PTSD and Empathy are deeply linked.  It is Generally believed that people who rank high on the empathy scale are predisposed to PTSD when exposed to major trauma.

There are two primary components to empathy. 

  1. Affective Empathy, which is known as emotional empathy.
  2. Cognitive Empathy, which is the more intellectual side of empathy, the ability to put yourself in another's place.

We also know that humans remember emotions far more clearly than we remember facts, we will often remember how we felt in a moment over the details of the event. We know based on the 9/11 memory project, that even on the scale of an world changing event that people over the years remembered things differently. Some people remembered their location at the time of the event differently. However, all of them remembered the emotions they felt very clearly. The emotions did not change much or at all. So I think we can safely say that humans remember emotion far better than anything else. 

So the idea of high affective empathy levels, having an effect on if a person develops PTSD is one that I think is a solid concept. I am also willing to bet that it goes far deeper than we currently understand. 

If you search the term "empath" on Google you will find the search engine will tell you that we have no solid proof of human empathic sensitivity. The odd thing is that if you do the same search on Google Scholar you will be greeted by thousands of studies that can confirm some level of human empathic sensitivity. We also have both DARPA and ARPA studies that show some level of sensitivity. 

What a deep dive into these topics teaches us is that we are very much in the infancy of understanding the concepts of empathy and related areas. We understand why a person can pick up on visual or verbal clues about another person's state of mind or emotions. However, we have no idea why people can "read" a room. We don't understand why people can pickup on tension in a room even without visual or verbal clues. We have all heard the saying "the tension is so high you could cut it with a knife".  Studies have proven that this is a true phenomenon. 

So with all of our collective ignorance on the subject of empathy and akin subjects, is the cure for PTSD deep down this rabbit hole? I hope so. It is that hope that keeps me going day to day.