Welcome to this special series of the Untangled Mind Podcast. I'm Piper Harris. Over the next several episodes, we're going to take a hard look at empathy. It's a word that we hear everywhere. It's praised as the highest virtue in therapy, leadership, and even culture at large. But what if empathy isn't always the answer? What if, left unchanneled, empathy actually paralyzes us, burns us out, or keeps us from real change? In this series, I'll walk you through empathy's history, what neuroscience reveals about it, the cognitive traps it creates, and even how our culture and the counseling industry has become addicted to it. Most importantly, I'll show you what to do with empathy, how to move from empathy into sympathy, and from sympathy into compassion, where action and transformation actually happen. So whether you're a clinician, a leader, or simply someone navigating the pain of others, this series will challenge how you think about empathy and hopefully give you a clearer, stronger way forward. Hey there, and welcome, welcome, welcome. So, as many of you know, if you've listened along with me, um oftentimes I get ideas from podcasts based on what's happening in the therapy room. And this discussion of empathy has been just resounding. Um, it's been pretty clear a lot of people have been talking about it, and I challenge them with it. And a client actually said to me the other day, we're chatting about it. She goes, you know, you really should do a podcast on this. So thank you, client. You're brilliant, and we are going to dig into it. So, what we're really talking about in this series is about empathy. And what I see and what I want to challenge about this idea of empathy. So, this is gonna be about a six-part series, and we're gonna talk about different parts. We're gonna talk about um what I think is the empathy trap. We're gonna talk about the historical roots today. Um, we're gonna go into the neuroscience, we're gonna talk about some of the cognitive heuristic traps, anything and everything, and give you some tools to kind of be aware that I think oftentimes empathy can be a trap. I think it can also be a form of avoidance or let's say self-centeredness or narcissistic tendency, and how we can move from being stuck in empathy and move forward in sympathy. So this is gonna contradict um, I think, a lot of information out there, and especially in the counseling field. Um, and so I think that might rustle some feathers. So I'd ask that you would just have an open mind to this. And um, if you are someone who's like a highly sensitive person, highly empathetic person, I get you. I um am a highly empathetic person myself, but I've had to learn to channel it, and that's really what my hope is for you today. So let's dig into today's topic. So we're gonna talk about kind of the historical roots of empathy and sympathy, because they really are different. Um, and so, you know, first what I want to say is that everybody's talking about empathy, right? You heard that in the introduction, like the leadership, empathy, and culture, and it's really praised as like this ultimate virtue, but I really don't think it is all that we think it is. And I really do think some of the grades, like Carl Rogers, would probably be rolling in his grave saying, okay, I didn't mean empathy to go this way. Maybe I could be wrong. I don't know what the man would think, but so today it's really about the empathy trap. And so we're looking at this concept from why it's been elevated to like almost the most sacred status, and how I believe it actually becomes a barrier both for clients and for us as clinicians, um, and anybody in the world. So, first to start off, you may not know that the word empathy is actually fairly new. It's fairly new. Um, so really it comes from the beginning of sympathy. So sympathy came from the Greek word sympathia, I think that's how you say it. What it means um is fellow feeling or suffering with. Okay, so that's what that really means there. Adam Smith in 1759 wrote the theory of moral sentiments, and he used sympathy in 1759 to describe entering into another situation. So you can see how empathy started to kind of grow. But really, it came from the Greek sympathia, which means fellow feeling or suffering with. Okay, so that's really where the root is when it comes to empathy. Now, empathy um came about in the early 20th century. There's a translation of Theodore Lipp's concept of, and please forgive me if you speak German, Einfelung, Einfüllung, I-E-I-N-F-U-H-L-U-N-G. Maybe I should learn how to say these words before I do a podcast. I apologize. Somebody that is uh German, please tell me how to say this. So this came about in the early 20th century with Theodore Lipp's concept, and what that meant was feeling into, feeling into. So we start kind of seeing this shift from the sympathy, the idea of what sympathy is from the Greek, into more of the idea of feeling into by this German philosopher. So then came along an American psychologist named Edward Titchener, and he translated that in it into the English word empathy. So he used eifunglung, Einfunglung, um into empathy. So again, I'm so sorry, I don't mean to be rude about German. I can't speak German. So all that to be said, then we fast forward to the 1950s and we get to Carl Rogers, the wonderful, um, passionate, compassionate man, Carl Rogers. I love watching his old film. So he comes along and he really makes empathy one of those three core conditions of therapy. So it's on alongside the unconditional positive regard and congruence. So empathy really in the 50s became kind of this gold standard of counseling. So if you could feel with your client, basically what Rogers was saying is that then you are doing therapy right. Okay. Then Daniel Goleman came in in about the 1990s and he really kind of popularized this idea with some neuroscience research. Um, the empathy is biological and um biologically and socially necessitated necessity. Saying that wrong. So you can see there's a huge history of where we started with sympathy with Greeks, and then where we are today. So the distinction today, though, is empathy means I feel with you. Sympathy means I feel for you. What I want to add into there is that we need to get compassion, which means I act for you. I act for you. So when Daniel Goldman came out, he talked about this emotional intelligence and that spread um this idea of empathy way beyond therapy. And so it really has um become this kind of buzzword when it comes to good leadership or good parenting or even good citizenship. And then we add neuroscience on top of it. And we'll get into that more in further episodes. We're talking about mirror neurons. These brain scans show how we light up in our certain parts of our brain when others are in pain. So all of a sudden, empathy um isn't just like this virtue, it's like proven by science. But here again, we are today, empathy is absolutely everywhere. But what I want to say is what happened to sympathy and compassion? Where did they go? Why were they so pushed into the background? So, this is how I really like to frame of it, frame it. Think of empathy, sympathy, and compassion as a ladder. So at the bottom is empathy. This is I feel with you. I feel with you. So this is that in additional, you see someone that's um grieving the loss of a spouse. And I'm telling you when I'm in here with those clients and they are having these guttural sobs, I mean, I feel it with every part of my being being. It is so painful. That's the empathy. Now, the middle of the ladder, that's sympathy. And so that's I feel for you. So I was feeling with you. And then above that, the next middle rung is I feel for you. And then at the very top of that ladder, you climb up this ladder. It comes to I act for you in compassion. I think the trap is that too many people stay stuck on the bottom rung. I do. So if all we ever do is feel, if that's all we ever do, we absolutely collapse into distress. We're overwhelmed, we're flooded, we're paralyzed. So that's where I think the problem lies when people say, well, I'm just so empathetic. Okay. But if all you do is sit there, if all I did was sit here and feel the depths of pain with my clients, how am I able then to act as clinician that sits there and does what Roger says and give them the unconditional positive regard, give them congruence, but also give them tools toward finding healing and whole self. I can't if I'm sitting there at the bottom rung and I'm like, I feel this with you, I feel this with you, I feel this with you. Does that make sense? So let me give you a picture. Um, I worked with this woman um who was constantly overwhelmed by some of the struggles in her life. So every time they called these individuals in her life, she literally felt crushed by pain. She believed um this was proof of her love. But what if, what if really um this did was just keep her in the cycle that was making her more upset, more distressed. So her empathy was serving her, right? In a way. It was serving her because this is how I express my love, right? But you know, it and it also gave purpose, like I'm still needed. I can take care of the people in my family and I can see how much they hurt and I can hurt with you. And it what it did, though, unfortunately, is it really protected her from the idea of change. If she if she stayed stuck in their pain, right, she didn't have to face her own or challenge her own thoughts and behaviors. That's what I mean by the empathy trap. It cements avoidance. It cements avoidance. It's wonderful for us to be empathetic, it's wonderful for us to feel for others. In fact, there's so many studies when we look at so sociopaths and psychopaths, they don't feel, right? They have no empathy. That part of their brain is that's out. So empathy is a wonderful, wonderful thing. But if all we do is empathize, it really does cement this avoidance of, you know, it makes me feel good over here because I love someone, I'm not feeling for them, but it cements this avoidance of, but I need to work on what's happening with me. So as we kind of think about that, I want you to pause here and ask yourself, okay, who in your life do you over-identify with? Who in your life do you over-identify with? Where do you confuse feeling someone's pain with actually helping them? Feeling someone's pain with them, let me say this clearly, feeling someone's pain with them doesn't actually help them. It lets them know they're not alone. But are you helping them if you cry along with them? If you're that's all you do. And most importantly, what does staying in that role do for you? I know that last question is really hard. I often pose this to my clients all the time. I'll say, okay, well, how does your anxiety work for you? What do you mean? I'm here to get rid of it. It's awful. No, no, no, no, it's obviously working for you. So how's it working for you? And it's a really hard thing to look at. It's a really hard thing to look at. But you have to ask yourself, who in your life do you over-identify with? Where do you confuse feeling pain, someone else's pain, with actually helping them? And most importantly, what does staying in that role do for you? Is it feeding a need, an unmet need? Okay, face it. Let's admit it. But remember, every pattern serves us somehow. Every single pattern serves us somehow. Even the destructive ones, even the ones that we think are generous and kind and compassionate, all of the things that empathy can be. Too much of empathy is highly destructive. Highly destructive. I I'm not going to step back from that. I'm just, I'm not. So again, if we we look at um this kind of ladder, I want you to think about that. If you are that really deep feeler, you are at the bottom rung of that ladder. You're at the bottom of the feeling. You might feel an immense love and compassion for the well, I won't even say compassion, love. And you're feeling the feelings with someone, but you're just sitting there. You haven't even climbed the ladder yet. So here's another example. Um, there's this young professional caller, Lisa. She was completely consumed by global trag tragedies, like, really, the news just sent her spiraling. So it was like we had to take steps like, okay, turning off social media, okay, turning off the news. I mean, she would lose sleep. She'd feel like immense guilt, and she'd just cry at the drop of a hat. So she kept insisting to me that if I don't feel this deeply, then that means I'm heartless, right? So she created this false narrative that if I don't feel this deeply, then I'm totally heartless human beings. So her empathy acted acted like a moral batch, proof that she cared. But it left her completely hopeless and detached from her own life. I mean, it was causing issues at work. She was falling apart at work. So when I w asked her, I said, well, how does this serve you? She didn't like that, right? She's like, Well, it's just that I'm an empathetic person. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You're defining what you think this empathy is. How does it serve you? So when we kept going through that, she realized that empathy actually had distracted her from her own anxiety. And we had to dig into that. And her own anxiety was actually linked to death anxiety. It really kind of turned into this excidential, excess, I can't say words today, um, existential crisis that we had to go into. So she realized that it had distracted her from this own anxiety. We had to dig at it. And the approval she got from friends or people was like, oh my gosh, you're so sensitive, you're so caring, and da-da-da-da-da. When she did get that, at the end, people started avoiding her because it was so much, it actually reinforced that cycle. So her empathy had become both a shield and a trap. Can you see that? So one of the most powerful tools here is simply asking, how does it serve you? And almost all my clients push back on this. They do. I push back on it. It's like they say, well, it doesn't serve me, it causes me pain, like I said before. But if you actually sit with it, you can start to see the hidden payoffs. You really can. There's the relevance, there's the attention, there's the avoidance. So you've got to name those payoffs and break that illusion. You have to. Because it shows that um empathy isn't an uncontrollable flood. It's not. It's a habit of thought reinforced by choices. Empathy is not an uncontrollable flood. If it is, if it is for you, it's because it's a habit of thought and it's reinforced choices. We can control empathy. And this isn't just about individuals. I think it's highly cultural. I do. Social media rewards displays of empathy, right? People put their golden moments on or the things that they do. The more visibly you cry, hurt, or feel with others, the more attention you get. It's true. Um, so groups form around shared pain, right? We see this. We hurt together, therefore we belong together. So, in a therapy culture, um, we've repeated this for decades. It's like feel your feelings. And while that's important, and I recognize that, it has really tipped the scale. All it is is feel the feels, and we are in a mess. We forgot to um equally empathize that thought work, boundaries, and action are imperative. Imperative. Um, the grandfather um of psychology, William James, uh, would be rolling around, going, hold on a second. Like there, there needs to be thought behind this, there needs to be action behind this. You can't just feel for feeling's sake. That's what empathy is. Empathy is a wonderful thing, but it should be a catalyst to get to sympathy and then get to compassion. And compassion is where that action is, but it is not like that anymore. And therapy has really done a number on this, and the people that walk around with it as a moral badge. So, again, the balance is completely, completely tipped. So rather than working on the thoughts, the boundaries, the actions, we're just sitting there feeling. So, empathy has actually what I believe become a performance. It's become an identity. And dare I say, it's become an addiction. So, just like in individuals, the payoff, right? The payoff with this kind of cultural um uh hand holding of empathy, the payoff is belonging, attention, and sometimes avoidance. I really do believe that's what we're seeing in society culturally with this idea of everybody just has to have empathy. We're stuck. And it has become performative and it has become identity. In fact, especially in the counseling field, my gosh, if you don't step only into empathy, you will get eviscerated. I was on LinkedIn the other day, and a woman was kind of going off about some of her thoughts on the counseling field, and I totally disagreed. And I read through all the other client comments on there, and you know what I recognized? I recognized the cultural identity within the comments. So for me to step in and say, hey, I actually kind of disagree with this. This is how I practice it, this is what I believe, um, X, Y, and Z, I knew I would be eviscerated from one end to the other. Because what I saw just on a thread on LinkedIn was, ah, here's the group, here's the identity, here's the addiction to this idea. So why step into it? Maybe that's me being a chicken, and maybe that's part of it, but really I was like, I I I can't step into something where this is so identified within group, they won't hear. So here's the challenge that I really want to leave with you. Like empathy is not bad. Please hear me. Empathy is not bad. I require empathy as a therapist. Now, listen, I want to say this too, this caveat. I used to be such an empathetic person that it bit me in the butt more times than I like to think. Because all I did was sit there and feel terrible with these people. And on honestly, it led me to poor choices. Empathy is not bad, but it is the doorway, it is the first rung of the ladder. But it is not where you stay. It is not where you stay. You feel it initially. Sympathy is the caring. We move to caring and then we move to compassion because what does compassion do? Compassion asks us to act. So you have to ask yourself, are you stuck at the bottom rung of the ladder? Are you confusing feeling with helping? Are you willing to take a harder path, moving into sympathy and ultimately compassion? Are you willing to say to yourself, I have overly identified with this idea of empathy as if it's a moral badge? I'm addicted to what it makes me feel. And at times it makes me feel superior to others. You gotta look at yourself, really. You gotta look at yourself. So this starts our series on empathy. So today we kind of learned a little bit about the history of where empathy came from, and we really explored what the empathy trap is. So, next episode, we're going to go deeper into the neuroscience, which I think is really fascinating. We'll go into that and we'll look at what actually happens in the brain when we empathize and why unchanneled empathy can literally stress our brain and our bodies into exhaustion. It's really important for us to understand. I am not demonizing empathy. 100% I am not. But I think with so many things, we've just run with it and we've lost um control of what this is. We've redefined what empathy is. We've redefined who's empathetic and who's not. And I just want to challenge you that empathy is the first step. It's amazing. Empathy is a reason why we have humanitarian efforts. Empathy is the reason why I do my job and I do love my clients with all my heart and I do feel their pain, but I can't sit there with them in it. Why? I can sit and hold the space with them. I'm not feeling it with them. I can hold it with them because I am here. I am the one, I am the healer. I have to give them the tools so I hold that pain with them so that they're able to process what they're going through. If all I did was feel with them, what am I going to help them with? We have created empathy as this moral badge. We over identify, and I'm sorry, we are addicted to this idea of empathy. And this series is going to absolutely challenge you with it. It is. So I hope you'll keep uh in touch with us and listening to this series. Um, so again, we're gonna come back to episode two, and that's when empathy hurts the brain and the body. So I'll catch you guys next time. Thanks for joining. Thanks for spending this time with me today on the Untangled Mind podcast. My hope is that what you heard today helps you think differently, question deeply, and take real steps toward change. So remember, empathy isn't the end, it's the entry point. And then the real work is really moving beyond feeling and into action. If you're finding this series helpful, I'd love for you to share it with someone who could benefit. And be sure to join me next time as we continue to untangle the myths around empathy and explore the way forward.