There's a phenomenon that I wish I had a name for. Or even a good description of. It's when people imagine that your issue is just something they've experienced, even when the magnitude is very different. E.g., when people who have been sad at some point tell clinically depressed people that they should just cheer up. When they tell somebody with an anxiety disorder that they should calm down. Or, as with your sibling and CFS sufferers that they should just get a little exercise and it'll all be fine.
I can sort of forgive that in regular folk. But in doctors? It's shameful.
My folks are like that too. They never experienced any psychic or physic trouble at any point in their 70 years long life, so they cannot fathom that people may strongly suffer from any of these problems, which are in their opinion not real problems and can be solved with cheering up and making an effort, because that's how they solved their own 5-minute 'problems'.
I cannot imagine growing up in a context like that. That must have been rough.
I think you're right about the relationship between suffering and empathy, though. There have been some awful things in my life. But given the time to recover from them and really consider the experience, empathy has gotten much easier for me from them.
There's a phenomenon that I wish I had a name for. Or even a good description of. It's when people imagine that your issue is just something they've experienced, even when the magnitude is very different. E.g., when people who have been sad at some point tell clinically depressed people that they should just cheer up. When they tell somebody with an anxiety disorder that they should calm down. Or, as with your sibling and CFS sufferers that they should just get a little exercise and it'll all be fine.
I can sort of forgive that in regular folk. But in doctors? It's shameful.