Confusions, conflations and confabulations in defining Empathy

I gave it a try anyway!

In this essay series*, we Creātell collaborators thought of exploring empathy in its myriad colors and contexts. My first thought was to write about finding empathy for others from within one’s grief, but I got stuck in definitions. When I turned to friends and family for their thoughts (pasted verbatim at the bottom), my meandering became floundering…

Then, as Joan Didion famously said, We tell ourselves stories in order to live... I started to write to make sense. This essay resulted but I’m not sure I’ve quite got it. So I’m shamelessly sharing all the meanderings and flounderings because I want to know what YOU think! 

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*You can read the whole series here: Confusions, conflations and confabulations in defining Empathy | In Favor of Primordial Compassion | Addict | Empathy is medicine, and the dosage matters | Empathy towards Nature

“A question of balance” by Reena Kapoor (c)2023. Instagram @1stardusty

These squishy things

H. Jackson Brown Jr., American author best known for his book, Life's little Instruction Book wrote, Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something… 

“Empathy” seems a bit squishy, difficult to grasp, to delineate exactly and even harder to practice. I think I recognize it when I know the people involved. But what about those I don’t know so well? Would I know if “empathy” were being put on? If the person had memorized the right things to say or was simply practicing at it? Like my Yoga teacher used to say upon seeing the horror on our faces when she went into one of her special contortions, Fake it till you make it, guys! What’s the statute of limitations on faking? Is that “real empathy” or just narcissism? 

The answers I got from friends and family touched upon some common themes:

~ putting yourself in someone else's shoes, 

~ trying to identify with their feelings and 

~ eschewing judgmentalism…

One wise owl pointed out positive empathy where we partake in celebrating another’s happiness. I love that! 

Many offered that empathy is hard - perhaps impossible - because who can truly walk in another’s shoes? Sometimes we can’t even imagine the shoes awarded to them by birth or circumstance. It's hard to know where the shoes have been, what kind of dirt or baggage or heaviness they carry or how worn they are; if there are any holes that leak in shards and water or the cold or the unbearable, searing road! What then? 

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

― Atticus Finch

What about situations where we never approved of the shoes or the roads walked in the first place? Do we give up judging? Such horror! And who would we be without feeling a teeny bit superior everyday? 🙂

So many questions! 

First do no harm

So I thought maybe first delineate what not to do i.e., narrow the scope by defining by negatives. Most of us probably agree that anyone claiming to be empathetic is rarely that. One friend said it best…

My first instinct when I hear the word "empathy" is the image of someone who tells me how empathetic they are, which is an immediate orange-flag that the person is in fact a narcissist…

In talking about empathy, Brené Brown advises to never start with, At least… Don’t do that silver-lining thing for someone who’s in the throes of hurting. And I’ll add another anti-empathetic response that starts with, Thankfully, I…! When someone confides their pain do not respond by relishing your own eternal wisdom or luck in having avoided their misfortune. Instead step out of that blinding limelight, and bring your focus back to them i.e., the hurtee¹!

In looking closer, there are other “not-quite-empathy” concepts to consider such as sympathy. Sympathy describes not necessarily being able to identify with the hurtee but showing kindness anyway. In some quarters sympathy seems to get a bad rap. But time, place and context matter. Sympathy has its uses and at the very least keeps us all on nodding terms with those we don’t know or can’t be present for, for reasons of distance, time or circumstance. All else being equal, I prefer my city folk civilized and contained like their drought-resistant front yards. 

There’s also compassion, which I’m told is the mothership -- an overarching concept from which both sympathy and empathy sprout. The lines are blurry because in most exchanges intent and motivation matter, and are just as hard to read (hence the fraught nature of social media). So who’s to say which is which, let alone better? 

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

― Carl Jung

And, what about empathy for oneself? Wise folk who study the many ways in which we fool ourselves, suggest that we can be more generous with family and friends when we’re kind to ourselves. Charity begins at home, said the Catholic nuns I studied under for many years of my schooling²! Shouldn't be so hard, right? After all, there’s no problem knowing what it’s like to walk in our shoes. Yet even giving ourselves a break escapes us. So how to show up for others? 

Our torturous imaginations can help

The first step seems to be to genuinely acknowledge the emotion the hurtee is feeling, perhaps by thinking back to when we felt that feeling, albeit in completely different footwear. Even if we foolishly claim we’d never feel THAT way, our vast and crazy imaginations can help. An ancient Stoic philosopher³ said, we suffer more in our imaginations than we do in real life. Perhaps our imaginings around our own worst fears could help us with a more authentic identification.

So maybe empathy is simply being there, accepting and acknowledging what our dear hurting hurtee is feeling, whatever that might be -- a deep grief or sadness, loneliness, anger, hopeless- or haplessness, or even physical pain -- and as poorly as our imaginations or our pasts have informed us, trying to be present without judgment or analysis. 

Perhaps that’s all that’s possible to us flawed creatures. But there’s more…

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing

For having been as radical as I was in my foolish youth, I’ve come to abhor extremes -- rather extremely. And empathy is no exception. 

Too much empathy can hurt us and blind us. Especially in cases of prolonged exposure where we empathize but are unable to dissociate sufficiently. A good example involves ER nurses who spend their days serving people in trauma. If they’re constantly empathetic to their patients without any detachment, they can burn out quickly. No doubt the recipients of their emotional largesse are eternally grateful. But so much giving of themselves can render them empty for themselves and their loved ones; their talents lost to the rest of us. 

The other problem with too much empathy is so much identification that we come to have expectations of the hurtee, their actions and outcomes. It’s happened to me where I’ve expected the hurtee to get on with it, act a certain way and not repeatedly return to the place of hurt. But the recipient may or may not be ready for the superimposition of our projections. Too much empathy can put us in danger of burdening those we want to help with our expectations.

An extreme empathy may also cause errors of reason and judgment. It can blind us from reality that a larger context provides. We may even misjudge the other party i.e., the hurt-ER, because we are so entrenched in our empathic loyalties. 

This can also become a problem of resource allocation in philanthropy. Causes that get support are not necessarily the most important or even the most urgent ones facing humanity but those that we identify with. This is natural, human and actually our prerogative as individuals with resources to give. We no doubt have the right to decide where our money and talents go. 

But for larger scale philanthropy and institutional giving this can become a problem. Note, I’m NOT making a case for some “authority” to dole out such allocation; think we know the kind of corruption such conceited central planning inevitably leads to. 

Take this simply as a cautionary note for not getting carried away in our attachments, and instead stepping back, especially if we’re lucky enough to give at larger scales. When a cause is something we don't see or witness on an everyday basis we’re in danger of making decisions ruled by personal empathy. Consider that a measure of charity may go a much longer way for a seemingly disembodied cause, addressing pain at a much larger scale for people we’ve never met e.g., witness the outsized impact of mosquito nets for malaria or polio vaccines in places or contexts far away from ours. 

I don’t want to push this point too hard, causing an analysis-paralysis for our generosities. All I say is let’s not get too crazy, because goodness lies within moderation (not the same as passivity, btw - that distinction for another day).

If I’ve confused you further, then you’re in excellent company - mine! 

So where did we land?

Jokes apart, here's what I think I’ve learned about empathy and its practice:

• Be there. Listen. Acknowledge what the person is feeling without getting judgy.

• If you haven’t been in their situation, try to identify the emotion they may be feeling by recalling or even imagining yourself in that situation.

• But DON'T

  • be/come invested in your solutions for them

  • begin with, At least… or Thankfully, I…

• Practice some level of detachment especially in chronic empathy-demanding situations.

• Watch out for empathy’s impact on your judgment when you need your head!

Any of this make any sense? Tell me…

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Friends & family on what empathy means to them~

~Taking a pause to consider from another's perspective before you speak or act

~Empathy to (me) means “to be able to relate”

~Empathy is when you can understand someone else's feelings. even if you haven't experienced you can feel for the person and imagine the pain or any emotion they are feeling, whether its excitement for them getting into oxford or their family member committing suicide. 

~Empathy means I put myself in the other person's shoes before I open my mouth.

~Empathy means I try to keep myself from pitying the other person.

~Hmmm - a complex word for me to define in a few sentences, but here goes- to see someone's point of view; to acknowledge it; to be able to share their feelings -so going beyond being able to see another's perspective; and to be able to sit with them with their feelings -without judgment

~My one sentence meaning of empathy is "understand, share and care about the feelings of someone else”. To truly understand -  one must take the effort & time to really see the world from the other person's perspective in a honest non judgy way (no right / wrong etc ). To truly share - one has to be able to fully internalize the feelings of the other person (feel what they might be feeling etc). To truly care - one has to be able to act in ways to alleviate / help any of the troubles the feelings might be causing the other person.

~Personally I find understanding relatively speaking easier to attempt and a lot of times I like to think I succeed, but find sharing (and caring) very hard .... Curious to hear what others say about this topic.

~Empathy to me is heartcentric. This emotion I feel in my heart 

~Empathy to me means putting oneself figuratively in the body and soul of another—to experience the other person’s feelings or physical condition very personally.

~Empathy is compassion and letting go of prejudices to understand what the other side wants. - at least my take on it.

~Empathy - Ability and mindset to understand the feelings and perspective of others. Willingness to suspend our biases and opinions to relate to the views and feelings of other people 

~Empathy to me is an "active" emotion, unlike compassion. Empathy means listening and not judging. Empathy means offering support, without bringing myself, my feelings, and my opinions into it. Empathy means being there for someone without trying to change them or "fix" them

~Empathy: Listening without judgment or advice; taking oneself out of the picture, being other focused. A shoulder to lean on, be cried on. Asking only how can I help

~Empathy to me means to imagine or try to feel what another living thing feels (in a given situation). I have been working on this a lot as I strongly feel that in order to be a part of this universe one has to make oneself available to "feel" or "be" part of the stream of consciousness. 

~I keep going back to the basic definition, which is the ability to share and understand another person's feelings. To say "I can empathize with this person's situation" works for me on an intellectual level, but not really an emotional one. Intellectually speaking, I can understand someone's feelings, but I do not share them, nor do I really care to. Empathy, in my mind, seems to be a catch-all term for a deeply moralistic assumption about what people should feel when other people feel bad things. While empathy is of course a positive word, it belies what seems to me to be a very American desire to be moral at every turn, even at the expense of one's own personal wellbeing. "Have some empathy," people say it all the time. But how can I have empathy for an orphan whose home was just destroyed in Syria? To pretend that I can understand or feel what that child is feeling or experiencing is to take credit for something I have never gotten close to experiencing. Am I just playing devil's advocate? Probably. But there's something about the term empathy that bugs me.

*Read the whole series here: Confusions, conflations and confabulations in defining Empathy | In Favor of Primordial Compassion | Addict | Empathy is medicine, and the dosage matters | Empathy towards Nature

1. A word - coined right here - for the person who’s hurting; the candidate for our empathy.

2. Without much empathy at all 🙂.

3. On groundless fears, Seneca wrote: There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. And I had to look up the shoes they walked in!