Learning to do *real* empathy

I lay there, eyes closed, trying to recall a time when I really felt. The question that had been nagging at me for months hung in the air: “What bad thing happens if I feel my feelings?”

A thought bubbled up from somewhere deep: “But then I have to do what the feelings say.”

I opened my eyes. Interesting.

Next to me, she stirred slightly but didn’t wake. We’d broken up a few weeks earlier, but were napping together as friends. Her words from our breakup echoed: “You don’t share your feelings very much.” She’d also said I wasn’t always empathetic, but I hadn’t seen the connection. Until now.

This fear of being controlled by my feelings wasn’t just about me. It was affecting how I interacted with everyone.

I remembered a conversation I’d had with a counselor months earlier that suddenly took on new meaning. He had told me: “Some people have an ‘empath problem.’ They feel others’ anxiety, internalize it, and change their behavior…”

I’d nodded, thinking of my own experiences. “I think I do the opposite. I just... don’t do empathy in social situations.”

The counselor shrugged. “Humans make errors. You’ll learn and get better.”

I remember feeling confused. Why wasn’t he attacking this issue teleologically? Wasn’t there some deeper incentive for my lack of empathy?

He added, “If you’re empathetic, you accept the energy and multiply it. So negative energy will be worse for you than the sender.”

At the time, I filed this away as interesting information. But I didn’t really get it. Not yet.

Now, lying next to her, it all clicked. The counselor’s words, my fear of feeling, my avoidance of empathy – it was all connected.

I had been operating under a misconception: that empathy required taking action. That if I truly felt what others were feeling, I’d be obligated to do something about it. And given how much pain there is in the world... that seemed overwhelming.

“Everyone around is in so much pain all the time if you look for it,” I mumbled aloud. "The flight attendant on the way here… random people... I don’t want to experience all of that constantly. Especially if I also feel responsible for fixing it."

As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt embarrassed. It sounded so self-important, like I was painting myself as this super-sensitive person who couldn’t bear the world’s pain. “This feels strange to say,” I admitted. “It almost seems too cute: ‘Oh I didn’t want to feel my feelings because I’m such an empathetic good person teehehehe.’“

But as I sat with the thought, I realized that by trying to protect myself from feeling overwhelmed by others’ emotions, I hadn’t been doing real empathy at all.

This hit home as I looked over at my ex. I suddenly became aware of how I’d been interacting with her emotions – and everyone else’s – on a purely surface level. Like a pick-up artist running through a script: “Person is having emotion X, therefore I should react/do Y.”

I hadn’t actually been keeping a full model of her and how she feels in my awareness. I was ignoring it, almost not tracking it at all. No wonder she had said I wasn’t being empathetic enough.

And it wasn’t just about other people’s emotions. I realized I had been resisting my own negative emotions too. Somewhere along the line, I’d picked up this idea that negative emotions were bad and should be avoided. But as I sat with this realization, some more of that resistance dissolved. (More about that here.)

The effects of these realizations were immediate. As she stirred and opened her eyes, I saw her differently. Her freckles were more obvious now, the colors of her face more vibrant. It was like I was seeing her in high definition for the first time.

Listening to her was fascinating, really hearing her. Her pupils dilating as we spoke. The pauses in her speech. The arcing of her voice. A veil had been lifted, and I could see so much more.

@ChrisChipMonk, chris@chrislakin.com, chrislakin.com/now

Thanks to Stag Lynn for help editing. Thanks to CFAR and Nolan for financial support.