For my sanity, long ago, I've had to adopt an absurdist point of
view towards everything. I feel the injustice and I still don't
like being wrong - yet when I'm in a debate, I remind myself
that while words have power, they don't have to have power over
my emotional state. I started practicing in the 3rd grade and I
got very good at being able to deflect words, as I have a strong
mental thesaurus and can make bad things good in my mind very
quickly and the other person "just having a bad day". I do it
for my own protection against emotional manipulation. But not
just against me. I can never turn my "empathy" circuits off. In
a room, I feel what people feel. Positive, negative, every
emotion that's coming out of them, it hits me all at once.
Thankfully, on the Internet I have control and can do things
that are difficult in real life: take several points of view,
diffuse emotional situations... because it's the realm of
writing, a place where I do well. I'm still sitting here in my
comfortable chair and can see the pixels on the screen when I
need to. But even here, I feel connected to everybody I talk to.
Their emotional states start to become my own. So it's a
constant struggle between the two: maintaining an absurdist
point of view towards everything keeps me from feeling hurt as
much as I normally would. Yet it doesn't stop the empathy
circuits from receiving everything.
