HealthyGamerGG - The Dark Side of Empathy

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

In today's video, we learn about the hidden dangers of empathy and how it can lead to burnout and negative impacts on your mental health. Check out more mental health resources here! https://bit.ly/3xsk6fE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The more empathic you are, we see that it will burn you out if you are in a caring profession, if you are in a caring relationship. If you have friends, partners, spouses, you try to support them more and more. It will worsen your mental and lead to burnout. And in severe potential cases, even lead to vicarious trauma. So a lot of people nowadays are talking about how empathy is fantastic. We should have more empathy. We should have empathy for our friends, empathy for our work colleagues, empathy for our relationships, empathy for the whole world.

And the more empathic we are, the more emotionally available we are, the better it will be. There will be articles on this everywhere I look. So articles in Harvard Business Review, and you'll even have people like this, like psychiatrists on the internet, who will talk about how being more empathic will benefit you and isn't even about helping other people. But it turns out that having empathy is incredibly dangerous. Having high levels of empathy is correlated with higher levels of burnout, leads to worsening mental health actually allows people to objectively take advantage of you, and most bizarrely of all,

can negatively impact your relationships, especially romantic relationships. We're going to start with this concept of emotional contagion. So this is really fascinating, but as people have gotten more interested in empathy over time, we've basically discovered that there are multiple kinds of empathy. So one is something called cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand what someone else thinks or believes. So it's sort of understanding what's in someone's head. And there's a second kind of empathy called affective empathy. And this is more in line with what people usually think of when we think of empathy. It's the ability to feel what someone else feels. But as researchers have

looked into affective empathy especially, they've started to realize that there is a huge problem with this facet, is that it leads to something called emotional contagion. So what happens when you are very empathic with another person when you have affective empathy is they are feeling negative in some way. They're feeling sad. They're feeling depressed. They're feeling hopeless. And due to the empathic circuits of your brain, in order to form a connection with this person, you absorb some of their negativity. And literally, in the scientific literature, this is called emotional contagion. And so what ends up happening when you were empathic with someone is you absorb some of their negativity and it actually negatively affects you. And this emotional contagion,

can lead to an incredible amount of burnout. Because just because you're feeling what they're feeling, it doesn't necessarily help them feel better. Much like another kind of contagion, like an infection. When you get infected by someone else, it doesn't reduce the amount of infection that someone else feels. And a lot of research on empathy shows that once this contagion happens, you basically suffer and it doesn't necessarily lead to a benefit in other people.

So if we look at professions that involve a lot of empathy as part of their job, like people like social workers who are working with people who are struggling in their life, what we tend to find is that between 50 and 75% of social workers are actually burnt out. And one of the reasons that they're burnt out is because of all of the emotions that they're constantly dealing with. We see a lot of this in also something called caregiver burnout. These are not just professionals, but when you have someone who is taking care of someone else, so you have a family member or friend who is struggling a lot, and caregiver burnout was

originally studied in things like cancer. So when you have a spouse who has cancer, you take care of them a lot, you're, you know, taking care of all the responsibilities and that sort of leads to burnout. But we're seeing caregiver burnout also in mental health-related issues with people like friends or romantic partners or even parents or children. This emotional contagion also has pretty specific manifestations. And a great example of this is something called vicarious trauma. So we have studies that show that when you is an empath or someone who is supporting someone else, continuously gets exposed to their trauma, you can exhibit symptoms of experiencing that trauma yourself.

This is why we call it vicarious trauma. It's as if you were traumatized through simply having an empathic connection with someone who is traumatized. Now, this is an evolutionary thing that probably helps us in some ways. So we know that, for example, parents experience this with children who are sick or injured in some way. In those kinds of situations, it's probably pretty helpful. But we know that vicarious trauma can also affect people like therapists. If they're not careful, they can actually suffer from the trauma of their patients.

The really scary thing is that we are seeing this principle play out in an entirely new way because of the Internet. So the Internet has become a place where we really advocate for having a safe space to share and speak my truth and share the traumatic things that I've done. We'll see this a lot in mental health communities and discussions and on social media where people are sharing their trauma. And what's happened is really interesting. Even though we want the internet to be a place where you can share your trauma and we want to accept you and help you heal and all that good stuff, on the flip side, we have people

getting triggered by trauma dumping. And it's like, bra, you're trauma dumping. I can't handle this right now. And I think what we've sort of. figured out is in creating some of these safe spaces, we've gotten people who will essentially vomit their trauma, and then that negatively affects the audience, the person who's listening. And there's research to back this up. And I'm even seeing this in a very, very, like, new way, which is almost trauma through

repeated social media exposure. So it's almost like vicarious trauma that is experienced through social media. So if you look at social media, what you'll see is that there's a lot of, like, really terrible stuff that we get exposed to. And the better of a person you are, the more likely you are to expose yourself to traumatic things, right? Because you care about these people, these refugees, these people who are starving, these people who have been taken advantage of, victims of different kinds of violence and oppression. And we want to like spread awareness and we want to help people understand and we want to share what's going on these tragedies because we as a world should

do something about this. So the kinder you are, the more empathic you are, the more that you expose yourself to this, I am seeing something very scary, which is vicarious trauma through social media. And we're seeing evidence of this. The U.S. Surgeon General recently put out kind of a beautiful op-ed where he was advocating for putting a warning on social media platforms for the dangers to mental health. So as you're empathic, it can actually lead to a social media-induced vicarious trauma. that damages you and will worsen your mental health. This is all a roundabout way of saying that the more empathic you are, we see that it will

burn you out if you are in a caring profession, if you are in a caring relationship. If you have friends, partners, spouses, you try to support them more and more, it will worsen your mental and lead to burnout and in severe potential cases, even lead to vicarious trauma. So that's the first danger. But it gets better. So it's not just about absorbing the emotional contagion of other people. It turns out that the more empathic you are, the more likely you are to be taken advantage of. And if you're someone who's a highly sensitive person, if you're someone who's very empathic, you've already figured this out, that people take advantage of your kindness.

They create these double standards where you understand the pain that they're going through when they get dumped. And so you're there for them. You're supporting them. But when the situation is reversed and you need support, they're so callous that they don't actually bother to help you. They're like, I don't have time for this. They set limits with you, but are upset when you set limits with them. And if this is kind of the experience of a lot of people, what a lot of people will say is, oh, it's your fault, right? This is all in your head.

You need to get better at setting boundaries. Things are way more even. This is the callous person that you're friends with will say, no, no, this is actually 50-50. You just don't realize it. So it turns out that there are studies, fascinating studies, that actually demonstrate very clearly that the more empathic you are, the more likely you are to be screwed in life. So I'm going to share one of these with you, okay? Super cool study. So in this study, it requires a couple of different things.

So we have two people, okay? And we have, let's say, $100. And in this experiment, what we do is we give the $100 to one person. And we say to person number one, you have to divide this $100 into two groups. and then you have to offer one of these amounts to the other person. If the second person accepts the way that you split the money, both of you get to keep the money the way that you split it. So if I give you $100 and you decide, okay, like let's say it's me and you, okay?

So let's say I have the $100, okay, and I'm going to split it with you. So I say, okay, I'm going to take $50 and you take $50. Do you accept? If you accept, you actually get the $50 and I get the $50. If you do not accept, neither of us gets money. That's the way that the experiment is designed, okay? So what we discover is that most people, if you have a relatively normal amount of empathy, will split things 50-50 because that's fair, right?

I get $50 free bucks, you get $50-free, it's all good. The second that you add a little bit of sociopathy into the mix, things start to change. Because here I am, I'm a sociopath, right? And so I'm thinking to myself, well, this is like free money either way. So what I can do is I can say, how about 60, 40? I get 60 and you get 40. If this person rejects it, they get nothing. And if they accept it, they at least get 40 free bucks and I get 63 bucks.

Even though it's not even, you are still benefiting. And I'm willing to give you an unfair trade knowing that if you turn down my unfair trade, we both get screwed. So I'm going to take advantage of this fact by split. up the money in an unfair way. And what we find is that people will even split things. If you're a real asshole, you'll split things 90, 10. Okay, Dr. Kay, here's 100 bucks. I'm going to keep 90 and you take 10.

If you want to turn it down, go ahead and turn it down. None of us gets anything. You're going to lose out on $10. And if you turn down the trade, I may lose out on 90, but you're going to lose out on 10. It's just free money. Just take the trade. I'll keep 90. You take 10, right?

It's a win-win for both of us. So the more antisocial you are, the more likely you are to split things unfairly. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. It combines over two decades of my experience of both being a monk and a psychiatrist and distills all of the most important things I've learned into a choose-your-own-adventure format. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today. Now, here's the crazy thing. The person's capacity to accept an unfair trade depends on their level of everything. empathy. So the kinder you are, the more likely you are to accept an unfair trade in this scenario.

So if I'm splitting things 50-50, everyone's going to basically accept unless you're a real asshole and then you say, no, I'm not going to accept unless you give me 90 and you take 10, right? You can kind of flip it around. But that's not the way the experiment is organized. So basically what happens is most people will sort of default to 50-50. And in order to accept an unfair trade, your empathy has to be high, right? And so what that basically means is that the more impasseh. you are, the more likely you are to take an uneven or unfair trade. Now, here's the really crazy thing, okay? So we know that the neurotransmitter serotonin is associated with empathy.

The higher your serotonin is, the higher you are to be, the more likely you are to be empathic. As you are content and happy, you are more likely to be kind to other people. So they took this experiment, and then what they did is they gave people SSRIs. These are antidepressant or anti-anxiety medications that boost serotonin transmission. So this is not just a general personality thing. They actually administered medication to these people. And what they found is when you give someone a serotonin boosting medication, they are more likely to accept unfair trades. The more empathic you are, the more likely you are to get screwed by other people.

This is wild. And if you're someone who's a highly sensitive person or incredibly empathic, you know exactly what I'm talking about, that your empathy allows other people to take advantage of you. But it gets even we're more weirder. So the other really weird thing is if we look at histories of people who grew up abused, okay, they are more likely to be abusive. So if I was growing up, if I was a child growing up in a household where I was emotionally abused, when I grow up, I'm more likely to abuse other people. And so we may think, okay, this is just a consequence of trauma. But it turns out that it's not just the trauma itself. It turns out that the more empathic you are, the more you understand your abuser.

So as you put yourself in your abuser's shoes and then you sort of understand their perspective, there are two separate things that happen. The first is that you are likely to be forgiving of their abusive behavior. Okay. So this is like literally what I've seen when I work as a psychiatrist and I work with people who are were like in unfair or unhealthy or abusive relationships, what they always do is empathize with their abuser. So if someone is, let's say I'm in a romantic relationship where someone is physically abusive to me, what I'll do is I'll say like, oh, well, like, I understand they're under so much stress right now. You know, they've been drinking a lot and that's their unhealthy coping mechanism. It's something that we're

working on. You know, I understand that their life is hard. I understand why they would be like short-tempered. I understand why they would get angry. I understand that they grew up in a household where people were physically abusive to them. The more empathic I am with them, the more likely I am to be forgiving for their bad behavior, tolerant of their bad behavior. I empathize with my abuser. In the most severe cases of this, we see something called Stockholm Syndrome, which is pretty famous. But this is when someone gets kidnapped and is controlled. They start to have positive feelings towards their abuse.

abuser, and it appears that this is all mediated by empathy. Now, it gets even weirder than that. It turns out that the more empathic you are, if you associate with people who are sociopaths, the more sociopathic you will become. There's a study that looks at this very specifically. So they took a group of people, gamers, and they had them play a video game. And in one video game, they play a character like Superman. And in another video game, they play a character like the Joker. So they play like literally, you can play as a good character or you can play as an evil character. So you play the game for a while and it's whatever, but then they did something really interesting. After someone finished playing the game, they tested their capacity for empathy. And they found that whichever character you play actually shapes the way that you then interact with

the world. So they discovered a couple of things. The first is that if you played as the Joker, you are more likely to endorse violent solutions to problems. So when you play Superman and someone's like, is it okay to, you know, hit someone in the face if they're fucking annoying you? And people who play Superman are like, no, that's not okay. But if you play the Joker, people are more likely to say, yeah, it's okay to like use violence. Violence is more justifiable and more likely to be a course of action that is acceptable. But it gets even weird than that.

It's even at the very, very minute level. What they did is they took the people who played Superman, they took the people who played the Joker, the Joker, and they asked them to look at neutral facial expressions. So it's just a facial expression that's neutral. And people who played Superman would look at this facial expression and say, this person is neither angry or happy. They're not upset. They're not thrilled. They're just chilling. They're viving.

They're neutral. But people who played as the Joker are more likely to interpret neutral facial expressions as being hostile. or negative in some way. So when we sort of act out or empathize with some kind of abusive or negative figure, it changes the way that we perceive the world and it changes the way that we believe things are justified or not justified. Absolutely wild, right? And this is not just one study I'm telling you guys about.

This is like one study that has also been backed up by a lot of other studies. And then the third thing that they measured was how kind these people are after playing this video game. And what they sort of discovered is they would ask people like, how much money would you donate to a good cause? And people who play Superman are more likely to donate to a good cause, whereas people who play Joker, the Joker, are less likely to donate or would donate a smaller amount. So it appears that being empathic towards an evil figure in some way actually literally changes the way that we perceive the world, changes what we think is justifiable or acceptable, and literally alters our own kind. kindness behavior. The last thing that we're going to talk about is super wild because a lot of people think that empathy is a net positive for a relationship, including this guy. But it turns out that

empathy can actually be damaging for a relationship. And once I explain this to you, I hope it makes sense because once I understood it, it clicked for me so beautifully. So let's say you're early on in a relationship. You're not really committed to each other yet. Y'all have been talking a little bit. you've gone on maybe two dates. Now, let's say you're highly empathic, okay? And so early on in a relationship, y'all are not deeply in love. Y'all are kind of like, I don't know if I like this, I don't know if I don't like this, like this person is good in this ways.

These are a couple of green flags. These are a couple of red flags. And so the more empathic you are, the more sensitive and accurate you are at judging your partner's unhappiness. And let's think about what that would do. If I've gone on two dates with you. And I recognize that you are unhappy with these qualities. You don't like me for these reasons.

Maybe you find someone else attractive. And there's studies that show that people who are highly empathic early on in relationships accurately judge when their partner is attracted to someone else. Okay. So someone's like, hey, like, hey, do you think that, hey, do you think that girl is pretty? Do you think she's pretty? And I'm like, no, no, I don't think she's pretty. But if you're highly empathic, you know that I'm bullshitting.

You can read what I'm sort of really experiencing. You feel that empathy because your empathy circuits are strong. You're a mind reader. And you actually recognize that I do think that that chick is attractive. So what impact do you think this has on relationships? Studies actually show that a high level of empathy early on in relationships can actually sabotage the relationship and prevent it from progressing because you are accurately able to detect someone else's unhappiness.

And remember, because of the principle of emotional contagion. agent, when you detect that unhappiness, you also feel that unhappiness. So what that means is that if your partner is unhappy, you are able to accurately read that and you become unhappy. So let's take two scenarios, one where one partner is slightly unhappy and you're actually having a great time. The second person's like totally chill and totally vibe and we're enjoying this. It's two dates in, let's see where it goes. If they are not empathic, and there's a term called mind blindness, if they are more mind blind, they are oblivious to their part. partner's dissatisfaction, which means that their partner can kind of like work themselves

through it, right? Just because I'm attracted to someone or just because I'm unhappy with something, doesn't mean I'm going to break up with someone. I may need to work through it myself. I mean to let go of my ex. I may need to go to therapy myself or work on my confidence or whatever. So in one situation, you have one unhappy person and one happy person. And it turns out that if you have one happy person and one unhappy person in relationship, that relationship is more likely to succeed than if you have one unhappy person, emotional contagion, and then a second unhappy person. Which relationship do you think is more likely to succeed? One with an unhappy and one happy person where they can maybe work through things or a relationship

where both people are unhappy. So it turns out that we have studies that show that having a high level of empathy actually sabotages your early relationships. And I see this so much in my clinical practice when I work with people who are very caring, very empathic, and even are kind of like this nice guy picture. There's other stuff that involves nice guys. But let's say an empathic emotionally available dude. So it turns out that empathic emotionally available dudes will be like, oh my God, nice guys finish last. They have this consistent experience of getting into relationships, being incredibly caring, and for some reason they end up alone.

And then they say, like, I don't understand. I'm such a nice person. I'm emotionally available. I'm empathic. I'm caring. I've gone to therapy. And yet I'm alone. And then what does the internet do?

The internet victim blames, right? No, you're a nice guy. You're one of these toxic nice people who's looking for sex and you're not actually kind and you're this and you're this and you're this. There's no victim blaming unless you're a nice man on the internet, right? And that's the one situation where it's okay to victim blame. So we sort of have these. scenarios, and I've seen this not just in men, but women as well, who are incredibly empathic and

supportive and wind up alone. And it turns out that there are a couple of good reasons for that. The first is that as they are empathic, they experience emotional contagion, and their partner's unhappiness becomes their unhappiness. Instead of being stable and resilient and helping your partner move from unhappiness to happiness, you get contaminated by it, and it sabotages the relationship. But there are also other factors as well. People who are are empathic, as we mentioned, are more likely to be taken advantage of. People are going to take advantage of your kindness. If you are a nice guy, you know what I'm talking about, because people will take advantage of your kindness. There is this whole complex of sometimes people or men

are deceptive, right, where they are expecting sex, but they're offering kindness and that's kind of like an act. But the opposite is also true, where people are genuinely kind and get genuinely taken advantage of. And there's data to support that as well. And so it turns out that recognizing threats early on in a relationship is a double-edged sword. Because the more that you see problems in the relationship, the more likely you are to mentally check out. Whereas recognizing threats later in the relationship seems to correlate with positive, you know, relationship lifespan and satisfaction. So, and this may sound kind of confusing, right, because there are people on the internet who will talk about how you should be more empathic. And you may be wondering, okay,

well, like some people say you should be more empathic and some people you should, you should, say you should be less empathic, which one is it? And it turns out that empathy, just like any other human function, whether we look at confidence, ego, narcissism, fear, anxiety, happiness, love, all of these things are neither good nor bad. It is who is in control of them. Does the love control you? Oh, love is such a wonderful thing, except when you fall in love with the wrong person. Oh my God, anxiety is such a terrible thing, except when anxiety warns you of danger, and actually helps you survive and protect yourself. Now the question kind of becomes,

all right, Dr. Kay, you've said that we should be less empathic, but like, what do I do about this? How do I be less empathic? Should I just be more of an asshole? And it turns out that there are a variety of different things that correlate with sort of protecting yourself from too much empathy. And as we learn these skills,

we will have a healthier relationship with our empathy. The first thing that we need to do is be more compassionate instead of empathic. When we help someone, there are two different modes of operation. And it turns out that compassion is like neuroscientifically somewhat discreet from empathy. So remember, affective empathy is the ability to feel what someone else is feeling, whereas compassion is the ability to have kindness towards someone else. And often those two things come hand in hand, right?

I feel your pain, therefore I am kind. But you don't have to feel someone's pain to be kind to them. So when, you know, like if you have a little kid, let's say like a six-year-old kid who loses their favorite stuffed animal or their blanket gets, you know, ruined in the wash, even though I don't really understand that pain unless it happened to me, I can still be compassionate and kind towards them. What we sort of discover, especially if you're a psychiatrist or therapist, is that you can have compassion towards your patients without being caught up in their emotions. And this is where I think a key thing to understand is recognize that you don't. have to feel what you feel in order to be kind. You let them stay over there and you can exhibit kindness towards them without becoming one with them. The problem with empathy is that it causes two of us to fuse. So very practically, I think the best way to sort of implement this for people that you want

to help, be responsible for helping them. Don't be responsible for their problems. So when you make their problems, your problems, when you get overly invested, let's find you. a girlfriend, let's find you a boyfriend, let's find you love. I'm going to work night and day to find you love. That's a recipe for disaster because you can't find them love. You can't control their behavior, but you're trying to achieve a particular thing in their life. It actually has a paradoxical effect where the more invested you become, the more it damages you, and the more lazy they become. As you take responsibility for the outcome, they stop taking responsibility for the outcome. And a pattern that I've seen in my practice over and over and

over again is that the more empathic that you are, the more people rely on you and become like basically fucking lazy, right? And I see this a lot even with like parents that I work with who have children who are addicted to video games. As mom does more and more and more to help their child, does their laundry, cooks for them, let me help you with your resume, let me help you with this college application. Did you do your college application? The child becomes more and more incompetent. And what you will find, especially if you see all these, like, I see a lot of posts about things like weaponized incompetence, is what you will see is for anyone to have weaponized incompetence. And if you're an empathic person who deals with weaponized incompetence,

there is someone who facilitates or enables that weaponized incompetence. That human being has to be able to be that incompetent for a reason. Otherwise, they would be more capable, right? Someone had to do everything for them. So separate compassion from empathy. The second thing that we need to understand is that the more self-critical you are, the more vulnerable you are to high levels of empathy. So there are studies that show that you can be empathic. But if you have confidence in yourself, that sort of maintains a certain amount of stability in your identity. So if I'm confident and I'm empathic, that kind of works out okay. But if I'm self-critical, if I blame myself and I'm empathic, that is like a terrible cocktail.

that will wreck your mental. So let's like think through this for a second so we understand, right? So let's say I feel your pain. And then I'm self-critical. So now that I feel bad, when my emotional circuits activate, it also triggers my self-critical sort of like rumination and this kind of stuff, right? After you go through a breakup or when you get exposed to something sad, these self-critical thoughts will start flooding your mind. And it turns out that if you get that empathic signal from the outside, it still triggers this self-critical reaction. So if your friend is going through a breakup and they're really struggling and they're really sad, you can even blame yourself. I should be a better friend. Or they're asking for your help and you feel burnt out and then you feel

guilty. We'll get to that one in a second because that's a whole different thing. But it turns out that the more self-critical you are, the more vulnerable to empathy you will be. So the solution there is to focus on your own confidence. It isn't even about setting limits with other people or cutting yourself off, which is oftentimes the coping mechanism that we end up using, as you reduce your own self-critical thinking and develop confidence, you will be able to handle empathy better. Now, let's get to the third thing. So this is one super cool. So it turns out that the other thing that makes people vulnerable to high levels of empathy is internal conflict. So if you're someone who's highly empathic, hopefully this makes sense too, that you feel for

someone's pain. And then you want to help them, but you recognize that there's emotional contagion. You recognize that you have your own stuff to deal with. You don't have the bandwidth to help them right now. And so then you're conflicted because if you set boundaries with them, you feel guilty. And if you don't set boundaries with them, you're sacrificing your own stuff. So highly empathic people oftentimes are put into lose-lose situations by themselves. You feel like it's someone else putting you in in that situation, but is actually your internal conflict that worsens the negative impacts of empathy. And so what we want to do there is recognize anytime you are kind to someone else or you're

trying to be empathic towards someone else, right? Anytime you're trying to be supportive, notice if there is an internal conflict and recognize that the worst that internal conflict is, the more of a lose-lose situation you're going to be in. So how do you resolve that? And this is like literally what we do in therapy, right? So I have, you know, I had a patient once who their parents wanted them to come home for the holidays. Lots of patients, not just one. The patient doesn't like to come home from the holidays because mom and dad are divorced.

They live in the same city. And no matter whether you go home for the holidays or don't go home for the holidays, mom or dad is not going to be happy. That's a very ugly divorce. Mom is unhappy that you're only spending Christmas morning with her. Dad is unhappy that mom gets Christmas morning and they get, Christmas afternoon. And so these two people got divorced for a reason, right? They're really unhappy and they're somewhat self-absorbed. And there's no way that my patient can win. They hate going back

because no matter what they do, they cannot make both of their parents happy. Because what both of their parents want is a full Christmas with the child that they love. And even if my patient says, okay, this year we're going to do you, what that means is that the other parent gets no child for this year of Christmas. So there's no, they never hear the end of it. So they would try to set limits and they would feel incredibly guilty. And then they would not set limits and they would feel torn apart. So literally in psychotherapy, what we do with this person is work through that internal conflict, right? Stop taking responsibility for your parents' happiness. I know this sounds crazy, but they signed up for only half of a Christmas the moment they got divorced. Do you get that? Do you get

that? Like, this is something of their making. They're the fucking ones who decided to get divorced and somehow this is your problem to solve. Now you're supposed to duplicate yourself and be in two places at once. You're supposed to make up for the decision that your parents divorce themselves. This is what we do in psychotherapy. It is about resolving that internal conflict. And when we realize that, when we have that breakthrough and he's like, oh, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. This is not my problem. I no longer have to feel guilty. I'm going to Show up at Christmas morning with my mom. Show up at Christmas morning with my dad.

And then I'm also going to have a conversation with them and be like, hey, both of y'all, let's hop on a conference call. Both y'all want me to be there for Christmas. If y'all wanted me to be there for Christmas the whole time and both of you wanted me 100%. The thing that y'all should have done is never gotten divorced. Now y'all are in two places. I cannot be in two places at once. Y'all tell me what you want to do. Y'all figure it out.

Stop putting me in the middle. It is the resolution of that internal conflict, the absolute. solution of that guilt that then protects you from that empathy and stops getting you screwed. It's such a simple solution. It's such a simple realization that you as a child don't control this. This is their problem. And yet the more empathic we are, the more we adopt their point of view, because their parents are mad at each other. So I'm going to accept their framing of the problem. So this is something that you'll have to be incredibly careful about, that everyone is talking about the benefits of empathy and how we should be more empathic and all I'm looking for is someone who

like is very empathic and supports me and loves me and and you know if they can't handle me at my worst they don't deserve me at my best and since they're I'm entitled to them handling me at my worst I'm going to just be my worst all the time right because that's their fucking problem now and there you are accepting it you're like yeah I want to be a good boyfriend I want to be a good girlfriend I should be emotionally available I should be empathic I should be supportive because if I'm not I feel guilty. And then that tears me up inside and I don't want to feel guilty because that makes me a bad person. So I'm going to help them and I'm not going to set boundaries with them and I'm going to let them walk all over me.

It doesn't work. So be very careful about empathy. Recognize that it can damage everything from your relationships to your self-esteem to having you even experience vicarious trauma and learn to set some of these limits. Otherwise, you will go absolutely insane. And then everyone around you who cares about you can go insane with you. you.