The Danger of Empathy
Empathy is good, right?
Right. It is important to be able to consider the world from another’s point of view, to walk in their shoes, to feel with them, to be engrossed in their experience, to care.
So empathy can’t be bad, right?
Wrong. When empathy leads to
compassion fatigue,
also known as
vicarious traumatization,
it can be very bad indeed.
Many years ago, when I was in my first year of social work school, I interned at an agency that treated children who had witnessed domestic violence and/or had experienced sexual abuse. I was a novice psychotherapist who listened every day to horrific stories of trauma. Within four months, I was despairing, low-energy, and prone to crying fits that I couldn’t anticipate or stop easily. I felt powerless. I was experiencing vicarious traumatization.
And it was yucky!
Here’s what I brought to my first shot at being a therapist:
bottomless maternal love and care
a desire to help, which veered regularly into grandiosity
deep empathy
And here’s what I lacked:
very strong boundaries.
Without these boundaries,
I lost track of where I ended and my clients began. This handicapped their absolutely necessary development as individuals separate from me.
I ran interference on things — like their behaviors and choices — that they, and only they, had to take responsibility for and experience the consequences of.
I took on their feelings and their struggles and denied them the right to feel and struggle and grow strong themselves.
I blamed myself when things went wrong.
I merged with them rather than holding them as a reliable, supportive, consistent witness who had confidence in them.
I failed to metabolize the emotions I absorbed from them because I didn’t know how to distinguish between theirs and mine.
I became overwhelmed and, ultimately, useless to the very clients I wanted to help.
How does this story of me as a young psychotherapist relate to teaching? Just exchange “student” for “client.” Teachers are just as endangered by empathy as I was.
And it’s yucky.
Next time: How to metabolize the emotions that come from empathy? That is, how to battle compassion fatigue and forestall burnout? Stay tuned!