July 16, 2025 • 61 mins
Empathy isn’t the problem—but lately, some voices claim that it is, arguing that empathy leads to irrational decisions or even “civilizational suicide.” If you’re someone who cares deeply, you probably reject the idea that empathy is a threat to society. In fact, you likely believe we need more empathy in the world, not less. Yet at the same time, you might find yourself struggling with empathy exhaustion & wondering how to stay engaged without burning out. This episode is to help you unpack how this flawed argument is connected to your exhaustion & how you can stay engaged in meaningful social change while caring for yourself as a compassionate person.
In this episode of Mindset Unlimited, I explore how empathy is a complex human capacity we need to understand to avoid manipulation & prevent burnout.
Some of what I explore in this episode includes:
- Unmasking the manipulation of empathy in political & media narratives
- Breaking the cycle of empathy & self-erasure
- Understanding compassion fatigue
- Engaging practical tools for emotional resilience
Thoughts or questions? Share them with me!
https://www.speakpipe.com/MindsetUnlimited
EPISODES REFERENCED:
How to Avoid Overwhelm and Access Joy
How to Prioritize Your Needs (Beyond Maslow)
How to Navigate Societal Gaslighting & Stay Empowered
LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
Are Billionaires Good For Society?
From Compassion Fatigue to Resilience
Why a Lack of Empathy Is the Root of All Evil
CONNECT WITH VALERIE:
This podcast was produced by VF Coaching
Proud member of FPC
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Valerie Friedlander (00:00):
Hello, my friends and welcome to another
(00:02):
episode of Mindset, unlimited.
Mindset tips, tools andinspiration for women in a time
of change, I'm your host.
Valerie Friedlander, ICF,certified life coach,
sociologist, intersectionalfeminist, truth seeker, artist,
mom and nerd. Today we aretalking about empathy isn't the
problem, untangling the mythsand staying engaged without
(00:26):
burning out. There's a lot ofreasons why I wanted to talk
about this, and I have spent alot of time digging in to
various articles and just thisis a super researched, chock
full of references episode. Ifyou want to follow along with
me, all of the links to thethings are in the show notes, so
(00:49):
you're welcome to check thoseout as well. Part of the reason
I wanted to engage this isbecause so many of the people
that I work with are highlyempathetic. They are people who
really care deeply about thepeople in their lives, as well
as making a difference, making apositive impact in the world and
(01:09):
in this current climate, social,political climate, it's hard, it
is hard to be one of thosepeople. And there's also a lot
of noise, a lot of talk, a lotof black and white thinking
around empathy and the idea ofempathy. You may have heard some
of it in the news, and I wantedto engage that. I wanted to go,
(01:33):
Okay, what is going on here?
Why? Why is this a thing? I findthat understanding stuff can
help me make more intentionalchoices around how I both
support myself as I deal withthe impact of those things, as
well as deciding how I want toshow up to them and what do I
need to help myself and thepeople around me do that. So
(01:56):
just a short little breakdownwe're talking about, why are we
talking about this? So I'm goingto dig a little bit into what's
coming up and what sparked myyou know, what I think we need
to talk about this. I'm going totalk about what is empathy and
break that down, because wethrow words around. As you know,
I'm a word nerd, and I want toknow like, what are we what are
(02:18):
we actually saying hereexhaustion in this particular
social, political climate, andwhat do we do? So a little bit
more detail about like, whatyou're gonna get in this episode
is we're looking at themanipulation of empathy, how
it's being twisted in today'spolitical and media narratives.
What happens when we confuseempathy with self erasure, and
(02:42):
how do we find balance there?
How chronic stress andcompassion fatigue affect your
ability to show up and staygrounded? And of course, tools
to reconnect with the thingsthat help you show up and stay
grounded like your values,understanding stress cycle and
reclaiming your strength, inyour compassion and in your
(03:05):
empathy. So this is very, veryfull episode. I before I dive in
and get started, I do want toencourage you. I'm working on
the whole like back end SEOstuff, but with the rise of AI
and search engine shifting andall of that, it's really hard to
(03:25):
reach people just it's just alot. So if you enjoy this
episode, if you find thisepisode helpful, please share it
with others. It would mean somuch to me. I think this is
really important information, soI would appreciate it also, if
you feel inclined to leave areview, even just like clicking
(03:46):
the stars in Spotify as anexample, that helps the systems
tell other people that this issomething that people are
interested in or might beinterested in, So it raises it
up in the search. So if youwould be willing to take a
moment to do that, I wouldsuper, super appreciate it. And
(04:08):
of course, I always love to hearfrom you. So reach out if you
have questions. Want me to diginto something further, whatever
I love hearing from you. So allright, with all that said,
without further ado, let's getstarted.
(04:29):
Let's start with why I'm doingthis episode. Now, I work with a
lot of empathetic people, soanytime there's talk about
empathy, I'm like, Hmm, what'sgoing on there? What are we
talking about? What is thislooking like? And like many of
you, I saw the quote runningaround that was made by Elon
(04:52):
Musk. That was the fundamentalweakness of Western
civilization, is empathy. Andthat. Quote was in memes. It was
all over the place, and I saw itin juxtaposition to a researcher
who, well, a psychologist whoworked with the Nazis who were
to go on trial for the Nurembergtrials, and talking about how
(05:15):
empathy was the thing that waslacking. And that kind of
juxtaposition. And I was like,Okay, well, this is very one or
the other. It's good, bad, goodversus bad. And I actually think
that that kind of juxtapositionis part of where we run into
problems. It's where we have atendency to lose the nuance of
(05:39):
what it means to be human. So Idecided to dig in and find out
what was going on there. So thatquote from Musk was from a
conversation that he had withJoe Rogan on that podcast. And
more of the full quote was, Ibelieve in empathy, like I think
you should care about otherpeople, but you need to have
(06:03):
empathy for civilization as awhole and not commit to a
civilizational suicide. So thoseare like, What the heck is that?
So I dug into, what is thisidea, this suicidal empathy
concept, that he is referringto, and it comes from someone
that both musk and Rogan havelooked up to. Rogan's had him on
(06:26):
his podcast before it's Gad Saadwho is a professor of marketing
at Concordia University inMontreal, Canada. He is the
former holder of the ConcordiaUniversity Research Chair in
evolutionary behavioral sciencesand Darwinian consumption. He
pioneered the use ofevolutionary psychology in
(06:49):
marketing and consumer behavior.
So he defines this idea ofsuicidal empathy as the
inability to implement optimaldecisions when our emotional
system is tricked into anorgiastic, hyperactive form of
empathy deployed on the wrongtargets. Evolution has endowed
our emotional and cognitivesystems with the capacity to
(07:11):
deploy our resourcesstrategically. This is why
parents are willing to jump infront of a bus to save their
biological children, but areless likely to sacrifice their
lives to save a random childacross the globe. It does not
make them callous, but Darwinianbeings capable of cost benefit
(07:34):
trade offs rooted in universalfeatures of our human nature.
Okay, so some of the things thatjumped out in that little
paragraph to me had to do withemotional system is tricked, and
the idea of wrong targets, butalso the idea of Darwin and what
he's I mean, the whole thing isjust kind of a mess. So what I'm
(07:58):
seeing in that is, how do youdecide who the wrong targets
are? I mean, his idea is,obviously that it is those who
aren't biological. But how doyou decide if the emotional
system is tricked? And I'msaying this as somebody who,
again, I've worked with peoplewho have dealt with being
(08:21):
gaslit, who have dealt withnarcissistic behavioral type,
things that are people pleasersand have struggled with that
overload of empathy, and we'regoing to talk about that in a
little bit, but I just thatwhole thing was like, what part
of it is, you know, themisunderstandings of Darwin, the
(08:43):
two pieces that are commonlyutilized around Darwin have to
do with natural selection andsurvival of the fittest. Now,
natural selection is the ideathat there is a prescient
directionality to evolution. Sothis is where he's talking
about, like the Darwinian beingscapable of cost benefit trade
(09:06):
offs, as though it's thislogical process that we know
that this is going to benefitus, etc. But the problem is,
natural selection is nonprescient. It cannot be looked
forward to anticipate whatchanges are going to be needed
for survival. Truly, it doesn'tmake any sense, because it
(09:29):
assumes that we have so muchmore control over our
environment and what's happeningin our ecosystems than we do.
Certainly we have an impact onit, but in terms of the
trajectory of it and what we'recreating and impacting, we can't
predict like that. This is oneof the problems with humans, is
(09:51):
that we are one of the only, Ibelieve, creatures that can
project ourselves into thefuture. But we do it really
badly, because we do it based onwhere we currently are, not
where we will be. So it assumesthat we have power that. That we
don't really have, and it alsofocuses in on individuals, like
(10:15):
the idea that we individuallyprotect our own biological
children more than otherchildren, which isn't
necessarily true, because thereare plenty of adoptive parents
who would have a big issue withthat conversation in the first
place. And additionally, we'retalking species evolution, not
(10:38):
individual evolution, soapplying darwinianism to
individuals doesn't work and isjust another example of our own
conditioning around hyperindividualism run very amok in
our own philosophicalunderstanding of ourselves and
the idea of survival of thefittest. This idea that survival
(11:00):
depends entirely on cutthroatcompetitive fitness has been
very much debunked. It is beenshown that species practice both
mutual struggle and mutual aid.
So there's like a dualdisposition of selfishness and
selflessness, competitivenessand cooperativeness that all
(11:23):
lead to evolution. Most of thisis from an article from
Scientific American that islinked in the show notes. And
this was a slight digressionfrom the primary focus of the
episode, but I really felt likeit was important because of the
way Darwin is utilized in theseconversations. As I was digging
(11:46):
into all of this, I came acrossthe work of Dr Jabra Ghneim. I
apologize if I didn't pronouncehis last name correctly. He is a
Doctor of Education at BrighamYoung University, and he wrote a
paper looking at this argumentand exploring it and his
background. His research focuseson the role of entrepreneurship
(12:11):
education in promoting thesocial inclusion of refugees,
particularly through communitiesof practice, and I really wanted
to dig further into his work,but only so much time he
emphasizes the core criticism ofthis idea of suicidal empathy is
that suicidal empathy is beingused as a rhetorical tool to
(12:34):
delegitimize policies aimed atequity or humanitarian aid.
Labeling certain actions asquote, unquote, suicidal empathy
can become a convenient way toavoid grappling with the
structural injustices orhistorical imbalances that such
policies attempt to address. Soit was helpful to have that
(12:57):
concisely identified in hiscritique. He explores a variety
of philosophical, sociological,psychological aspects of the
dynamics going on, and I havethat linked in the show notes
too, if you want to read throughthe entire paper, it's very
interesting. In his critique,some of the core questions that
(13:20):
he is exploring is, can a virtuelike empathy become a vice? Can
compassion for others overshadowefforts to uphold societal
values, enforce laws andmaintain security? Part of what
he brings up in this is the ideaof empathetic distress.
Empathetic distress is a termthat psychologists use for the
(13:44):
phenomenon that occurs whenindividuals become so consumed
by the suffering of others thatthey make decisions that are
considered irrational orcounterproductive. And of
course, this ties into that ideaof suicidal empathy that
societies can also get so caughtup in the suffering of others,
(14:06):
they make decisions that areirrational or counterproductive
to the social well being. Whatthis brings up to me is a
question of who decides what itmeans to be well. Who decides
societally, what it means to bewell, if we're talking
individually, theoretically, theindividual would have that
(14:29):
deciding factor. But what doesit mean for a society? And in Dr
Saad's view and his examplesthat he gives of where we have
suicidal empathy. It really is alimitation around what society
can be. It is a reduction ofpossibilities and this scarcity
mindset, like there's no roomfor everyone, and it ties into
(14:53):
that idea of survival of thefittest being a competition
amongst people. One of theexamples that he gives is the
idea that migrants to the USreceive greater aid than
veterans. And even if that wereactuality, what is a solution to
that? Is it to take aid awayfrom other people, or is it to
(15:16):
extend aid how we think abouteach other and how we are well
together has a lot to do withour values. The example that he
gives on an individual level isabout if you feel empathy for a
person who is struggling, andyou let them into their home and
then they steal from you, andthat would be an example of
(15:40):
suicidal empathy, where yourempathy harmed you. But this
turns to the idea of, what areour values. I think of the story
of Les Mis and in that story, ifyou're not familiar, the main
character has been convicted ofstealing bread and served time,
and he is released, and he isstruggling, and one of the
(16:04):
guards has decided that he willsteal again and is following him
to wait to re arrest him. And heis helped by a priest, I
believe, who opens his home tohim and and lets him stay. And
then he steals from the priest,and runs off with, I think it's
two candlesticks. And the guardcatches him and goes, I've got
(16:28):
you. And the priest comes outand says, Oh, no, no, I gave
those to him, and you forgotthese other pieces of silver
that I also gave you. And sothat's the thing that comes to
mind is like, what values are weupholding? Another thing that
comes to mind, you know, when wethink about values, when we
(16:51):
think about what our capacity isand where our capacity is being
constricted, in terms of ourability to care for each other
and the well being of eachother. And we're going to talk a
little bit more later, aboutlike in group, out group, and
money and things like that, butthis idea of scarcity, of what
(17:15):
we think we don't have, butwhere we might actually have
more than we think. And I did anepisode A while back on Maslow,
and I talked about the Blackfoottribe. And in the Blackfoot
tribe, the idea of wealth washow much you had to give to the
community. So it really has todo with the way we think about
(17:39):
society and the way weunderstand ourselves, and what
values we choose to uplift inour interactions with each
other. So this sets thegroundwork for what we're
talking about in this episode. Iknow there's like a long
groundwork setup, but I thinkit's important to be aware of
(18:00):
the ways in which thisconversation about empathy can
be manipulated, in ways in whichour empathy is being
manipulated, and how do we startto think and engage
intentionally in an empatheticway? So in order to do that,
let's back up a minute and talkabout what is empathy. So there
(18:22):
are two types of empathy,there's cognitive empathy, which
is also known as mentalizing orperspective. Taking this type of
empathy involves consciouslyadopting another's perspective
and trying to understand howthey are thinking or feeling.
Then there's affective empathy,also known as emotional empathy,
(18:46):
emotional contagion, vicariousexperience or empathetic
sharing. Affective empathyentails feeling elements of
another person's emotions. Thisis a somewhat automatic process
involving mimicry, whereanother's expression or demeanor
is mirrored. This is what Iresonate with personally. I used
(19:09):
to think it was such asuperpower, I could sit next to
you and feel your emotions, andthen I was like, Wait, is that?
Like, maybe that's not actuallygood. And that led me to a lot
of people pleasing force,helping, controlling kind of
behaviors, because if somebodywas upset around me, I needed to
(19:32):
fix them so that I could feelbetter. So it wasn't actually
about taking care of them, itwas really about taking care of
me through them, partly becauseI didn't, I didn't have a sense
of self or boundaries. So thisis, I think, where we can run
into issues with empathy, andI'm going to get to that in just
(19:56):
a very quick second. I didappreciate Debbie L Stoewen's
outline of the differencebetween sympathy, empathy and
compassion. She says, sympathyis I care about your suffering.
Empathy. Is I feel yoursuffering, and compassion is I
want to relieve your suffering.
And I would say compassion, Iwant to relieve your suffering,
(20:19):
has to do with caring about thesuffering, not necessary. And it
could be because of feeling thesuffering the empathy part, but
it can also be like I have thatseparation between myself and my
feelings and you and yourfeelings, which I do think is a
healthy thing to have, and Iwanted to separate those three
(20:43):
things, because so often we usethem interchangeably,
particularly empathy andcompassion. And so what is? What
is the difference? Sometimesempathy leads to compassion, but
I do question, is it compassion?
If it's because you're trying tofix yourself through fixing
(21:07):
somebody else? So that's wherewe can run into some problems
with empathy. It's and thedifference of the problems with
empathy that I'm going to diginto versus the problems of
empathy that the professor andmusk have identified is it's not
about emotional blindness. It'snot about just automatically
(21:30):
doing things that are counter toyour well being. It really has
to do with stress responsepatterning and attachment
patterning that all tie intosocial conditioning. So that's
where I'm separating what I'mgoing to talk about from what
they think is the problem is,it's it's not, it's not breaking
(21:53):
us down because we're just beingdumb, being blind, it is an
issue that we need to look at interms of how we've been
conditioned societally, as wellas individually, in terms of
safety and belonging and whatworks for us. And so this is
another place where wedifferentiate values, our
(22:16):
conditioned values, to ourchosen values. I talk about that
in another episode. So, solet's, let's touch on, like the
two big, big things aroundempathy that I notice in terms
of difficulty, one is empatheticassumption. So if I'm sitting
next to you and I'm picking upthat you are upset, what often
(22:39):
can happen is that my experiencegets super imposed upon your
experience. I don't necessarilyknow why you're upset, what's
going on that you're upset whatyou need, but I would make
assumptions on that based off ofwhat I would need and what's
going on for me. So there's aprojection of how I would feel
(23:03):
and what I would want versusasking. And this is that
differentiation between the ideaof the Golden Rule, do unto
others as you would have them dounto you, and the platinum rule,
which is Do unto others as theywould like done to them, so
separating those out and gettingcurious instead of assuming, is
(23:26):
one of the things that we can dowhen it comes to a problem
related to empathy. Anotheraspect of that same empathetic
assumption is also knowingempathetic capacity. When people
are tired or stressed, they tendto show less empathy than when
they're calm and rested. Soknowing what kind of energetic
(23:50):
capacity you have around holdingspace for someone else's
feelings and your own ability,so when we're holding space,
we're not necessarily taking onsomebody else's feelings, but
we're allowing room to feelthem, to pick them up, to
recognize them and sit with themand be with them. If I don't
(24:13):
have the capacity for that,that's where I can lose myself
in somebody else's feelings. Ican take them on and own them as
my own, and make assumptions,and then I'm not showing up well
for that person. So I need tomake sure that I'm caring for
myself in that. Okay, so anotheraspect that is a challenge in
(24:37):
empathy is in group empathy. Andactually Saad speaks to that,
but in kind of the opposite waythat I'm going to talk about it,
in a lot of ways, what He'semphasizing is this idea of only
having in group empathy, andwhen we have out group empathy
is when we're creating suicidalempathy is essentially what I
(25:01):
understand from what I'mreading, in terms of what he's
saying. So in group, empathy iswhere we have a narrow focus,
and we are prioritizing thesuffering that you're familiar
with over other suffering. Sothat's instead of extending
moral obligations to all people,you're only extending them to
(25:24):
those that you happen tonaturally empathize with. So
this is where I would say thesuicidal empathy idea plays into
the propaganda machinesupporting oppressive systems
and taking us down the road togenocide because it only upholds
in group empathy, instead ofvaluing empathy for all people
(25:47):
and the effort that it takes toextend empathy to people that
you don't necessarily naturallyempathize with. Okay, so that's
a lot. I know it's a lot to takein. I covered a number of
things, and I'm recognizing, asI'm going that this episode is
going to be kind of long. Sothis is a good place to just
(26:10):
kind of take a breath and sitwith all of the facets of
empathy. It has a lot of nuanceto it. It is not good or bad.
There are things that we need torecognize within ourselves, and
this is why self work is so keyto support our ability to show
up with other people and to liveinto our values we are naturally
(26:35):
going to gravitate towards ingroup empathy if we have
particular trauma experience.
And again, trauma is notnecessarily the big T trauma
where something happened to us,but also where something didn't
happen that should havehappened, we are going to be
more resistant. It's also wherediscomfort can come into play.
(26:57):
If I am empathetic and I show upto you in a way that I think
will be helpful, I may find thatmy intention is mismatched to my
impact, because if I don'tactually know if what would
support me isn't what wouldsupport you, or if I am, turns
out, projecting onto you certainthings That make sense to me but
(27:21):
might not fit you because of ourown lived experiences related to
our own identities, sexual,gender, relational cultural
experiences, then I may getfeedback that isn't what I want.
It may not feel good to me. Itmay cause discomfort. And so my
ability to sit in the discomfortof receiving that there was a
(27:45):
misalignment between what Ithought and what my intention
was and what my impact was iskey. It's so important, because
otherwise, if I can't sit withthat discomfort, then I can
exacerbate the harmful impactthat I didn't want in the first
place, because I prioritize mycomfort over the growth edge and
(28:08):
leaning into the growth edgethat I'm being invited to look
at discomfort is an opportunityfor growth. But if I can't sit
with it and deal with my owndiscomfort, then instead of
uplifting my intention andfinding a different way to
engage my intention, I am goingto sacrifice the intention for
(28:31):
upset and discomfort over theimpact that wasn't what I
expected, and this isparticularly key for those of us
with a greater number ofsocietal privileges based on our
identities to do this workbecause discomfort learning
about oppression and harm is notas bad as being oppressed and
(28:54):
harmed, and this is especiallychallenging when my locus of
control is outside of myself,trying to make myself feel
better by trying To make youbetter so trying to address my
comfort by addressing you so mylocus of control is outside of
myself. That's where we oftenslide down that slippery slope
(29:17):
and lose sight of what wethought we were trying to do
because. We were actually tryingto do wasn't what we thought we
were trying to do. Let me saythat again, this is where we get
lost, because what weconsciously think we are trying
to do help somebody else is notwhat we're actually trying to do
(29:40):
because of our own wounds thatare being projected onto them
that we are trying to fixthrough them, and if it doesn't
work, then it feels like thatwound gets bigger, is got salt
in it, and that's where we startto lock down. So even just
noticing, I'm even moreactivated now than I was when I
(30:03):
noticed that there was somethinggoing on where I had that
empathy. Empathy can be anopportunity to check in with
yourself. And I would actuallyeven encourage checking in with
yourself first before you thenextend. Because when we extend
an assumption and extend tocontrol, even if we don't mean
(30:27):
to, that's where we get lost andwe're not actually doing what we
intended, versus if we'vechecked in, I do have capacity.
I'm in a space where I canreceive new information and I
can reach out with curiosity,then I can receive what will
actually be supportive and whatactually is needed. So I can
(30:50):
engage with compassion, becauseI experienced empathy. And then,
of course, the ability to extendempathy to people who I'm not
naturally inclined to empathizewith because of my own
conditioning, is another keycomponent. Okay, so part two is,
let's talk about thedehumanization of ourselves and
(31:13):
of others. So we just talked alittle bit about empathy and the
dynamics of where empathy isactually problematic. And now
let's talk about where this canget really lost and how it's
being exploited in our currentsystems. So the people that are
primarily uplifting thisnarrative around societal
(31:36):
suicidal empathy are the peoplewho are exploiting others for
their personal gain. Those arethe ones you hear mostly talking
about this idea and upliftingthis idea. I'll give you a
couple examples. So let's talkabout money. Some of these
folks, like Jeff Bezos ofAmazon, where the workers are
(31:59):
being exploited, the poor areessentially paying for the work
and making the wealthy superwealthy. There's Zuckerberg
replacing people with AI onmeta. And of course, it's useful
to you know, we were using thepeople to build all these
systems and replacing them withmachines because they don't
(32:22):
require health insurance, healthbenefits, sick leave, human
things. So these are the places.
These are the people that you'retypically hearing from. Part of
the issue that comes up here isthey don't want us empathizing
with the people that are beingcrunched under their boots, even
(32:47):
if we are them. They want toreduce our empathy. They want us
to use the products and aspireto be them. A good example of
this is Sam Altman, who recentlydid an interview where he said
we should encourage people tomake tons of money and then also
find ways to widely distributewealth and share the compounding
(33:11):
magic of capitalism. One doesn'twork without the other. You
can't raise the floor and notalso raise the ceiling for very
long. And I'd rather hear fromcandidates about how they're
going to make everyone have thestuff billionaires have, instead
of how they're going toeliminate billionaires. The
(33:34):
problem with this is that it'snot possible for us to all be
billionaires. It's just, it'snot it's not feasible
realistically. But this is thisidea that, like, well, you
should be able to be abillionaire. You should be able
to be like us, and we want youto want to be us and imagine you
(33:57):
could be us and empathize withus versus the people that we
exploit. Those people don'tmatter. They're irrelevant.
Aspire to be me so that you canbe relevant. Candice said, has a
great article where she talksabout billionaires are not your
friend, and the high cost ofexcess wealth in society. And
(34:20):
one of the things that shehighlights is, let's humanize
these billionaires. Billionaireshave the same 24 hours in a day.
Way as the rest of us, and thatis often used as a weaponization
of like well, we all have thesame 24 hours, so you must not
be using yours well. But here'sthe kicker, their immense wealth
(34:45):
isn't a result of somesuperhuman time management
effort or intellect. It's builton the back of our collective
labor involving various levelsof exploitation, and it's not
necessarily even like directwrongdoing. The system itself is
designed to reward those at thetop disproportionately, far
(35:08):
beyond individual contribution,and of these people, there is a
spectrum that moves from peoplebeing blissfully ignorant to
their impact or just really,really trying to feel like
generous, kind people like SamAltman. I've heard interviews
with him where he really wantsto think that he's thinking of
(35:31):
everybody, and he wants the bestfor everybody, and he's a really
good person and all of that, buthe is not grounded in the
reality, and he cannot receiveany kind of accountability to
that. And there's an interviewthat he did with Trevor Noah
where Trevor, like, tries to gethim to see stuff, and he's like,
(35:55):
nope, and La, la, la, nope,nope. It's all fine. It's gonna
be fine. Everything will betotally okay. And in that
though, there's still activemanipulation of systems to
safeguard or increase fortunes,and that's often our expense.
And again, some people are like,ah, and some people are like, I
(36:18):
don't care. You know, thosepeople don't matter. Don't be
one of those people, except mostof us are those people. So
basically, as Candace says, thereality is that the staggering
levels of wealth thatbillionaires amass necessitate
practices like maintaining lowwages, evading taxes through
(36:41):
intricate global schemes, andprioritizing corporate profits
over the well being ofcommunities and the environment.
So this is a place where the ingroup, out group, we're being
encouraged and propagandized. Isthat a word? I don't know. It is
now to make ourselves the outgroup that we don't want to be
(37:05):
empathized with the people thatwe should aspire to, and put
ourselves down and make it anindividual problem that we are
not as successful, ie, wealthy,as these other people. So we're
going to actively be encouragedto put down the people who
aren't wealthy, includingourselves, with this idea that
(37:28):
eventually we could be thosepeople, which is just simply not
possible. Sam's idea of theraising the ceiling and the
floor, the problem is thatthere's no raising of the floor.
So why are we raising theceiling? Well, that's what we're
doing. We're raising the ceilingand we're not raising the floor.
(37:52):
And he's right. They do have togo hand in hand, but they are
not, and that is the place thatgets wiped from the
conversation. Okay, so that'sone aspect. Let's talk about
another aspect of in group outgroup race, and this one is
playing in, just like the moneyone is playing in in our current
(38:15):
socio political environment.
These are the two that really,really stand out. There are
more, but they're the ones I'mdigging into right now. The
common view of race for a longtime, and this ties to eugenics
and everything, is that traitsessential to race are inter are
unchangeable. Now we know raceis a construct. It's totally
(38:38):
made up by people, so thatdoesn't even make any sense, but
that is the narrative. So let'stie to another period of time
where this in group out group,and the idea of empathy for the
in group and dehumanization ofthe out group came into play for
a very, very long time. There'scontinuous and there still is to
(39:02):
be to be clear like there stillis a continuous portrayal of
Jews as duplicitous, malevolentand powerful as far back as the
beginning of the 19th century,and that was harnessed by Hitler
and his Dark Souls skillfulmanipulation of tactics to turn
people's pre existing antiJewish sentiments into hatred,
(39:26):
initially via propaganda books,essays and speeches alluding to
a Jewish conspiracy to gainworld leadership, and later also
by staging hoaxes of foreignattacks on Germans and the Nazi
regime's benevolence. The ideabeing that if these
characteristics are inherent perracial theory, then it would be
(39:50):
impossible to unlearn them. Andso the only solution is extermination.
This is. Categorizing is anaspect of dehumanization,
assigning and limiting thepossibilities of a person based
on contrived, perceivedcharacteristics of their
(40:11):
identity. And while this excerptis related specifically to what
was done to the Jewish people bywhite Germans under the Nazi
regime. It is important to notethat they were inspired by what
was done to black people here inthe United States, and this
continues to be done againstblack people and Jewish people,
(40:35):
as well as Palestinian peopleand Latino people, particularly
right now, Latino migrant peoplein the US. It is done by the
people in power, andparticularly perpetuated by the
use of things like propaganda.
The main function of propagandais to elicit strong emotions in
a group of people in order tocreate a cohesive group
(40:58):
organized around common values,and implicitly or explicitly
define who are included from agroup who are excluded from
group membership, in order Tomobilize the forces of group
polarization. This isweaponization of empathy. This
is these people deserve to haveour empathy, and these people do
(41:20):
not. This goes back to gad saidcomment about deployed on the
wrong targets. Emotional systemis tricked into an orgiastic,
hyperactive form of empathydeployed on the wrong targets,
who are the wrong targets, andlooking at where his philosophy,
where he places his philosophy,and where people who are
(41:44):
uplifting his idea where theirphilosophy lies. It's within
these propaganda machines of whobelongs in the in group. The in
group are the billionaires youshould want to be in the in
group. The in group are whitepeople. The other people can't
possibly even be in the ingroup. So those are just a
(42:07):
couple examples of what ishappening there and so how this
idea of weaponized empathy isactually being weaponized. Okay,
so let's move over to this ideaof desensitization, what we
normalize, we accept what ishappening here. So within this
propaganda in group, out group,we are wired for belonging. We
(42:30):
want to belong. So if we havethe ability to fit into the in
group, or pretend that we couldfit into the in group, that's
where we are going to put energyto feel safe. So all of these
tools are to make some peoplefeel like by putting other
people down, by devaluing otherpeople, dehumanizing other
(42:53):
people, they will become safer.
So an example of all of thisstate sanctioned images of
people in dehumanizingconditions. This is a tactic of
psychological warfare to makeexamples of real people with
full lives, peoples whose lovedones are looking for them and
(43:16):
mobilizing for them to come homesafely. These examples of people
in dehumanizing conditions areintended to deter us all from
public dissent, to scare us intocompliance when we share state
sanctioned images, whether weare the ones re sharing them or
the people who are sharing them,we are not only participating in
(43:40):
The planned campaign, but alsodoing their work for free,
emboldening their allies,normalizing imagery of
inhumanity into our feeds, andputting our communities in a
freeze state. This all derivesfrom the People's media project
digging into this informationand a 2023 review found that
(44:02):
repeated exposure todehumanizing prison imagery,
especially when stripped ofcontext, lowers public empathy
and increases tolerance forpunitive policies. The more
often people see prisonersdepicted as sub human, the more
likely they are to accept harshpunishment as normal or even
(44:24):
necessary. That is the power ofrepetition. US media uses
repetitive, demeaning images ofblack people, Hispanic people,
Latino people, to justifysystems of violence. It was done
back. Think when we had slaveryand Jim Crow promoting the idea
that slavery was fine,segregation is appropriate, mass
(44:47):
incarceration is necessary, ittrained the public to accept and
expect black and brown people'ssubjugation. Many of us know
this is an issue, so I know thatif you're listening to this, you
are, I'm probably preaching tothe choir here, and it is really
important to pull these thingsforward, to be aware of the
(45:11):
dynamics I often have talkedabout, like repeating things
over and over again. We can'thelp but have it come into our
being in some way, it takes evenmore conscious effort. So being
really mindful of yourconsumption and what you share
is key. We know these things arean issue. We push back and
(45:34):
strive to overcome it, yet weare increasingly exhausted by
design, and I think that'sreally important to remember
that our exhaustion is bydesign, and we also want to stay
engaged compassion fatigue, theclassic symptom, is a decline in
the ability to feel sympathy andempathy and accordingly, act
(45:57):
from a place of compassion, ourability to care, to feel, to
take action is replaced by anoutwardly impassive,
detachedness. Someoneexperiencing compassion fatigue
becomes more task oriented, lessemotion focused, and can
increasingly pull away fromothers, becoming socially
(46:18):
isolated, profound physical andemotional exhaustion are classic
symptoms. So being really awareof what's happening inside of
you, if that's something that'shappening for you, then really
giving yourself room to takecare of yourself, this is where
we have a continually activatedstress response. And again, I'm
(46:42):
going to reiterate, this is bydesign. A lot of people are
expressing the experience thatis defined as hyper
normalization. This is a termthat was articulated in 2005 by
Alexey jorchak, again, myapologies if I'm mispronouncing
to describe the civilianexperience in Soviet Russia.
(47:04):
Hyper normalization describeslife in a society where two main
things are happening. People areseeing that governing systems
and institutions are broken, andthe second is that for reasons
including a lack of effectiveleadership and an inability to
imagine how to disrupt thestatus quo, people then carry on
(47:28):
with their lives as normal,despite systemic dysfunction,
give or take, a heavy load offear, Dread, denial and
disassociation. So this is wherehyper normalization engages,
that juxtaposition between thedysfunctional and the mundane.
It's described by haraf haruchaa digital anthropologist as the
(47:51):
visceral sense of waking up inan alternate timeline with a
deep bodily knowing thatsomething isn't right, but
having no clear idea how to fixit. It's reading an article
about childhood hunger andgenocide, only to scroll down to
a carefree listicle highlightingthe best dressed celebrities, or
(48:14):
a whimsical quiz about what PopTart Are you? I wanted to
highlight hyper normalization,because, similar to compassion
fatigue, we start to shut downour ability to show up because
there is an overwhelm ofexperience. So this is two
different facets. We have thedesensitization from the
(48:36):
propaganda machine, from the ingroup, out group stuff, and then
we have the spaces of the hypernormalization, where we feel
this sense that something iswrong, but we don't really know
how to engage it at all. So it'slike an overwhelm of feeling
versus a depletion of or numbingof feeling. So I think both of
(49:00):
those are really important torecognize and engage and name
because naming them and what weare dealing with when you're
coming from a place as anempathetic person wanting to
uphold your values and show upto the things that are going on,
when we can name these two polesand experiences, it can create a
(49:23):
form. Of psychological relief,as Caroline Hickman, a
psychotherapist, expresses, theworst thing in the world is to
feel that you're the only onewho feels this way, and that you
are going quietly mad andeveryone else is in denial. That
terrifies people. It traumatizespeople again. This is that like
(49:47):
something should be there andisn't there that is a type of
trauma. People who feel thewrongness of current conditions
acutely may be experiencing somedepression and anxiety, but
those feelings can be quiterational, not a symptom of poor
mental health alarmism or a lackof proper perspective. So for
(50:10):
those of you who are listening,part of the reason I wanted this
part two to this idea of empathyis you probably are somebody who
considers yourself to be ahighly empathetic person. And
when you are in this space of,okay, well, how do I function? I
know all of these things, all ofthese polls, all of these
(50:34):
dynamics. I know that what'sbeing said is wrong. It's being
weaponized. It's activating myempathy maliciously. It is
playing on these very realdynamics around empathy to shut
me down. Well, what do I doabout it? And it's important to
name it and also recognize thatit's it's happened before this
(50:57):
shutdown happens, not justbecause of a lack of feeling,
but because of an overwhelm offeeling. In the 1955 book, They
Thought They Were Free theGermans 1933 to 45 journalist
Milton Mayer described a similarstate of freeze in German
citizens during the rise of theNazi Party. Quote, you don't
(51:19):
want to act or even talk alone.
You don't want to go out of yourway to make trouble. Why not?
Well, you're not in the habit ofdoing it. And it is not just
fear, fear of standing alonethat restrains you. It's also
genuine uncertainty. We justdon't know. And this is where I
think we're seeing a lot of it,in the world, or in US society,
(51:43):
and people who care and theywant to do something and they
don't like what's happening, butthey don't know what to do. And
I would even say, I often runinto this where I'm like, I
don't know what to do. What willmake a difference, what
sacrifices but not too much.
(52:06):
What do I need to give up orshow up for? How do I engage the
enormity and overwhelm is astate of inaction, and it
happens when we feel likesomething is bigger than us. So
it is a normal response. So Ithink first and foremost,
really, truly, it is recognizingthe feelings, recognizing the
(52:28):
experience, and being with that,not telling yourself that
something's wrong with you, orbuying into sometimes we know
consciously some of thesedynamics that are happening
around us, but we can't fend offall of it. So a piece of it gets
in, and the piece of it that ismost likely to get in is the
(52:52):
over individualization, becausewe're all so conditioned around
individualism that that piece ofit's a you thing, and you have
to do things alone. Thing iswhat's going to get emphasized,
and that is a core component ofhow we feel overwhelmed and we
freeze. So understanding therole of stress and the stress
(53:15):
response cycle is the next pieceof this. So we can name these
things, we can know these thingsare going on, and then we have
stress and the stress responsecycle. So I want to highlight
something that in a training Irecently did with Dr Scott
Lyons, he highlighted, which isthat stress is how we mobilize
(53:39):
energy to meet life's demands.
So it is important, and it isappropriate for it to be here
there is energy being mobilizedto meet life's demands. The
problem is, and we have theuncertainty. We don't know what
the demands are. We don't knowwhat to do with energy, and it
just sits in us, and it ends upturning inward, so recognizing
(54:02):
that it's natural, it's normalfor stress to be there. Stress
is not something to avoid, it'ssomething to complete. So we
have an activization, we need tomobilize it and then allow it to
deactivate and give ourselvesroom to restore so that we can
then be ready the next time anactivation is present, also
(54:26):
recognizing what is real andwhat is not. What actually needs
that activation and what is pastand doing that healing work is
really key, because then we aremore able to access and assess a
situation to know, yes, Iactually need the stress
response right here, right now,versus I need it just all the
(54:49):
time, everywhere. One of theother pieces that comes up is
fear of losing that stressenergy and that ability to show
up and falling into thedesensitization and
normalization. So we hold on tothe stress to keep us from
becoming desensitized ornormalizing what's happening.
(55:11):
Yet it is necessary to make roomfor being fully human, so that
we can hold on to our ownhumanity. In order to hold space
for others humanity, we do haveto actually also humanize
ourselves, which means access toa full range of human emotions,
which includes joy as anexample. How do you hold on to
(55:34):
both? Okay, so I'm going totouch on that it's getting a
little bit long in this episode.
I do want to highlight that anepisode I just did recently
engages that it'll be linked inthe show notes, but it is called
How to Avoid overwhelm andaccess joy in a time of change.
(55:57):
And I think that one I aimed toengage some of these pieces,
because, again, we do need tohave access to the whole range.
So a couple things that can alsohelp. One, all right, so we've
talked about naming what'shappening. We've talked about
recognizing that stress is anormal response under our
(56:20):
circumstances. The other pieceis also recognizing that social
change isn't good or bad, itjust is. So this goes back to
that whole thing we started withabout like, ooh, change is bad.
We want to hold on to what itis. No, it's not good or bad, it
just is. It's what we do with itthat matters. So empowered
(56:44):
change versus disempoweredchange, our ability to show up
to the unknown. So again,emotional overwhelm is not an
indication of the need to shutdown. We need structural change.
So what are our collectivevalues? Who do we want to be.
What world do we want to create?
Remembering the ends don'tjustify the means. The means
(57:06):
create the ends. What are weseeding through our action,
individually, collectively? Sowhen we can tap into what are
our collective values? What dowe want to uplift in the world,
then we start connecting toother people who have that same
desire, and start workingcollectively, not individually,
(57:29):
like, oh, I have an idea. Let'sdo these things, but communing
with one another to be able toseek a way forward. What are we
going to do together? Values area grounding point of
discernment. One of the thingsthat Paul sagard, PhD in defense
of empathy, speaks to is empathywithout reason is blind, but
(57:52):
reason without empathy is empty.
So being able to access ourbrains and our ability to
process and get curious andengage is important, but we also
need to be able to care andextend ourselves in care beyond
just what our in group, ourstandard in group says, but from
(58:15):
there, and of course, that'swhere our values come in and
moral reasoning. Okay, so to digfurther into that, I encourage
you to check out the recentepisode again, how to avoid
overwhelm and access joy in atime of change. I'm going to go
through those points that Iencourage, naming what's
(58:38):
happening, feeling the feelings,understand the role of stress
and the stress cycle thatactivation, mobilization,
deactivation, restoration, andgetting support to navigate
that, because sometimes those gooff, and the activation stays
activated because of our pastexperiences as well as the
(59:00):
moment that we're in. Part ofthat can be knowing what your
values, knowing what's importantto you, and connecting with
community to help guide wherethat mobilization happens.
Remembering systemic problemsrequire systemic solutions. So
knowing your part in thatepisode I talk about the book
(59:23):
social change now, a guide forreflection and connection,
written by Deepa Iyer. Take alook at that, connect with other
people, so that you have adirection, even in the
uncertainty of things, of wherethe mobilization can occur for
you, that works for you, becauseotherwise we get spread too
(59:45):
thin. We're spraying everywhere.
We're not targeting the thingthat actually needs the
attention. And then once you.
Know, what are your values?
Where's the aim and who you'redoing that with taking
meaningful action. Takingmeaningful action helps prevent
burnout that is caused byhelplessness. Tapping into
(01:00:07):
meaning rooted in your valuesand your ability, allows you to
mobilize that stress response sothat it can be deactivated at
least temporarily, you havespace to restore and engage the
next opportunity that fitswithin your values and the
meaningful action that you takewithin the community that you're
(01:00:30):
part of. Okay, I know that's alot. There's a long episode. I
appreciate you. I appreciatethat you're listening. I hope
this was helpful to you. Ifthere's something that you felt
confused about that you wouldlike me to dig further in. I
really kind of skimmed the topof a lot of things to try and
(01:00:53):
give you the core pieces. Let meknow. I'm happy to dive further
in. If there's an aspect of thisyou want support with, reach
out. I'm here for you. That ispart of my role in this. Is
exactly this, but also thecoaching, support of engaging
that stress process, engagingthe pieces of, how do you move
(01:01:16):
forward when you're in thisstuck or freeze response, what
does that look like? So helpingyou access that. And so please
reach out lots of links in theshow notes to check out. And if
you found this episodeinsightful helpful, please share
it with others. I would greatlyappreciate it, and I will talk
(01:01:40):
to you all next time.
Hello, my friends and welcome to another
(00:02):
episode of Mindset, unlimited.
Mindset tips, tools andinspiration for women in a time
of change, I'm your host.
Valerie Friedlander, ICF,certified life coach,
sociologist, intersectionalfeminist, truth seeker, artist,
mom and nerd. Today we aretalking about empathy isn't the
problem, untangling the mythsand staying engaged without
(00:26):
burning out. There's a lot ofreasons why I wanted to talk
about this, and I have spent alot of time digging in to
various articles and just thisis a super researched, chock
full of references episode. Ifyou want to follow along with
me, all of the links to thethings are in the show notes, so
(00:49):
you're welcome to check thoseout as well. Part of the reason
I wanted to engage this isbecause so many of the people
that I work with are highlyempathetic. They are people who
really care deeply about thepeople in their lives, as well
as making a difference, making apositive impact in the world and
(01:09):
in this current climate, social,political climate, it's hard, it
is hard to be one of thosepeople. And there's also a lot
of noise, a lot of talk, a lotof black and white thinking
around empathy and the idea ofempathy. You may have heard some
of it in the news, and I wantedto engage that. I wanted to go,
(01:33):
Okay, what is going on here?
Why? Why is this a thing? I findthat understanding stuff can
help me make more intentionalchoices around how I both
support myself as I deal withthe impact of those things, as
well as deciding how I want toshow up to them and what do I
need to help myself and thepeople around me do that. So
(01:56):
just a short little breakdownwe're talking about, why are we
talking about this? So I'm goingto dig a little bit into what's
coming up and what sparked myyou know, what I think we need
to talk about this. I'm going totalk about what is empathy and
break that down, because wethrow words around. As you know,
I'm a word nerd, and I want toknow like, what are we what are
(02:18):
we actually saying hereexhaustion in this particular
social, political climate, andwhat do we do? So a little bit
more detail about like, whatyou're gonna get in this episode
is we're looking at themanipulation of empathy, how
it's being twisted in today'spolitical and media narratives.
What happens when we confuseempathy with self erasure, and
(02:42):
how do we find balance there?
How chronic stress andcompassion fatigue affect your
ability to show up and staygrounded? And of course, tools
to reconnect with the thingsthat help you show up and stay
grounded like your values,understanding stress cycle and
reclaiming your strength, inyour compassion and in your
(03:05):
empathy. So this is very, veryfull episode. I before I dive in
and get started, I do want toencourage you. I'm working on
the whole like back end SEOstuff, but with the rise of AI
and search engine shifting andall of that, it's really hard to
(03:25):
reach people just it's just alot. So if you enjoy this
episode, if you find thisepisode helpful, please share it
with others. It would mean somuch to me. I think this is
really important information, soI would appreciate it also, if
you feel inclined to leave areview, even just like clicking
(03:46):
the stars in Spotify as anexample, that helps the systems
tell other people that this issomething that people are
interested in or might beinterested in, So it raises it
up in the search. So if youwould be willing to take a
moment to do that, I wouldsuper, super appreciate it. And
(04:08):
of course, I always love to hearfrom you. So reach out if you
have questions. Want me to diginto something further, whatever
I love hearing from you. So allright, with all that said,
without further ado, let's getstarted.
(04:29):
Let's start with why I'm doingthis episode. Now, I work with a
lot of empathetic people, soanytime there's talk about
empathy, I'm like, Hmm, what'sgoing on there? What are we
talking about? What is thislooking like? And like many of
you, I saw the quote runningaround that was made by Elon
(04:52):
Musk. That was the fundamentalweakness of Western
civilization, is empathy. Andthat. Quote was in memes. It was
all over the place, and I saw itin juxtaposition to a researcher
who, well, a psychologist whoworked with the Nazis who were
to go on trial for the Nurembergtrials, and talking about how
(05:15):
empathy was the thing that waslacking. And that kind of
juxtaposition. And I was like,Okay, well, this is very one or
the other. It's good, bad, goodversus bad. And I actually think
that that kind of juxtapositionis part of where we run into
problems. It's where we have atendency to lose the nuance of
(05:39):
what it means to be human. So Idecided to dig in and find out
what was going on there. So thatquote from Musk was from a
conversation that he had withJoe Rogan on that podcast. And
more of the full quote was, Ibelieve in empathy, like I think
you should care about otherpeople, but you need to have
(06:03):
empathy for civilization as awhole and not commit to a
civilizational suicide. So thoseare like, What the heck is that?
So I dug into, what is thisidea, this suicidal empathy
concept, that he is referringto, and it comes from someone
that both musk and Rogan havelooked up to. Rogan's had him on
(06:26):
his podcast before it's Gad Saadwho is a professor of marketing
at Concordia University inMontreal, Canada. He is the
former holder of the ConcordiaUniversity Research Chair in
evolutionary behavioral sciencesand Darwinian consumption. He
pioneered the use ofevolutionary psychology in
(06:49):
marketing and consumer behavior.
So he defines this idea ofsuicidal empathy as the
inability to implement optimaldecisions when our emotional
system is tricked into anorgiastic, hyperactive form of
empathy deployed on the wrongtargets. Evolution has endowed
our emotional and cognitivesystems with the capacity to
(07:11):
deploy our resourcesstrategically. This is why
parents are willing to jump infront of a bus to save their
biological children, but areless likely to sacrifice their
lives to save a random childacross the globe. It does not
make them callous, but Darwinianbeings capable of cost benefit
(07:34):
trade offs rooted in universalfeatures of our human nature.
Okay, so some of the things thatjumped out in that little
paragraph to me had to do withemotional system is tricked, and
the idea of wrong targets, butalso the idea of Darwin and what
he's I mean, the whole thing isjust kind of a mess. So what I'm
(07:58):
seeing in that is, how do youdecide who the wrong targets
are? I mean, his idea is,obviously that it is those who
aren't biological. But how doyou decide if the emotional
system is tricked? And I'msaying this as somebody who,
again, I've worked with peoplewho have dealt with being
(08:21):
gaslit, who have dealt withnarcissistic behavioral type,
things that are people pleasersand have struggled with that
overload of empathy, and we'regoing to talk about that in a
little bit, but I just thatwhole thing was like, what part
of it is, you know, themisunderstandings of Darwin, the
(08:43):
two pieces that are commonlyutilized around Darwin have to
do with natural selection andsurvival of the fittest. Now,
natural selection is the ideathat there is a prescient
directionality to evolution. Sothis is where he's talking
about, like the Darwinian beingscapable of cost benefit trade
(09:06):
offs, as though it's thislogical process that we know
that this is going to benefitus, etc. But the problem is,
natural selection is nonprescient. It cannot be looked
forward to anticipate whatchanges are going to be needed
for survival. Truly, it doesn'tmake any sense, because it
(09:29):
assumes that we have so muchmore control over our
environment and what's happeningin our ecosystems than we do.
Certainly we have an impact onit, but in terms of the
trajectory of it and what we'recreating and impacting, we can't
predict like that. This is oneof the problems with humans, is
(09:51):
that we are one of the only, Ibelieve, creatures that can
project ourselves into thefuture. But we do it really
badly, because we do it based onwhere we currently are, not
where we will be. So it assumesthat we have power that. That we
don't really have, and it alsofocuses in on individuals, like
(10:15):
the idea that we individuallyprotect our own biological
children more than otherchildren, which isn't
necessarily true, because thereare plenty of adoptive parents
who would have a big issue withthat conversation in the first
place. And additionally, we'retalking species evolution, not
(10:38):
individual evolution, soapplying darwinianism to
individuals doesn't work and isjust another example of our own
conditioning around hyperindividualism run very amok in
our own philosophicalunderstanding of ourselves and
the idea of survival of thefittest. This idea that survival
(11:00):
depends entirely on cutthroatcompetitive fitness has been
very much debunked. It is beenshown that species practice both
mutual struggle and mutual aid.
So there's like a dualdisposition of selfishness and
selflessness, competitivenessand cooperativeness that all
(11:23):
lead to evolution. Most of thisis from an article from
Scientific American that islinked in the show notes. And
this was a slight digressionfrom the primary focus of the
episode, but I really felt likeit was important because of the
way Darwin is utilized in theseconversations. As I was digging
(11:46):
into all of this, I came acrossthe work of Dr Jabra Ghneim. I
apologize if I didn't pronouncehis last name correctly. He is a
Doctor of Education at BrighamYoung University, and he wrote a
paper looking at this argumentand exploring it and his
background. His research focuseson the role of entrepreneurship
(12:11):
education in promoting thesocial inclusion of refugees,
particularly through communitiesof practice, and I really wanted
to dig further into his work,but only so much time he
emphasizes the core criticism ofthis idea of suicidal empathy is
that suicidal empathy is beingused as a rhetorical tool to
(12:34):
delegitimize policies aimed atequity or humanitarian aid.
Labeling certain actions asquote, unquote, suicidal empathy
can become a convenient way toavoid grappling with the
structural injustices orhistorical imbalances that such
policies attempt to address. Soit was helpful to have that
(12:57):
concisely identified in hiscritique. He explores a variety
of philosophical, sociological,psychological aspects of the
dynamics going on, and I havethat linked in the show notes
too, if you want to read throughthe entire paper, it's very
interesting. In his critique,some of the core questions that
(13:20):
he is exploring is, can a virtuelike empathy become a vice? Can
compassion for others overshadowefforts to uphold societal
values, enforce laws andmaintain security? Part of what
he brings up in this is the ideaof empathetic distress.
Empathetic distress is a termthat psychologists use for the
(13:44):
phenomenon that occurs whenindividuals become so consumed
by the suffering of others thatthey make decisions that are
considered irrational orcounterproductive. And of
course, this ties into that ideaof suicidal empathy that
societies can also get so caughtup in the suffering of others,
(14:06):
they make decisions that areirrational or counterproductive
to the social well being. Whatthis brings up to me is a
question of who decides what itmeans to be well. Who decides
societally, what it means to bewell, if we're talking
individually, theoretically, theindividual would have that
(14:29):
deciding factor. But what doesit mean for a society? And in Dr
Saad's view and his examplesthat he gives of where we have
suicidal empathy. It really is alimitation around what society
can be. It is a reduction ofpossibilities and this scarcity
mindset, like there's no roomfor everyone, and it ties into
(14:53):
that idea of survival of thefittest being a competition
amongst people. One of theexamples that he gives is the
idea that migrants to the USreceive greater aid than
veterans. And even if that wereactuality, what is a solution to
that? Is it to take aid awayfrom other people, or is it to
(15:16):
extend aid how we think abouteach other and how we are well
together has a lot to do withour values. The example that he
gives on an individual level isabout if you feel empathy for a
person who is struggling, andyou let them into their home and
then they steal from you, andthat would be an example of
(15:40):
suicidal empathy, where yourempathy harmed you. But this
turns to the idea of, what areour values. I think of the story
of Les Mis and in that story, ifyou're not familiar, the main
character has been convicted ofstealing bread and served time,
and he is released, and he isstruggling, and one of the
(16:04):
guards has decided that he willsteal again and is following him
to wait to re arrest him. And heis helped by a priest, I
believe, who opens his home tohim and and lets him stay. And
then he steals from the priest,and runs off with, I think it's
two candlesticks. And the guardcatches him and goes, I've got
(16:28):
you. And the priest comes outand says, Oh, no, no, I gave
those to him, and you forgotthese other pieces of silver
that I also gave you. And sothat's the thing that comes to
mind is like, what values are weupholding? Another thing that
comes to mind, you know, when wethink about values, when we
(16:51):
think about what our capacity isand where our capacity is being
constricted, in terms of ourability to care for each other
and the well being of eachother. And we're going to talk a
little bit more later, aboutlike in group, out group, and
money and things like that, butthis idea of scarcity, of what
(17:15):
we think we don't have, butwhere we might actually have
more than we think. And I did anepisode A while back on Maslow,
and I talked about the Blackfoottribe. And in the Blackfoot
tribe, the idea of wealth washow much you had to give to the
community. So it really has todo with the way we think about
(17:39):
society and the way weunderstand ourselves, and what
values we choose to uplift inour interactions with each
other. So this sets thegroundwork for what we're
talking about in this episode. Iknow there's like a long
groundwork setup, but I thinkit's important to be aware of
(18:00):
the ways in which thisconversation about empathy can
be manipulated, in ways in whichour empathy is being
manipulated, and how do we startto think and engage
intentionally in an empatheticway? So in order to do that,
let's back up a minute and talkabout what is empathy. So there
(18:22):
are two types of empathy,there's cognitive empathy, which
is also known as mentalizing orperspective. Taking this type of
empathy involves consciouslyadopting another's perspective
and trying to understand howthey are thinking or feeling.
Then there's affective empathy,also known as emotional empathy,
(18:46):
emotional contagion, vicariousexperience or empathetic
sharing. Affective empathyentails feeling elements of
another person's emotions. Thisis a somewhat automatic process
involving mimicry, whereanother's expression or demeanor
is mirrored. This is what Iresonate with personally. I used
(19:09):
to think it was such asuperpower, I could sit next to
you and feel your emotions, andthen I was like, Wait, is that?
Like, maybe that's not actuallygood. And that led me to a lot
of people pleasing force,helping, controlling kind of
behaviors, because if somebodywas upset around me, I needed to
(19:32):
fix them so that I could feelbetter. So it wasn't actually
about taking care of them, itwas really about taking care of
me through them, partly becauseI didn't, I didn't have a sense
of self or boundaries. So thisis, I think, where we can run
into issues with empathy, andI'm going to get to that in just
(19:56):
a very quick second. I didappreciate Debbie L Stoewen's
outline of the differencebetween sympathy, empathy and
compassion. She says, sympathyis I care about your suffering.
Empathy. Is I feel yoursuffering, and compassion is I
want to relieve your suffering.
And I would say compassion, Iwant to relieve your suffering,
(20:19):
has to do with caring about thesuffering, not necessary. And it
could be because of feeling thesuffering the empathy part, but
it can also be like I have thatseparation between myself and my
feelings and you and yourfeelings, which I do think is a
healthy thing to have, and Iwanted to separate those three
(20:43):
things, because so often we usethem interchangeably,
particularly empathy andcompassion. And so what is? What
is the difference? Sometimesempathy leads to compassion, but
I do question, is it compassion?
If it's because you're trying tofix yourself through fixing
(21:07):
somebody else? So that's wherewe can run into some problems
with empathy. It's and thedifference of the problems with
empathy that I'm going to diginto versus the problems of
empathy that the professor andmusk have identified is it's not
about emotional blindness. It'snot about just automatically
(21:30):
doing things that are counter toyour well being. It really has
to do with stress responsepatterning and attachment
patterning that all tie intosocial conditioning. So that's
where I'm separating what I'mgoing to talk about from what
they think is the problem is,it's it's not, it's not breaking
(21:53):
us down because we're just beingdumb, being blind, it is an
issue that we need to look at interms of how we've been
conditioned societally, as wellas individually, in terms of
safety and belonging and whatworks for us. And so this is
another place where wedifferentiate values, our
(22:16):
conditioned values, to ourchosen values. I talk about that
in another episode. So, solet's, let's touch on, like the
two big, big things aroundempathy that I notice in terms
of difficulty, one is empatheticassumption. So if I'm sitting
next to you and I'm picking upthat you are upset, what often
(22:39):
can happen is that my experiencegets super imposed upon your
experience. I don't necessarilyknow why you're upset, what's
going on that you're upset whatyou need, but I would make
assumptions on that based off ofwhat I would need and what's
going on for me. So there's aprojection of how I would feel
(23:03):
and what I would want versusasking. And this is that
differentiation between the ideaof the Golden Rule, do unto
others as you would have them dounto you, and the platinum rule,
which is Do unto others as theywould like done to them, so
separating those out and gettingcurious instead of assuming, is
(23:26):
one of the things that we can dowhen it comes to a problem
related to empathy. Anotheraspect of that same empathetic
assumption is also knowingempathetic capacity. When people
are tired or stressed, they tendto show less empathy than when
they're calm and rested. Soknowing what kind of energetic
(23:50):
capacity you have around holdingspace for someone else's
feelings and your own ability,so when we're holding space,
we're not necessarily taking onsomebody else's feelings, but
we're allowing room to feelthem, to pick them up, to
recognize them and sit with themand be with them. If I don't
(24:13):
have the capacity for that,that's where I can lose myself
in somebody else's feelings. Ican take them on and own them as
my own, and make assumptions,and then I'm not showing up well
for that person. So I need tomake sure that I'm caring for
myself in that. Okay, so anotheraspect that is a challenge in
(24:37):
empathy is in group empathy. Andactually Saad speaks to that,
but in kind of the opposite waythat I'm going to talk about it,
in a lot of ways, what He'semphasizing is this idea of only
having in group empathy, andwhen we have out group empathy
is when we're creating suicidalempathy is essentially what I
(25:01):
understand from what I'mreading, in terms of what he's
saying. So in group, empathy iswhere we have a narrow focus,
and we are prioritizing thesuffering that you're familiar
with over other suffering. Sothat's instead of extending
moral obligations to all people,you're only extending them to
(25:24):
those that you happen tonaturally empathize with. So
this is where I would say thesuicidal empathy idea plays into
the propaganda machinesupporting oppressive systems
and taking us down the road togenocide because it only upholds
in group empathy, instead ofvaluing empathy for all people
(25:47):
and the effort that it takes toextend empathy to people that
you don't necessarily naturallyempathize with. Okay, so that's
a lot. I know it's a lot to takein. I covered a number of
things, and I'm recognizing, asI'm going that this episode is
going to be kind of long. Sothis is a good place to just
(26:10):
kind of take a breath and sitwith all of the facets of
empathy. It has a lot of nuanceto it. It is not good or bad.
There are things that we need torecognize within ourselves, and
this is why self work is so keyto support our ability to show
up with other people and to liveinto our values we are naturally
(26:35):
going to gravitate towards ingroup empathy if we have
particular trauma experience.
And again, trauma is notnecessarily the big T trauma
where something happened to us,but also where something didn't
happen that should havehappened, we are going to be
more resistant. It's also wherediscomfort can come into play.
(26:57):
If I am empathetic and I show upto you in a way that I think
will be helpful, I may find thatmy intention is mismatched to my
impact, because if I don'tactually know if what would
support me isn't what wouldsupport you, or if I am, turns
out, projecting onto you certainthings That make sense to me but
(27:21):
might not fit you because of ourown lived experiences related to
our own identities, sexual,gender, relational cultural
experiences, then I may getfeedback that isn't what I want.
It may not feel good to me. Itmay cause discomfort. And so my
ability to sit in the discomfortof receiving that there was a
(27:45):
misalignment between what Ithought and what my intention
was and what my impact was iskey. It's so important, because
otherwise, if I can't sit withthat discomfort, then I can
exacerbate the harmful impactthat I didn't want in the first
place, because I prioritize mycomfort over the growth edge and
(28:08):
leaning into the growth edgethat I'm being invited to look
at discomfort is an opportunityfor growth. But if I can't sit
with it and deal with my owndiscomfort, then instead of
uplifting my intention andfinding a different way to
engage my intention, I am goingto sacrifice the intention for
(28:31):
upset and discomfort over theimpact that wasn't what I
expected, and this isparticularly key for those of us
with a greater number ofsocietal privileges based on our
identities to do this workbecause discomfort learning
about oppression and harm is notas bad as being oppressed and
(28:54):
harmed, and this is especiallychallenging when my locus of
control is outside of myself,trying to make myself feel
better by trying To make youbetter so trying to address my
comfort by addressing you so mylocus of control is outside of
myself. That's where we oftenslide down that slippery slope
(29:17):
and lose sight of what wethought we were trying to do
because. We were actually tryingto do wasn't what we thought we
were trying to do. Let me saythat again, this is where we get
lost, because what weconsciously think we are trying
to do help somebody else is notwhat we're actually trying to do
(29:40):
because of our own wounds thatare being projected onto them
that we are trying to fixthrough them, and if it doesn't
work, then it feels like thatwound gets bigger, is got salt
in it, and that's where we startto lock down. So even just
noticing, I'm even moreactivated now than I was when I
(30:03):
noticed that there was somethinggoing on where I had that
empathy. Empathy can be anopportunity to check in with
yourself. And I would actuallyeven encourage checking in with
yourself first before you thenextend. Because when we extend
an assumption and extend tocontrol, even if we don't mean
(30:27):
to, that's where we get lost andwe're not actually doing what we
intended, versus if we'vechecked in, I do have capacity.
I'm in a space where I canreceive new information and I
can reach out with curiosity,then I can receive what will
actually be supportive and whatactually is needed. So I can
(30:50):
engage with compassion, becauseI experienced empathy. And then,
of course, the ability to extendempathy to people who I'm not
naturally inclined to empathizewith because of my own
conditioning, is another keycomponent. Okay, so part two is,
let's talk about thedehumanization of ourselves and
(31:13):
of others. So we just talked alittle bit about empathy and the
dynamics of where empathy isactually problematic. And now
let's talk about where this canget really lost and how it's
being exploited in our currentsystems. So the people that are
primarily uplifting thisnarrative around societal
(31:36):
suicidal empathy are the peoplewho are exploiting others for
their personal gain. Those arethe ones you hear mostly talking
about this idea and upliftingthis idea. I'll give you a
couple examples. So let's talkabout money. Some of these
folks, like Jeff Bezos ofAmazon, where the workers are
(31:59):
being exploited, the poor areessentially paying for the work
and making the wealthy superwealthy. There's Zuckerberg
replacing people with AI onmeta. And of course, it's useful
to you know, we were using thepeople to build all these
systems and replacing them withmachines because they don't
(32:22):
require health insurance, healthbenefits, sick leave, human
things. So these are the places.
These are the people that you'retypically hearing from. Part of
the issue that comes up here isthey don't want us empathizing
with the people that are beingcrunched under their boots, even
(32:47):
if we are them. They want toreduce our empathy. They want us
to use the products and aspireto be them. A good example of
this is Sam Altman, who recentlydid an interview where he said
we should encourage people tomake tons of money and then also
find ways to widely distributewealth and share the compounding
(33:11):
magic of capitalism. One doesn'twork without the other. You
can't raise the floor and notalso raise the ceiling for very
long. And I'd rather hear fromcandidates about how they're
going to make everyone have thestuff billionaires have, instead
of how they're going toeliminate billionaires. The
(33:34):
problem with this is that it'snot possible for us to all be
billionaires. It's just, it'snot it's not feasible
realistically. But this is thisidea that, like, well, you
should be able to be abillionaire. You should be able
to be like us, and we want youto want to be us and imagine you
(33:57):
could be us and empathize withus versus the people that we
exploit. Those people don'tmatter. They're irrelevant.
Aspire to be me so that you canbe relevant. Candice said, has a
great article where she talksabout billionaires are not your
friend, and the high cost ofexcess wealth in society. And
(34:20):
one of the things that shehighlights is, let's humanize
these billionaires. Billionaireshave the same 24 hours in a day.
Way as the rest of us, and thatis often used as a weaponization
of like well, we all have thesame 24 hours, so you must not
be using yours well. But here'sthe kicker, their immense wealth
(34:45):
isn't a result of somesuperhuman time management
effort or intellect. It's builton the back of our collective
labor involving various levelsof exploitation, and it's not
necessarily even like directwrongdoing. The system itself is
designed to reward those at thetop disproportionately, far
(35:08):
beyond individual contribution,and of these people, there is a
spectrum that moves from peoplebeing blissfully ignorant to
their impact or just really,really trying to feel like
generous, kind people like SamAltman. I've heard interviews
with him where he really wantsto think that he's thinking of
(35:31):
everybody, and he wants the bestfor everybody, and he's a really
good person and all of that, buthe is not grounded in the
reality, and he cannot receiveany kind of accountability to
that. And there's an interviewthat he did with Trevor Noah
where Trevor, like, tries to gethim to see stuff, and he's like,
(35:55):
nope, and La, la, la, nope,nope. It's all fine. It's gonna
be fine. Everything will betotally okay. And in that
though, there's still activemanipulation of systems to
safeguard or increase fortunes,and that's often our expense.
And again, some people are like,ah, and some people are like, I
(36:18):
don't care. You know, thosepeople don't matter. Don't be
one of those people, except mostof us are those people. So
basically, as Candace says, thereality is that the staggering
levels of wealth thatbillionaires amass necessitate
practices like maintaining lowwages, evading taxes through
(36:41):
intricate global schemes, andprioritizing corporate profits
over the well being ofcommunities and the environment.
So this is a place where the ingroup, out group, we're being
encouraged and propagandized. Isthat a word? I don't know. It is
now to make ourselves the outgroup that we don't want to be
(37:05):
empathized with the people thatwe should aspire to, and put
ourselves down and make it anindividual problem that we are
not as successful, ie, wealthy,as these other people. So we're
going to actively be encouragedto put down the people who
aren't wealthy, includingourselves, with this idea that
(37:28):
eventually we could be thosepeople, which is just simply not
possible. Sam's idea of theraising the ceiling and the
floor, the problem is thatthere's no raising of the floor.
So why are we raising theceiling? Well, that's what we're
doing. We're raising the ceilingand we're not raising the floor.
(37:52):
And he's right. They do have togo hand in hand, but they are
not, and that is the place thatgets wiped from the
conversation. Okay, so that'sone aspect. Let's talk about
another aspect of in group outgroup race, and this one is
playing in, just like the moneyone is playing in in our current
(38:15):
socio political environment.
These are the two that really,really stand out. There are
more, but they're the ones I'mdigging into right now. The
common view of race for a longtime, and this ties to eugenics
and everything, is that traitsessential to race are inter are
unchangeable. Now we know raceis a construct. It's totally
(38:38):
made up by people, so thatdoesn't even make any sense, but
that is the narrative. So let'stie to another period of time
where this in group out group,and the idea of empathy for the
in group and dehumanization ofthe out group came into play for
a very, very long time. There'scontinuous and there still is to
(39:02):
be to be clear like there stillis a continuous portrayal of
Jews as duplicitous, malevolentand powerful as far back as the
beginning of the 19th century,and that was harnessed by Hitler
and his Dark Souls skillfulmanipulation of tactics to turn
people's pre existing antiJewish sentiments into hatred,
(39:26):
initially via propaganda books,essays and speeches alluding to
a Jewish conspiracy to gainworld leadership, and later also
by staging hoaxes of foreignattacks on Germans and the Nazi
regime's benevolence. The ideabeing that if these
characteristics are inherent perracial theory, then it would be
(39:50):
impossible to unlearn them. Andso the only solution is extermination.
This is. Categorizing is anaspect of dehumanization,
assigning and limiting thepossibilities of a person based
on contrived, perceivedcharacteristics of their
(40:11):
identity. And while this excerptis related specifically to what
was done to the Jewish people bywhite Germans under the Nazi
regime. It is important to notethat they were inspired by what
was done to black people here inthe United States, and this
continues to be done againstblack people and Jewish people,
(40:35):
as well as Palestinian peopleand Latino people, particularly
right now, Latino migrant peoplein the US. It is done by the
people in power, andparticularly perpetuated by the
use of things like propaganda.
The main function of propagandais to elicit strong emotions in
a group of people in order tocreate a cohesive group
(40:58):
organized around common values,and implicitly or explicitly
define who are included from agroup who are excluded from
group membership, in order Tomobilize the forces of group
polarization. This isweaponization of empathy. This
is these people deserve to haveour empathy, and these people do
(41:20):
not. This goes back to gad saidcomment about deployed on the
wrong targets. Emotional systemis tricked into an orgiastic,
hyperactive form of empathydeployed on the wrong targets,
who are the wrong targets, andlooking at where his philosophy,
where he places his philosophy,and where people who are
(41:44):
uplifting his idea where theirphilosophy lies. It's within
these propaganda machines of whobelongs in the in group. The in
group are the billionaires youshould want to be in the in
group. The in group are whitepeople. The other people can't
possibly even be in the ingroup. So those are just a
(42:07):
couple examples of what ishappening there and so how this
idea of weaponized empathy isactually being weaponized. Okay,
so let's move over to this ideaof desensitization, what we
normalize, we accept what ishappening here. So within this
propaganda in group, out group,we are wired for belonging. We
(42:30):
want to belong. So if we havethe ability to fit into the in
group, or pretend that we couldfit into the in group, that's
where we are going to put energyto feel safe. So all of these
tools are to make some peoplefeel like by putting other
people down, by devaluing otherpeople, dehumanizing other
(42:53):
people, they will become safer.
So an example of all of thisstate sanctioned images of
people in dehumanizingconditions. This is a tactic of
psychological warfare to makeexamples of real people with
full lives, peoples whose lovedones are looking for them and
(43:16):
mobilizing for them to come homesafely. These examples of people
in dehumanizing conditions areintended to deter us all from
public dissent, to scare us intocompliance when we share state
sanctioned images, whether weare the ones re sharing them or
the people who are sharing them,we are not only participating in
(43:40):
The planned campaign, but alsodoing their work for free,
emboldening their allies,normalizing imagery of
inhumanity into our feeds, andputting our communities in a
freeze state. This all derivesfrom the People's media project
digging into this informationand a 2023 review found that
(44:02):
repeated exposure todehumanizing prison imagery,
especially when stripped ofcontext, lowers public empathy
and increases tolerance forpunitive policies. The more
often people see prisonersdepicted as sub human, the more
likely they are to accept harshpunishment as normal or even
(44:24):
necessary. That is the power ofrepetition. US media uses
repetitive, demeaning images ofblack people, Hispanic people,
Latino people, to justifysystems of violence. It was done
back. Think when we had slaveryand Jim Crow promoting the idea
that slavery was fine,segregation is appropriate, mass
(44:47):
incarceration is necessary, ittrained the public to accept and
expect black and brown people'ssubjugation. Many of us know
this is an issue, so I know thatif you're listening to this, you
are, I'm probably preaching tothe choir here, and it is really
important to pull these thingsforward, to be aware of the
(45:11):
dynamics I often have talkedabout, like repeating things
over and over again. We can'thelp but have it come into our
being in some way, it takes evenmore conscious effort. So being
really mindful of yourconsumption and what you share
is key. We know these things arean issue. We push back and
(45:34):
strive to overcome it, yet weare increasingly exhausted by
design, and I think that'sreally important to remember
that our exhaustion is bydesign, and we also want to stay
engaged compassion fatigue, theclassic symptom, is a decline in
the ability to feel sympathy andempathy and accordingly, act
(45:57):
from a place of compassion, ourability to care, to feel, to
take action is replaced by anoutwardly impassive,
detachedness. Someoneexperiencing compassion fatigue
becomes more task oriented, lessemotion focused, and can
increasingly pull away fromothers, becoming socially
(46:18):
isolated, profound physical andemotional exhaustion are classic
symptoms. So being really awareof what's happening inside of
you, if that's something that'shappening for you, then really
giving yourself room to takecare of yourself, this is where
we have a continually activatedstress response. And again, I'm
(46:42):
going to reiterate, this is bydesign. A lot of people are
expressing the experience thatis defined as hyper
normalization. This is a termthat was articulated in 2005 by
Alexey jorchak, again, myapologies if I'm mispronouncing
to describe the civilianexperience in Soviet Russia.
(47:04):
Hyper normalization describeslife in a society where two main
things are happening. People areseeing that governing systems
and institutions are broken, andthe second is that for reasons
including a lack of effectiveleadership and an inability to
imagine how to disrupt thestatus quo, people then carry on
(47:28):
with their lives as normal,despite systemic dysfunction,
give or take, a heavy load offear, Dread, denial and
disassociation. So this is wherehyper normalization engages,
that juxtaposition between thedysfunctional and the mundane.
It's described by haraf haruchaa digital anthropologist as the
(47:51):
visceral sense of waking up inan alternate timeline with a
deep bodily knowing thatsomething isn't right, but
having no clear idea how to fixit. It's reading an article
about childhood hunger andgenocide, only to scroll down to
a carefree listicle highlightingthe best dressed celebrities, or
(48:14):
a whimsical quiz about what PopTart Are you? I wanted to
highlight hyper normalization,because, similar to compassion
fatigue, we start to shut downour ability to show up because
there is an overwhelm ofexperience. So this is two
different facets. We have thedesensitization from the
(48:36):
propaganda machine, from the ingroup, out group stuff, and then
we have the spaces of the hypernormalization, where we feel
this sense that something iswrong, but we don't really know
how to engage it at all. So it'slike an overwhelm of feeling
versus a depletion of or numbingof feeling. So I think both of
(49:00):
those are really important torecognize and engage and name
because naming them and what weare dealing with when you're
coming from a place as anempathetic person wanting to
uphold your values and show upto the things that are going on,
when we can name these two polesand experiences, it can create a
(49:23):
form. Of psychological relief,as Caroline Hickman, a
psychotherapist, expresses, theworst thing in the world is to
feel that you're the only onewho feels this way, and that you
are going quietly mad andeveryone else is in denial. That
terrifies people. It traumatizespeople again. This is that like
(49:47):
something should be there andisn't there that is a type of
trauma. People who feel thewrongness of current conditions
acutely may be experiencing somedepression and anxiety, but
those feelings can be quiterational, not a symptom of poor
mental health alarmism or a lackof proper perspective. So for
(50:10):
those of you who are listening,part of the reason I wanted this
part two to this idea of empathyis you probably are somebody who
considers yourself to be ahighly empathetic person. And
when you are in this space of,okay, well, how do I function? I
know all of these things, all ofthese polls, all of these
(50:34):
dynamics. I know that what'sbeing said is wrong. It's being
weaponized. It's activating myempathy maliciously. It is
playing on these very realdynamics around empathy to shut
me down. Well, what do I doabout it? And it's important to
name it and also recognize thatit's it's happened before this
(50:57):
shutdown happens, not justbecause of a lack of feeling,
but because of an overwhelm offeeling. In the 1955 book, They
Thought They Were Free theGermans 1933 to 45 journalist
Milton Mayer described a similarstate of freeze in German
citizens during the rise of theNazi Party. Quote, you don't
(51:19):
want to act or even talk alone.
You don't want to go out of yourway to make trouble. Why not?
Well, you're not in the habit ofdoing it. And it is not just
fear, fear of standing alonethat restrains you. It's also
genuine uncertainty. We justdon't know. And this is where I
think we're seeing a lot of it,in the world, or in US society,
(51:43):
and people who care and theywant to do something and they
don't like what's happening, butthey don't know what to do. And
I would even say, I often runinto this where I'm like, I
don't know what to do. What willmake a difference, what
sacrifices but not too much.
(52:06):
What do I need to give up orshow up for? How do I engage the
enormity and overwhelm is astate of inaction, and it
happens when we feel likesomething is bigger than us. So
it is a normal response. So Ithink first and foremost,
really, truly, it is recognizingthe feelings, recognizing the
(52:28):
experience, and being with that,not telling yourself that
something's wrong with you, orbuying into sometimes we know
consciously some of thesedynamics that are happening
around us, but we can't fend offall of it. So a piece of it gets
in, and the piece of it that ismost likely to get in is the
(52:52):
over individualization, becausewe're all so conditioned around
individualism that that piece ofit's a you thing, and you have
to do things alone. Thing iswhat's going to get emphasized,
and that is a core component ofhow we feel overwhelmed and we
freeze. So understanding therole of stress and the stress
(53:15):
response cycle is the next pieceof this. So we can name these
things, we can know these thingsare going on, and then we have
stress and the stress responsecycle. So I want to highlight
something that in a training Irecently did with Dr Scott
Lyons, he highlighted, which isthat stress is how we mobilize
(53:39):
energy to meet life's demands.
So it is important, and it isappropriate for it to be here
there is energy being mobilizedto meet life's demands. The
problem is, and we have theuncertainty. We don't know what
the demands are. We don't knowwhat to do with energy, and it
just sits in us, and it ends upturning inward, so recognizing
(54:02):
that it's natural, it's normalfor stress to be there. Stress
is not something to avoid, it'ssomething to complete. So we
have an activization, we need tomobilize it and then allow it to
deactivate and give ourselvesroom to restore so that we can
then be ready the next time anactivation is present, also
(54:26):
recognizing what is real andwhat is not. What actually needs
that activation and what is pastand doing that healing work is
really key, because then we aremore able to access and assess a
situation to know, yes, Iactually need the stress
response right here, right now,versus I need it just all the
(54:49):
time, everywhere. One of theother pieces that comes up is
fear of losing that stressenergy and that ability to show
up and falling into thedesensitization and
normalization. So we hold on tothe stress to keep us from
becoming desensitized ornormalizing what's happening.
(55:11):
Yet it is necessary to make roomfor being fully human, so that
we can hold on to our ownhumanity. In order to hold space
for others humanity, we do haveto actually also humanize
ourselves, which means access toa full range of human emotions,
which includes joy as anexample. How do you hold on to
(55:34):
both? Okay, so I'm going totouch on that it's getting a
little bit long in this episode.
I do want to highlight that anepisode I just did recently
engages that it'll be linked inthe show notes, but it is called
How to Avoid overwhelm andaccess joy in a time of change.
(55:57):
And I think that one I aimed toengage some of these pieces,
because, again, we do need tohave access to the whole range.
So a couple things that can alsohelp. One, all right, so we've
talked about naming what'shappening. We've talked about
recognizing that stress is anormal response under our
(56:20):
circumstances. The other pieceis also recognizing that social
change isn't good or bad, itjust is. So this goes back to
that whole thing we started withabout like, ooh, change is bad.
We want to hold on to what itis. No, it's not good or bad, it
just is. It's what we do with itthat matters. So empowered
(56:44):
change versus disempoweredchange, our ability to show up
to the unknown. So again,emotional overwhelm is not an
indication of the need to shutdown. We need structural change.
So what are our collectivevalues? Who do we want to be.
What world do we want to create?
Remembering the ends don'tjustify the means. The means
(57:06):
create the ends. What are weseeding through our action,
individually, collectively? Sowhen we can tap into what are
our collective values? What dowe want to uplift in the world,
then we start connecting toother people who have that same
desire, and start workingcollectively, not individually,
(57:29):
like, oh, I have an idea. Let'sdo these things, but communing
with one another to be able toseek a way forward. What are we
going to do together? Values area grounding point of
discernment. One of the thingsthat Paul sagard, PhD in defense
of empathy, speaks to is empathywithout reason is blind, but
(57:52):
reason without empathy is empty.
So being able to access ourbrains and our ability to
process and get curious andengage is important, but we also
need to be able to care andextend ourselves in care beyond
just what our in group, ourstandard in group says, but from
(58:15):
there, and of course, that'swhere our values come in and
moral reasoning. Okay, so to digfurther into that, I encourage
you to check out the recentepisode again, how to avoid
overwhelm and access joy in atime of change. I'm going to go
through those points that Iencourage, naming what's
(58:38):
happening, feeling the feelings,understand the role of stress
and the stress cycle thatactivation, mobilization,
deactivation, restoration, andgetting support to navigate
that, because sometimes those gooff, and the activation stays
activated because of our pastexperiences as well as the
(59:00):
moment that we're in. Part ofthat can be knowing what your
values, knowing what's importantto you, and connecting with
community to help guide wherethat mobilization happens.
Remembering systemic problemsrequire systemic solutions. So
knowing your part in thatepisode I talk about the book
(59:23):
social change now, a guide forreflection and connection,
written by Deepa Iyer. Take alook at that, connect with other
people, so that you have adirection, even in the
uncertainty of things, of wherethe mobilization can occur for
you, that works for you, becauseotherwise we get spread too
(59:45):
thin. We're spraying everywhere.
We're not targeting the thingthat actually needs the
attention. And then once you.
Know, what are your values?
Where's the aim and who you'redoing that with taking
meaningful action. Takingmeaningful action helps prevent
burnout that is caused byhelplessness. Tapping into
(01:00:07):
meaning rooted in your valuesand your ability, allows you to
mobilize that stress response sothat it can be deactivated at
least temporarily, you havespace to restore and engage the
next opportunity that fitswithin your values and the
meaningful action that you takewithin the community that you're
(01:00:30):
part of. Okay, I know that's alot. There's a long episode. I
appreciate you. I appreciatethat you're listening. I hope
this was helpful to you. Ifthere's something that you felt
confused about that you wouldlike me to dig further in. I
really kind of skimmed the topof a lot of things to try and
(01:00:53):
give you the core pieces. Let meknow. I'm happy to dive further
in. If there's an aspect of thisyou want support with, reach
out. I'm here for you. That ispart of my role in this. Is
exactly this, but also thecoaching, support of engaging
that stress process, engagingthe pieces of, how do you move
(01:01:16):
forward when you're in thisstuck or freeze response, what
does that look like? So helpingyou access that. And so please
reach out lots of links in theshow notes to check out. And if
you found this episodeinsightful helpful, please share
it with others. I would greatlyappreciate it, and I will talk
(01:01:40):
to you all next time.
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