What if the counseling profession has been using the wrong tools all along? Shell Silverstein once wrote about eating soup with chopsticks, a playful image but an apt metaphor for our field. We keep using empathy as our only instrument, repeating the same patterns and wondering why both clients and clinicians end up drained. In this episode of the Untangled Mind podcast, I'm holding up the mirror to our industry. We look at how empathy became our professional identity, how it quietly fuels burnout, and what it means to move from feeling deeply to thinking clearly. This isn't about caring less, it's about caring wisely, about reclaiming compassion that's measurable, ethical, and sustainable. If you've ever questioned why so many therapists burn out, why feeling has replaced effectiveness, or why the helping professions sometimes struggle to help themselves, this episode is for you. Because at some point we have to admit that the soup's not the problem, the chopsticks are. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Untangled Mind Podcast. This is a fifth installment of the Empathy series. If you've not listened to the previous um in the series, please go back and check those out. I'm really talking about how, as a whole, empathy has actually eroded our mental health um helper industry and really discussing the change that needs to take place. So oftentimes I have a book full of Shell Silverstein poems, and I use these poems to help my clients critically think about some of the issues that they confront. I love Shell Silverstein. I remember as a little girl, I went to Shiloh Hills Elementary in Spokane, Washington, and I remember sitting in the library where Mrs. Blair, she was just this beautiful woman with blonde hair, I believe. I often sometimes think I miss like remember her with Blair. I can't remember that show back in the 80s with Mrs. Blair that was our librarian. But I do remember sitting in that library. I loved Mrs. Blair. She just was the most kind, compassionate, wonderful woman. And I remember her reading Shell Silverstein poems. And as a little girl, you would just giggle and gaffaw because none of the things he said made sense. But as an adult, there is such wisdom in his poetry. And I use this a lot of times with my clients a couple months ago. I used one of his to help a client understand their attachment and their attachment wounds and how they are attaching to individuals. And I used this one I'm going to share with you today just recently with a client to help them see some things. And what I want to say is that the tools that we use with our clients are absolutely applicable to us as clinicians, but we've just forgotten how to do so. So first let me go into this uh Shell Silverstein poem. So he once wrote, Eating soup with chopsticks, I should be finished soon. Eating soup with chopsticks while whistling a tune. Eating soup with chopsticks because I have no spoon. Eating soup with chopsticks can take all afternoon. So it's just a fun, whimsical poem, right? But it's also extraordinarily revealing. Not only for our clients, but because our profession, the counselors, the therapists, psychotherapists, whatever, helpers, we have been doing just like this poem. We've been eating soup with chopsticks. So we keep using the same emotional tools and repeating the same rituals of empathy, and we wonder why clients or even ourselves still end up being hungry. So I've been talking about through this this series this grandstanding on empathy, and it's really disgusted me. Empathy is absolutely important, but it's this grandstanding. Empathy has become this like badge of moral identity in the mental health field, and it's gross. We equate emotional resonance with clinical depth, which is not even true. That that that those two things don't equal one another. You know, supervisors often praise sensitivity more than outcomes, and social media absolutely rewards this disclosure, this self-disclosure. I am so empathetic over discernment. And it's it is eroding and corroding the mental health industry. And I would say that that is why we've seen an increase in mental health issues, even though we have an increase of mental health professionals that are available for individuals to be reached. That's the crazy thing. If we look at the data, we see that we have more mental health professionals, yet mental well-being is at an all-time low. Why is this? Well, I think it's because is this grandstanding on empathy? Because empathy alone is a blunt instrument, period. When we make feeling like feelings, the measure of competence, we're rewarding performance, not progress. Does that make sense? The chopsticks, oh, they look so beautiful, but absolutely no one is being fed. So what I believe is that true empathy is an entry point, not an end point. It opens the door, but therapy happens in what you build once you've stepped inside, once you've stepped through the door. It's just simply a door. That's all it is. And here's the crazy thing. There's some been some pretty um interesting historical shifts on how we got here. So our profession wasn't always this way. And that's the thing that I find fascinating is these new therapists, or even the therapists in the last 20 years, um, they've completely lost uh the historical context to why we are here today. And um, my husband always says to me um that I can't remember how the quote he says it's so good. My husband is full of wisdom. He says um that those that don't study history are basically um our future is gonna be not so great. So we need to study history to understand where we should be rather than where we just think we should go. Does that make sense? So, all that to be said, I totally botched his quote. I'm gonna ask him about that. So our profession wasn't always this way. So we first started out with William James, and he saw that psychology was a science of habit. So it was a habit, it was science of habit, will, and this pragmatic action. So we were to help people do differently. This was about action. So then Theodore Lips and then later later um Edward Tikchner, they brought in Eiffelung, and we talked about this, and I apologize if I don't have the German down. So this meant the feeling into the Einfelung. So feeling into. And so in English, that is as empathy. So we're shifting the focus from behavior to emotion. So we started seeing the shift with lips and um Titchner, Titchner, I think that's how you say his last name. Then finally we get to Carl Jung, right? So we know Carl Jung, he canonized empathy as like this core condition, and it really shaped this mid-century training around attunement rather than accountability. Now, I don't think that was uh Roger's whole thought process. I really don't. I've watched old film with him, I've read him, and I don't think this is ultimately where he meant for it to be today. Then we have Daniel Golem and neuroscience. What happened is we crowned empathy with prestige, prestige, right? Because we start seeing mirror neurons lighting up. We have proof, right, that feeling equates connection. But again, we forget where we we started. Yes, there was an evolution in psychology and the helping profession, but that doesn't mean that we discard the original approach of therapy in um in spite or we we discard it just because we want this empathy. I'm having a hard time with my words. So we really swung from James's like pragmatic spoon, right, to Roger's emotional chopsticks. That's how I want to kind of show this. There's this enormous pendulum swing. And so today's programs often teach that empathy is the cure. It's not it, but it's only the container. Um, I met with a new colleague uh just this last week, and it was just a fabulous conversation with her because my approach to therapy often um ruffles a lot of feathers of clinicians because I'm calling out this practice of empathy only, feelings only, and that it is causing greater harm, and that they need to clinicians need to stop parading around like they are just Jesus walking on water because they are empathetic. That is not the case, and I find it gross, I find it grossly unethical. Um, and so all that to be said, I met this colleague and we think similarly, and it was just very wonderful to discuss with her. We both love people, we both are highly compassionate and empathetic, but we don't start stop there. And so it was just so nice for me to have a conversation with her and not feel alone. I feel extraordinarily alone in an industry that says they're highly compassionate and empathetic, yet they attack me as if um they're these snarling dogs um circled around me. I really, I really feel that way often. Um, I receive a lot of ugly emails on my posts. Um, I I received a lot of ugly attention. And it it was so wonderful and life-giving to talk with her. So, all that to say that I think while she and I discussed it, so many more of these programs are churning out these clinicians saying that empathy is the only way to go, just sit there and passively nod and just hold space for their feelings when what I'm saying is that empathy, it's only a container. And I almost imagine William James and Carl Rogers, if they could see where the industry has gone, I think they would be appalled, but for different reasons. I think James, you know, the father of American psychology, he believed um that the human mind was a tool for action. He saw habit, will, and disciplined practice as engines of change. I totally agree. So psychology for him existed to help people act um their way into a new life, not simply analyze the one they already had, not simply to sit there and talk about their feelings and how lousy they were or how lousy they felt. Rogers, a half a century later, he brought warmth and humanity into the room, which we definitely needed. He reminded us that people change best when they feel safe, right? And seen and unjudged. So his empathy, emphasis, empathis, my words today, you understand what I mean, on empathy and unconditional positive regard was a absolutely necessary correction in a field that become had become very mechanical. Now, that pendulum though has swung too far. So what James originally framed as science of doing, it became uh doing is uh under the influence of Rogers. So what I'm trying to say, sorry, James framed science of doing under Rogers' influence of cultural feeling. So empathy once was a bridge to transformation, it became this entire structure. So the heart overtook the head. I think what Young, or excuse me, what Rogers was trying to add to James was that we do require empathy, but we don't discard, we do not discard the action of doing. They should influence one another. Empathy is simply the bridge to transformation. So neither man, I would argue, would recognize modern therapy these days, where therapeutic depth is more so measured by this um emotional um embrace rather than outcomes. And that really burnout, we see this so often is a proof of care. Like, oh, I saw 10 clients today and I'm just so exhausted. I understand that, but if all you're doing is reflecting their feelings, all you're doing is simplify sitting in empathy, yeah, you're exhausted. James would ask where the will went, right? And Rogers would wonder where dis discernment disappeared. I do not believe that these men were in conflict with one another. I think it was building on one another. Both would agree that empathy must grow up, that the heart can open the door, but reason and ethics have to decide what we do once we step through it. I do not think that they were in direct conflict with one another. I really truly believe that Rogers was saying, hey, we've got to bring this empathy into session, but our industry today, that's all they do. So, and that that unchanneled empathy, we know turns into this burnout cycle. And this burnout cycle just turns out these really apathetic, passive therapists that do nothing to help individuals. Going back to this conversation I had with this colleague earlier this week, we were saying how often individuals come to us and they're like, Yeah, you're like the seventh or eighth therapist. None of them have given me a plan, none of them have assessed me, none of them have talked about outcomes. I just sat there and maybe I felt okay for the first 30 minutes after session, but then I was right back to where I was. So, what happens when we have this unchanneled empathy in these clinicians is that it does drain our threat and pain circuits. We talked about this in the series. The amygdala flares up, the HPA access floods with cortisol, and the clinician's body literally carries every session home. So, therefore, when we get this unchanneled empathy, it turns into a burnout cycle and it leads to these crappy outcomes for clinician for clients. So the the narrative becomes, I'm exhausted because I care. Okay, hold on. Neither James nor Rogers would ever say this is good. I guarantee you. Go back, clinicians, go back and watch some of Rogers' old tapes. Go back and read James, go back and read Rogers. They never, never, ever were saying this is how this industry should look. Ever. And what's happened is clinicians, they just point outward to like their caseloads and their pay and their paperwork without confronting their inner loop. That over-identification of empathy masquerading as compassion. They have lost their way because they're not willing to critically think and study historically where our industry began. You know, there's a saying, chew the meat, spit out the bones. I once um was in a conversation with my director, and I was talking to her about Freud, and she hates Freud. And I said to her, I said, I get you don't like him. I don't agree with everything he said, but you can chew the meat and spit out the bones. There are a lot of good fruit we can take from him. You don't have to believe the whole thing. You don't have to spit out everything about someone that you dislike. Maybe there's something there that they said that is applicable to today. And I'm saying the same thing. I am not saying that empathy is bad. I am not saying that Rogers was wrong. I am saying that you have spit out too many bones that are actually what you needed to eat. Burnout is not a badge of virtue. Empathy is not a badge of virtue. It's evidence. The the badge of burnout is evidence of mismanaged empathy. I can't say this enough and more times than you guys are probably tired of hearing me say this. And I'm sure there's no clinicians listening to this podcast because it's just going to piss them off. I want to challenge you. If you're a clinician and you are getting angry at what I'm saying, take a beat and consider why you're angry. The industry mirror, our fear, our field mirrors the very cognitive distortions we try to treat. Emotional reasoning, right? Well, I feel strongly, therefore, I'm right. I don't care how you feel about how you're helping your client. Feelings aren't facts. Just because you feel a certain way does not mean you're right. Study the brain, study the brain's heuristics. You are always going to confirm your bias. This is how the brain goes. How about should statements? Good therapists should always feel deeply. No, no, that's not where we stop. We can feel something and then we need to step into critical thinking. Or how about catastrophizing? Ugh. I hear this all the time. You know, if I detach, I'll become cold and unethical. I can't tell you how many distasteful, ugly, and ignorant comments I get from clinicians in this field that tell me I'm cold and unethical. Simply because I'm saying stop parading your empathy like you are just the moral police. They think that I'm cold and unethical because I track outcomes and because I use assessments. Oh my gosh, I'm so cold and unethical. This is what I want to say, clinicians that send me these ugly things. First of all, you're dicks. Don't do that to someone. Excuse my language. I mean, take a beat like we ask our clients to before you start calling names. But the second thing I want to say to you is you've never been in the counseling room. None of my clients would say I'm cold or unethical. In fact, I challenge them with empathy. I challenge them with compassion. The clients that recently began with me, and I had her read this Shell Silverstein poem. Here's the thing, this is what I want to say. If I'm cold and unethical, why did I challenge her with a poem? Because I asked her to write me a letter. And then what did I do with that? I spent time responding to her letter to challenge her thinking while also saying, I hear your pain. I hear why you're approaching life in this way. If I'm so cold and unethical, why would I encourage a client to write me a letter? And why would I take the time out of my damn day to consider how I could help her untangle what's causing her harm? We we teach our clients, we challenge them, right, with their distortions. We do it all the time. But we don't challenge our own distortions. We protect it with professional jargon all the time. This is what you see. These ones that are are you know protecting their profession are the ones that attack me, the ones that are saying that they're the most compassionate, empathetic ones are the most ugly to me. Why are you not affording me the same compassion and empathy? Because you don't like that I'm saying you've confused your identity with integrity. To grow, we have to admit that our methods and our myths are outdated tools. This myth that we only do unconditional positive regard is so outdated and it is not what Rogers meant. They may have worked once, right, but they no longer serve the complexity of modern distress. Again, we can merge James and Rogers. We're not discarding either either of them. So as I was talking to this colleague the other day, which again just was life-giving, um, we were talking about these new clinicians. We see them, they come in, they're bright, and they're empathetic and they're full of purpose, right? But what happens is they are so uncomfortable in stepping into the mess. They can't even answer questions on an application form. Oh gosh, I just don't feel that I can answer that. Or oh gosh, I just feel like, oh, I just I just feel, I just feel, I just feel. They feel everything. And that's the problem. They're completely hollowed out. They they have no critical thinking, they have no oomph to give the client, the very individuals that are coming to us that are in pain. They're hollowed out. They full feel all these things, they feel fill themselves full with empathy and feeling, yet there's nothing left in them. And then ultimately what happens is these clinicians, they get a couple years in and they're angry at the system. They're questioning their calling, they blame their workbook, their workload. But the real injury, the real injury came from using empathy as their only instrument. All these clinicians are eating soup with chopsticks. Maybe they're graceful, maybe they're dedicated, but they are absolutely so. Starving. And it's got to change. You know, there's this counter-cultural stance. We need a recalibration, like I've been talking about. We've got to climb this ladder. Empathy, sympathy, compassion, and ethics informs it. Empathy connects. Sympathy acknowledges compassion acts with regulation, and ethics aligns action with truth. And go back what I said about ethics. My gosh, that's another thing that people in this industry fling around, but that's just not ethical. No, you just don't like it because it pings those feelings and it's counter to your feelings. Do you see the problem with only going on feelings? Resilient clinicians aren't those that feel the most. They're those ones who channel feeling into structured, measurable care. This toughness is not cruelty, it's containment with purpose. So all of you sending your nasty comments and emails to me and these snide remarks, which is shocking to me. And I suppose I'm doing them too. I suppose let me step out of self, let me observe self right now. I am lashing out as well. But I believe so firmly in what we do as a helper industry that I just I cannot stomach if we keep on this track. We are only helping people if we maintain course. So am I lashing out much like they lash out to me? Yeah, probably so. Who's right? Right? And then we get in this philosophical discussion: who's right? What do we see? All I'm saying is don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Nobody said empathy didn't have a place. We're just saying that it just can't be the only thing. We have to model what we ask our clients to do. We we don't can ask our clients to learn through osmosis. We don't. We give them tools. So you have to do the very same thing. And until counseling stops confusing this idea of depletion and equals devotion, we're going to keep replicating harm. Our training has to recenter on cognitive, behavioral, and ethical skill, not total emotional immersion. And I'm not saying CBT is the only way to go. Please, for the love of all things holy, I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that we can't do just emotional immersion. It does not work. And I challenge you to start studying the brain. Just because you're clinician does not mean that you are void of any issues with your feeling centers, with the way that you interpret feeling. Just because you're a clinician does not mean you are perfect. Supervisors should really start measuring outcomes, not their tears, not how empathetic their supervisees are. And professional culture has to learn that boundaries are not barriers, that the you, they're the new utensils that make nourishment possible. The next generation of therapists, they deserve models that are steady, not shattered. You all this goes back to why are there so many people in need and their mental well-being is so terrible when we have all kinds of mental health therapists on out in the world. Why is that? That doesn't make sense. It does not make sense. It does not make sense that I am cut off from colleagues because I think this way, and I have found one in the last five years that doesn't condemn me, that doesn't call me names, that recognizes that I am highly compassionate and empathetic, but I also believe that we must challenge our own thinking and that of our clients to give them the tools and send them on the way. I am doing nothing for my clients, sitting with them and passively nodding. I don't know if I mentioned it in the last podcast because I've kind of gone on tangents in this empathy series, but I recently had a new client come on board and he has just such a beautiful analogy, awful for him, but beautiful analogy of how it's been going for him in his process of finding a therapist. He said to me, He's like, you know, it's like I'm sitting in a burning house, and the therapist is looking at me saying, Tell me about the fire. Tell me about how the fire feels. What does the fire look like? And he said, I'm literally sitting there burning alive, and all I need is for you to throw me the fire hose so I can stop burning and then we can figure it out. And that's the problem with the industry. We want to look at the fire, we want to talk about how we feel about the fire. But the problem is, is you are letting your clients burn alive. That's disgusting. And that's what I'm saying with these tools. This chopsticks metaphor. Shell Silverstein's poem ends with futility. Eating soup with chopsticks can take all afternoon. So does our prof our profession's obsession with empathy. We are so busy and sincere and exhausted laboring to help others while other while using tools that were never designed for that. The problem isn't the soup. It's that we keep insisting on using chopsticks and calling the struggle virtue. You are essentially handing your clients chopsticks every time you only focus on empathy and you just sit there and hold space for them. You're giving them chopsticks in a fire. What the hell are you doing with that? In therapy, changing the utensils means comparing heart with head, data with compassion, structure with soul. Empathy lets us taste the soup, but wisdom teaches us to bring the spoon. Do you see what I'm saying? It is the integration of James and Rogers. It's not one without the other. And here's the uncomfortable truth. The very tools we teach are the ones we most need to reclaim. Therapist, just because you're a therapist, does not mean you have it right all the time. We have got to step into our own critical thinking. We ask clients to pause and observe and challenge distortions all the time. We're asking them constantly to step into critical thinking. Yet, as a field, we have absolutely lost the same discipline. The mirror of our industry has become a projection of our own unexamined patterns. It has. Emotional reasoning has dressed itself up as intuition. Catastrophizing has disguised itself as advocacy. And this personalization has been mistaken for empathy. Come on, please, clinicians, if you're listening, please see this. And listen, I'm not saying that I am void of any of these issues as well, but I'm telling you, I am constantly trying to, if I feel a resistance with a client, I step out of self and say, what's going on? When clients resist change, we call it defense, right? But when we do it, what is it? Oh, it's just, it's just clinical identity. Carl Jung said everything that irritated it irritates us about others can lead us to understanding ourselves. So as I was saying, when I feel that that irritation towards something, towards a system, towards colleagues, to burnout, the endless paperwork, whatever it may be, it may just be our psyche's invitation to look inward. Stop ignoring it. That's that mirror. We actually need to look in the mirror. Our collective frustration mirrors our collective avoidance. The industry's self-image, which was once meant to be on healing, has turned into psychological projection. And by the way, psychological projection of its own stagnation. We have got to make a change. We have got to protect our clients. We celebrate empathy without evaluation. We're evading evaluation. Why? Why are clinicians so against evaluation? Why are clinicians so against assessment? Oh, it's just heartless. It's so cold. No, it is simply a tool. I said to a client the other day, we do uh monthly reassessments at Untangled Mind. She's like, this is really hard because I want to be better. And I said to her, I recognize what you're saying, but what we have to understand is these are simply data points. This is one little thing that we do in this room. And then I work with her to reframe and look at um what we have been doing. But why does my industry evade evaluation? Heck, I send out evaluation forms every quarter to clients because I need to know what I need to know, because I have all of those biases and and these defense mechanisms in in my mind that block me from seeing self. And they're not always great. Recently, uh a client didn't pay, and you know, this had happened quite a few times before, and it's like reminding them, hey, you need to pay. And so the third time around, when they didn't pay, I responded with a text message, you have until the end of the week to pay this, or your time is going to end. Was I harsh in the text message? Yeah, probably. And they told me so. They said, I wasn't trying not to pay you. I didn't get these text messages. Listen, I don't know if it's the truth or not. Could I have expressed this in a different way? Yes. So what was it? What was it in me that had me respond in more of a harsh way? Okay, maybe historically I was seeing a pattern. Um, I felt used and abused because this individual didn't necessarily they um the the session before, or maybe it was a session that they didn't pay. In that session, they came to session, we done three EMDR sessions, we're seeing extraordinary results with the data that I take, not only during the EMDR sessions, but the reassessments. And in that session, they devalued me and said, you know, it's the acupuncture that's made me feel better, which is a defense mechanism of the client. So I had to step out of my critical text message that I sent to them and evaluate self. What was it? Yeah, it was popping back because you devalued the work that we did in session. I had to step out of self and critically think about what how I responded. Was it wrong? Absolutely. What I can tell you from that is I recognized the devaluation of the hard work I was holding too strongly to the client's outcomes as my own identity. The outcomes are important, the tools I use are scientifically informed, they're research-informed, they're wonderful tools, but it is not up to me, it is not up to me to heal the individual, is up to the individual's brain, physiology, their choice, their intellect, their all of those things, their will to do the changing. And what I took from her devaluation in that session, and therefore not paying, was I got real angry. But here's the thing: I had to step out of my butthurt and evaluate my behavior. My feelings don't matter. My feelings don't matter. Did I want to get paid? Yeah, everybody wants to get paid for their time. I mean, that's stupid to think otherwise. But my feelings were not accurate. They were the door I had to walk through and I had to go through the feelings and go, okay, I felt devalued. That's why I responded in this way. But is the devaluation accurate? No, I know I kicked ass with all those sessions. I know what the data shows, I know what I did. Devaluation from the client was a representation of their um maybe possibly their discomfort with becoming too close with me and actually realizing that there was change that took place. Devaluation happens for a myriad of reasons. But the problem is that I let those feelings of my own determine my response. That is wrong, and that is what I'm trying to get at. We prize this idea of attunement, but we neglect accountability. It's true. And I had to totally hold myself accountable to what I did. And I felt like an ass. I'm like, damn it, I fell prey to feelings. Damn it. But we're human. You know, we teach cognitive restructuring, but we refuse to restructure our own cognitive habits. What I'm challenging all clinicians with is that sometimes we have to eat humble pie, and that's important for us to do. Effort without awareness only reinforces this empathetic exhaustion. It's the same trap that many of our clients fall into, isn't it? Believing that if they try harder, it equals changing more. Or, you know, so like Einstein, uh Einstein, he used to say, we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them, right? So to continue glorifying empathy without discernment is to apply the same kind of thinking that created the burnout in the first place. It's spinning our professional wheels and mistaking movement for progress. There is no progress in our field. It has stagnated. Now, is this every single person in the field? No, I'm not saying that. But we really do have to look at why do we have more people in distress and yet we have more professions, professionals in the industry. So if we truly believe in this cognitive and behavioral change for our clients, then we have to model it. We have to model it. So that means we have to engage in the same dang process. So observation, step outside of the emotional fog, and name what isn't working, like I just told you I had to do. Evaluate, identify the beliefs that drive your practices or the way you do things. We can't assume that empathy is everything. And what do we assume about empathy? What does empathy mean? And then experiment, test new methods, gather data, adjust course. And finally, we have to integrate, keep what works, discard what doesn't, and own the discomfort of evolution. This is not cold detachment, it's ethical integrity. Critical thinking is not the enemy of compassion, it's the steward. To borrow from Young again, the unexamined shadow does not disappear. It governs. If we don't confront our own collective shadow, our addiction to this emotional performance that we're seeing with empathy will continue to project itself onto clients and systems. And we're going to call it injustice when really it's just imbalance. I know with this series, it's like Piper's just really ranting and raving. I'm trying to hold up the mirror to my industry. I really truly am. And I'm trying to hold the mirror up to these clients that sit solely into feelings. I recently had an old client from two years ago reach out to me and made some pretty poor choices and stated, I need you to write me a letter because my impulsiveness got out of the way and you know, used my diagnosis. This was BPD. And I was like, wait a second, something wasn't right. And I said, you know, I don't think you're giving me the whole story. Tell me what's going on. So before the email was like, I just need this for a work thing. And I was like, this is not, this is not jiving. And so ultimately what happened was this individual was like, Yeah, I haven't seen you in two years, but I was impulsive at work and I lost my job because I did something wrong. So I need you to write an email saying, I saw you two years ago, and I'm gonna justify my behavior, how I felt in that moment, because I identified with something. And I said, No, I absolutely will not help you justify your behavior and you not take responsibility for it. It is the same thing that's happening in our industry. We use empathy, the royal we, but not this we, to justify our poor behavior and poor treatment of clients and the lack of outcomes. The clinicians I see today are no different. You're calling me and asking me to write just some wrote letter justifying your behavior based on your identity. I identify as so empathetic. And if you got that same call as I did saying, hey, I just need you to write this letter. I just need you to justify my impulsive behavior and use my BPD diagnosis, my identity. I just need you to take care of that. You would be appalled and you'd be pissed because you'd say, Why would you ask me to take a chance on not only my license, but by stepping into this, by but also by by um stepping out of my professional integrity and saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have to take responsibility for how you identify and how you behave. This is not my job to justify your poor behavior. You would be so offended as I was that someone would ask you to do that. Y'all look in the mirror. You are your identity is empathy, and you're asking the world to justify your behavior, and your behavior is making you and your clients eat chops, eat soup with chopsticks, or more eloquently, you're giving them chopsticks while their world is on fire. You've got to see yourself, you've got to see yourself in the very things that we find disgusting in other behaviors. You have to examine your shadow because it does not disappear, it starts to govern you. You are addicted to emotional empathy and you are projecting it onto our clients and into the systems, and it is absolutely an imbalance. It is not what James and Rogers ever wanted. So when we revisit Silverstein's image, maybe the question isn't whether chopsticks can pick up soup. It's whether we have the humility to stop pretending they can. Ah. Because until we do, we will keep spending all afternoon exhausting ourselves with beautiful, ineffective tools. The courage is to set them down, to think critically, act wisely, and rebuild with both empathy and evidence. It's the thing that we need to allow us to finally taste the soup. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks so much for joining me, Piper Harris with the Untangled Mind Podcast. I hope you learned some tools that can equip you to untangle your mind and untangle your life. If you're curious about working with me for your anxiety or trauma, head on over to my website in untangledmind.net to connect with me. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review me on your podcast listening platform and share it with your friends and family. As always, thanks so much for listening to me. Piper Harris with the Untangled Mind Podcast. I'll talk with you next time.