Feeling distress from another's physical pain

What do you feel when you see someone breaking their leg or falling in a way that makes it clear they've hurt themselves? 


Watch the GIF below and try to perceive how you feel about it. 

Before moving on to my phenomenological description of this process, try to perceive for yourself, in your own experience, how this happens.




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Description

When I see someone getting hurt, for example, when they're falling badly, breaking their leg, or something else. I don't feel exactly the pain that the other person is probably feeling, nor the pain that I would probably feel if the situation had happened to me. 


In other words, I don't feel the pain from the impact they experienced when falling, nor in the same part of the body that hit the ground.


Instead, I feel a bad wave running through my body from top to bottom, probably starting with the movement in my throat, and, finally, a strange tingling ending, sometimes, in my forearms. 


Other times, this happens on the sides of my torso or in another part of my trunk, producing a desire to rub them and an overall trembling.


I also turn my gaze away from the scene I’m witnessing (This, if I'm only observing the situation, without being able to interfere. Otherwise, the impulse is to try to prevent the person from getting hurt).


Note: Seeing someone fall can often be funny, rather than evoking the sensation I described. 


However, my goal in this post is not to discuss whether the given stimulus will lead to one reaction or another, but rather to focus on the sensation that arises when it triggers a feeling of distress upon witnessing someone else's pain.


Check out these posts to understand the phenomenological approach used in providing these descriptions of experience: 1) What is Phenomenology; 2) Naturalization of Phenomenology; 3) Micro-Phenomenology; 4) Intersubjective Validation; 5) Embodied Cognition; 6) 4E


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