There’s a specific kind of empathic/imagination failure which I think goes like this:
1. I can’t truly imagine having your preferences or emotional needs
2. and I don’t realize this is a blind spot
3. so when I see you doing things I would never do
4. I have to think: if I was acting like you’re acting but with my preferences and emotional needs, what would that mean?
5. and all I’ve come up with is a flagrant, inauthentic demand for attention, a self-indulgent need to be rescued, or some other scorn-worthy, unsympathetic character trait.

(I think this is why you see people telling homeless folks to “get a job” and other equally clueless BS. I can’t make the empathic/imaginative leap to imagine myself without the tools to have the life I have now, so when I see the life you have, all I can do is imagine it’s the result of deliberate, wrong-headed choices. For me to wind up like you I’d have to quit my job, stop paying bills, etc. etc. So clearly the solution to your problem is to get a job, pay your bills, and then you’ll have a life like mine!)

“I’m an irreverant iconoclast who never backs down from a fight, and I’ve never needed a support tool. Y’all must be a buncha pussies or something.”