Don't let EMPATHY DESTROY YOU | Healthy vs Unhealthy Empathy
Can you care about somebody without drowning in it? Empathy is not something you are given, it is something you grow. And there is a version that eats you alive.
Can you care about somebody without drowning in it? Empathy is not something you are given, it is something you grow. And there is a version that eats you alive.
There are two ways this goes. Disconnection, where you decide not to take on their pain at all, and the other version where you sink into it with them. Neither one helps. There is no use going round in the same grieving, deeply caring state they are in. That is not support. That is two people underwater.
One thing to try: Notice whether you are feeling with somebody or feeling instead of them. There is a difference.
In this episode
(0:00) Being fully human, and fully accepted for who you are
(2:24) Empathy is grown, not handed to you
(5:07) Being stuck there a long time, or feeling like I was
(7:16) Therapists, counsellors, and the two versions of this
(9:34) No point going round in the same grieving state they are in
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Can you care about somebody without drowning in it?
Yes, and it is a skill rather than a gift. Empathy is not something you were handed at birth. It is something you grow, and there is a version of it that eats you alive.
The heart of it
Nobody is born empathetic. You learn it by being hurt.
Two people underwater is not support.
Feeling it and carrying it are different jobs, and only one of them helps.
You arrive as a blank canvas. Then you get an ego, then preferences, and then, eventually, loss. And it is the loss that teaches it.
When my granddad died I learned what grief feels like. That is the only reason I can meet somebody else's. Not exactly, because I do not know how close they were or what else they are carrying, but near enough to be useful.
You cannot explain a bungee jump to somebody who has not done one, and you cannot explain losing somebody either.
Which is worth knowing, because it means empathy is something you built. If it had simply been given to you there would be nothing in it to be proud of.
Now the two failures.
The first is disconnection. I will not take their pain on, I will keep this professional, they are not my family. That is not restraint, that is absence.
The second is the one people mistake for being deeply caring. You take it on completely and carry it home, and next week, and to the next person.
There is an old story about two monks who meet a young woman who does not want to ruin her dress crossing a muddy lane. One picks her up and carries her over. The other is quietly appalled and says nothing until that evening, when he raises it.
The first one says: are you still carrying her?
Think about a nurse. If she took every patient home she would not last a fortnight, and every patient after that one would get less of her.
One small thing to try
Feel it fully, then put it down when you leave.
That is not coldness and it does not make you less caring. You can pick it back up next time you see them, and you will be in far better shape to be of use.
The test is simple. If my daughter rings me struggling, does me being miserable for the rest of the week help her? It does not. It gives her something else to worry about.
Questions people ask
Is being an empath a bad thing?
Not at all, and I have been there. What I am saying is that carrying everybody's pain around is not the finished version of empathy, it is an early stage of it, and it costs you more than it gives anybody.
How do I put it down without feeling guilty?
By noticing that the holding was never the help. Nothing you carry between visits reaches them. What reaches them is you turning up able to be present.
Can empathy keep improving?
Yes, and that is the encouraging part. It is a muscle. You get better at going deeper into somebody's experience while staying steady enough to be of some actual use.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
empathy · boundaries · compassion
Read the transcript
Hey, welcome to Living Deeper Lives, the podcast that helps you
to be fully human and to be fully accepted for who you are and
your purpose.
This week, I want to talk about empathy and healthy empathy
versus unhealthy empathy.
What do I mean by this?
And this is something that I've been thinking about more and
more last few years, and it's not something I see much around.
You see a lot of people talking about empathy and what empathy
is and what it means to be an empath, but I want to dig deeper
into that, and that's what Living deeper lives means.
Let's dig deeper into empathy.
Where does it come from?
How do we develop it?
And what is the difference between healthy empathy and unhealthy
empathy?
So briefly, let's start with where does empathy come from?
Are we born with it?
Well, no.
I hate to burst many people's bubbles, but we're not born in caring,
loving, beautiful, empathetic creatures.
We really not.
We're born into this world as a blank canvas.
And then as life goes on, we develop an ego of what we want and
what we enjoy in life.
And then as time goes by, we develop the things we like and things
we enjoy, and we have relationships.
But then when the relationships start breaking down
or when we lose someone or somebody in our family passes away,
we develop pain.
We.
We recognize what it's like to be hurt and we feel grief.
And when we start feeling the grief, we start understanding what
it feels like to be in pain.
And then empathy really is just understanding someone else's
pain, putting ourselves in their shoes.
So when someone comes along and tells us their story, we feel
their pain, we feel their discomfort and their suffering.
And the thing is, with all of these things we develop, when we
develop them, once we're in them, we feel like we always had
them, but we really didn't.
So that's one of the first big myths that I would like to bust.
When you suddenly think.
When you suddenly feel like you're a really caring, loving human,
you suddenly feel that that's always been you down to the core,
but it really hasn't.
So recognize that empathy is a wonderful thing we develop.
It's a wonderful thing we grow and we learn to do.
It's not just given, because if it's just given, there's nothing
to be proud of.
It's.
It's like any born talent.
If we don't have to work at it, why be proud of it?
It's like when people say, I'm proud to be Cornish, it's Like, well,
what did you do to become Cornish?
Nothing.
So why be proud of something that you know, Be proud of something
you work hard at.
And empathy is something you work hard at.
Empathy is something you learn.
You learn through having hard times and pain.
You learn through when grieving and losing people.
It's like when I lost my granddad and that loss developed
pain inside of me and developed grief.
And with that, I learned what it was like to grieve for somebody.
And then when someone else could come along one day and say,
like, I've lost my granddad, I can relate to how they're feeling.
Not exactly.
Not entirely, because I don't know how close they were, I don't
know their situation, I don't know how caring they are or anything,
but I can somewhat relate to it.
It's the same with learning any of the deeper feelings.
We have to experience it to know what it's like.
It's like, I can explain what it's like to do a bungee jump all
day long.
Until you actually do it, you don't know what it's like.
I've never done a bungee jump, so I don't know why I use that example.
But unless you've lost somebody in your life, you'll never
know what it's like to lose somebody.
So that's the same with all of our deeper feelings.
But what is healthy empathy and unhealthy empathy?
Well, empathy, the same as any other skill, the higher you get at
it, the better you get at it, the better your empathy is.
And what do I mean by better empathy?
How can you have, like, how can you develop empathy as a skill?
Well, if you put it into levels, and I'm not necessarily putting
it in levels, but let's say we do.
When you first develop empathy, it's like, oh, yeah, I really
feel for them.
And then we carry it with us.
We find it hard to put down.
We actually take on that feeling.
And that's what we might be labeled as, empaths.
And I'm sorry, all you empaths out there, you're all going to really.
Not like this, but an empath, somebody that feels everything deeply
and it really upsets them and they carry it along with them.
And I was there for a long time, or I felt like I was there
for a long time, might have been kidding myself, I don't know.
But when I felt like I was there, I was.
If someone come along and said, oh, you're an empath, I'll
be there.
I take on Other people's feelings.
I take on the world's problems and how do we live in this world?
This world is a really horrible, painful place to live in.
Well, that's unhealthy.
Empathy.
Taking on other people's pains.
The next level of empathy is being able to feel their empathy,
but not.
Not taking on, not carrying it.
Empathy.
There's a wonderful Buddhist fable about this.
There's two Buddhist monks who are walking down a lane, and they
come across a beautiful girl that was wearing a long black dress.
And she said, I want to get to the other side of the lane, but I
don't want to get my dress dirty.
And one of the monks looked up and said, well, I'll carry her across.
So, okay.
He picks her up and carries her to the other side and puts her
down.
And the other Buddhist monk says, on the lane, you really shouldn't
have done that.
We're not supposed to carry them.
We're not supposed to interact.
We're supposed to let people solve their own problems and such
like.
And he said, okay, well, it didn't hurt just to carry her across.
Then later that evening, the Buddhist monk that had a problem
with her looked up and said to him, do you know what?
I really think we did the wrong thing today.
I really think it did not fit what we're supposed to do.
And the other one looked up and goes, are you still carrying
her?
And what it means by that is you take a nurse or a doctor, if
they experience someone's pain during the day and they take it to
the next patient and they take it home, they cannot function.
They cannot.
They wouldn't be able to deal with life if they took on everybody's
pains, if they took on every person that passes away in their
care or every illness they come across.
And the same as therapists or counselors, and there is two versions
here.
There's the version of disconnection.
Well, I'm not going to take on their pain.
I'm going to do it professionally.
And it doesn't bother me.
They're not me and my family.
That's disconnection.
That's not empathy.
Empathy is genuinely feeling their pain.
It's putting yourself in their shoes, in their story, in the best
possible reference that you can have based on your experiences
in life.
So you dig deep in your life and experiences to experience what
they're going through.
But then you let it go later.
You.
You let it go because it's not part of your life.
It's not your pain to share.
It's not your pain.
To pain and sorrow and grief to hold onto.
And no amount of you keeping it and staying with it is going to
help them.
You know, if my daughter phones me up and says, I'm really
suffering today, me suffering as well, after the bit of empathy,
me suffering as well is not going to help her one little bit.
What if I get so stuck in the suffering?
What if I start going back to her and going, oh, I know, and I'm
really suffering now, Kembra, your pain is really coming onto me
and things like that.
Now I'm going to make her miserable as well.
So both of us are going to be in a pit of misery.
Well, that's unhealthy, empathy.
And I hear many empaths are very much like that.
How do I deal with life when I feel things deeply?
Well, we recognize that the empathy comes and goes, that we don't
have to hold it.
It's the same with many feelings.
It doesn't mean you're less caring by moving on later.
And when you come across them again, you can go, how are you feeling?
And put yourself back in their feelings again.
But there's no point in you holding their feelings in the time
when you're not with them or in the time.
But there's no point in you holding all the feelings in the time
you're not with them.
There's no point in you going around in the same miserable, grieving,
feeling, understanding, deep, caring way in which your experience
they're experiencing their feelings and you experience them
the same.
I hope that makes sense.
I hope you can see a difference between empathy is a good
thing.
I don't want you to misunderstand that I'm saying empathy
is a bad thing because I'm not.
Empathy really is not a bad thing.
It's a great thing and I wish more people would develop it.
But continue to develop your empathy, continue to improve it,
make it better so you can empathize in a deep, deep way without
taking on their feelings.
I'm Stephen Webb and I help people through troubled and hard
times when they're struggling.
And you can head over to my website and download a free meditation
and get started to find your own inner peace.
Take care and thank you.
And if you can review this podcast or subscribe and follow,
