Yours

"I recently interviewed Dr. Richard Davidson, a pioneer in the emerging neuroscience of emotion. According to Dr. Davidson, who chairs The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, emotional styles – such as being empathetic, altruistic, optimistic, and resilient – have a neural basis, and you can change your emotional style through mental practice. In other words, how you think directly affects how you feel – both emotionally and physically.
But Botox users beware: According to one study, women who paralyze their facial muscles may show less empathy – and also feel less empathy as well."
 - Barbara Bradley Hagerty, former NPR reporter, author


A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976

Fallon's brain (on the right) has dark patches in the orbital cortex, the area just behind the eyes. This is the area that Fallon and other scientists say is involved with ethical behavior, moral decision-making and impulse control. The normal scan on the left is his son's. (Courtesy of Jim Fallon.)

Social anxiety linked to high IQs, empathetic ability, sentinel intelligence

Early hominids: Every day I'm hustling.

http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/study-links-social-anxiety-to-high-iqs-empathetic-ability-sentinel-intelligence/

Because early human's survival only consisted of being chill all the time and laid back and smoking bowls. Come on, people. Being alert and aware is not a sign of mental illness. We didn't survive as a species on the veldt plains by being as chill as possible about where the juiciest berries were and where the antelope with the most meat on its butt was by being relaxed all the time. 

Many times I have heard that hyper vigilance and abusive homes make for the best empaths. Or, dare I say it, psychics. To say my childhood was chaotic and violent is putting it mildly. 

To those who claim that they cured their social anxiety, you may have, but just like gay conversion camps don't "cure" gayness, you didn't "cure" your Mach 10 psychic ability that you probably have as a genetic trait. Nature vs. nurture, it doesn't matter. You're stuck with it, bub. 

Enjoy your self-loathing and denial and being in the closet if you detest who you are at your genetic core, but short of giving yourself a frontal lobotomy, you need to accept you are who you are, and that who you are is an empath. 

Psychic. 

Whatever.

Sam Harris: The Self is an Illusion