Early wounds sometimes lead people to become especially empathic and care-giving.

Looking at the histories of Holocaust survivors with early wounding, many became especially empathic.

A corrective experience later is important, which can come though a personal contact or spiritual experience.

Across psychology, research has shown that a meaningful subset of people who experienced early abandonment or neglect exhibit heightened compassion, caregiving motivation, and altruism later in life. However, others with an adverse childhood history show opposite symptoms, such as withdrawal, mistrust, or an exaggerated tendency toward self-protection. What matters most is how the early experience was processed and integrated, not merely whether it occurred.

People who experienced early abandonment, understood as the rupture of trust early in life, sometimes become the most attuned, fiercely compassionate adults. Psychology, developmental science, and trauma research have begun to map the mechanisms by which early suffering, under the right conditions, leads to altruism. The psychologist Ervin Staub named this phenomenon: altruism born of suffering. His research, which included studying Holocaust survivors, found that some individuals who endured significant early adversity were more, not less, motivated to ease others' suffering, contrary to what might be expected. If pain is........

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