How Empathy Can Go Wrong: 3 Hazards to Watch For

Judy knows that her husband, Tom, drinks too much. But she also knows that he grew up in an abusive home. Judy sees how Tom’s self-esteem plummets every time he visits his parents. She sees how hard he works to prove to himself, his parents, and herself, that he’s good enough. Judy feels Tom’s emotions every time she looks at him. She gets angry and hurt when he drinks so much, but she also feels his pain.

Todd, 20-years-old, understands that his father is well-known for his business success. His father has made many millions by buying and selling businesses and has his own company with 10,000 employees worldwide. Todd knows that his father has huge responsibilities on his shoulders, and can sometimes see the strain that his father lives under. This is what he reminds his younger teenage siblings (and himself) of when they are angry or hurt by their father’s verbal abuse.

Tina is a 42-year-old mother of three. She works full-time in the Intensive Care Unit of a local hospital. Tina is an empathetic and caring person, and others know this. She is typically the first one asked by her co-workers to cover an extra shift. She is the first one asked by the PTO president of her children’s school to organize and run a new committee. Tina can be counted on to say yes because she readily feels others’ stress and need, and always wants to be helpful whenever she can.

Of all of the emotions that we humans experience, one is generally believed, by psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists and neuroscientists alike, to rise above the rest.

Empathy. It consists of feeling another person’s feelings.

We can get angry, we can feel guilty. We can be frustrated or anxious. We can grieve or feel sadness, regret or resentment. But none makes a statement about who we are as a person, or about the nature of the human race like empathy does.

It’s the glue that binds a family, the bond that helps two people resolve conflict. It’s a salve for pain and an essential ingredient in resilient romantic love. If you’re a parent, you must have it for your children in order to raise them to be healthy and strong adults.

Study after study has shown empathy’s surprising power. Empathy can motivate a wife to protect her husband, spur a man to care for his elderly mother, and even reduce the pain of an electric shock. Therapists know that when they can feel a patient’s feelings, it is a healing force for positive change.

Most people would never think of it, but empathy does sometimes go haywire. This best part of the human spirit can turn against us and, unchecked, it can damage both the empathizer and the recipient. Being aware of the risks of empathy-gone-bad is both incredibly important and vastly helpful.

3 Hazards of Empathy

1. By being excessive: This happens when you feel someone else’s emotions so deeply that you are blinded by them. Too much empathy can allow unhealthy or damaging behaviors to continue when they really shouldn’t.

Example Judy: Judy’s empathy is getting in her way because it’s preventing her from setting limits with Tom. Tom needs to hear Judy say, “I can’t take your drinking any more. It’s hurting the kids and me, and it’s hurting you. I need you to deal with your drinking problem. Now.” And he needs her to mean it. But Judy feels so much of Tom’s pain that she can’t make herself hold him accountable. This is where empathy becomes enabling, and how it can harm everyone involved.

2. By being misdirected: This happens when you feel the emotions of someone who doesn’t deserve it. Misdirected empathy makes the empathizer vulnerable to exploitation by the recipient.

Example Todd: Now an adult, Todd is being unable to hold his father accountable for the damage he is doing to himself and his siblings. He’s essentially giving his father a “pass” for his bad behavior because of his empathy for him. In this way Todd’s empathy is misplaced. By failing to protect himself from his father’s bad behavior, Todd is risking his own happiness and health (and that of his younger siblings). For this he will, all of his life, pay a heavy price.

3. By being too indiscriminate: This happens when you take a “shotgun approach” to empathy. You offer it too freely to too many people. When your empathy is free for the asking, you end up giving too much to too many people.

Example Tina: Tina has multiple responsibilities in her life: her children, her husband, her ICU patients, and herself. Yet none of these people gets as much of her time and energy as they deserve. That’s because Tina’s inability to let others manage their own stress and problems leads her to spread herself too thin. Depleted by the demands, Tina often feels exhausted and irritable around her children and husband. She wonders why she keeps gaining weight, and why there are dark circles under her eyes.

So Judy is enabling her husband, Todd is failing to protect himself, and Tina is harming herself (and by extension her family) by over-extending herself to others. These are three examples of how empathy can work against you.

How to Keep Your Empathy Healthy

1. Be aware of when you’re feeling empathy and for whom. Make sure that the person receiving it deserves it.
2. Keep your empathy in check. Make sure it doesn’t prevent you from holding a loved one accountable for his or her actions.
3. Always prioritize your own needs. Take care of yourself before you care for others. That way you’ll be sure that your empathy can’t harm you.

Those who grow up with Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) learn early on that their feelings and needs don’t matter. This sets them up to be overly empathetic with others’ needs, and underly attentive to their own.

To learn more about CEN, emotions and how they affect relationships, Take the Emotional Neglect Test and see the books, Running on Empty and Running On Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships With Your Partner, Your Parents & Your Children.

A version of this article was originally published on PsychCentral.com. It has been republished here with the permission of the author.

Do These 5 Things to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

What’s been shown by research to be more important for job success than IQ?

What’s a major factor in life satisfaction?

What contributes to lasting marriages and happy children?

What can leap tall buildings in a single bound? (Well, maybe not that.)

It’s Emotional Intelligence! Also known as EQ.

Emotional Intelligence has been defined as the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships and conflicts with empathy and skill.

Research tells us that people with high EQ enjoy many advantages and benefits in life. But some people have a lot more of it than others.

Many people feel rather mystified by the concept of EQ. It’s natural to wonder how people get EQ. Are we born with our EQ already set? And why do some people have high EQ and some people don’t? And, probably the most important question of all: Can we increase our EQ?

Are We Born With EQ?

The answer is, “Maybe somewhat.” Few things are purely genetic, and EQ is no exception. Sure, some babies are undoubtedly born with a more natural tendency toward emotional awareness and capability for abstract thought, both of which would make it easier to learn about and understand emotions.

But in the nature/nurture question, I have clearly seen that nurture is enormously important. 

The Role of Parenting in EQ

Childhood is a training ground for emotional intelligence. When your parents see what you feel and respond to your feelings by helping you name and manage them, you learn what different emotions feel like, and how to put them into words. You learn how to identify what you’re feeling, and why you may be feeling it. You learn how to understand why you do what you do and deduce the reasons for others’ actions as well.

Emotionally aware and skilled parents do all of the above, naturally. So they tend to raise high-EQ kids. But, unfortunately, the opposite is also true. When your parents are not emotionally aware or skilled, you do not get what you need to learn the EQ skills.

When your emotions are not noticed, validated, or addressed enough in childhood (I call this Childhood Emotional Neglect or CEN), your emotions automatically become blocked off in adulthood. So throughout the most formative decades of your life, you are missing the opportunity to learn how emotions work.

You are left with a lack of crucial knowledge. Which emotion is which? What do you do with your feelings when you have them? How are your emotions affecting your decisions? How do other people’s emotions affect their behavior?

The effects of this lack of knowledge on every single area of the emotionally neglected person’s adult life are far more severe than most people realize.

Lacking a solid EQ makes it hard to handle situations when you are having feelings or when the other person is. So you are more likely to ignore issues, sweep problems under the rug, hurt other people’s feelings, or make decisions that you will later regret.

So, although less clearly visible, the effects of low EQ are so significant that I have often compared them to those of having a physical disability, such as a missing limb.

The Bright Side

Fortunately, for all of us, that is not the end of the story. There is some very good news here. EQ is nothing other than a set of skills. And you, no matter how much Emotional Neglect you were raised with, no matter what genes you were born with, can learn them.

Do These 5 Things to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

1. The first step is to decisively declare yourself a student of emotions. Then start paying attention to feelings in your everyday life, and make it your plan to learn everything you can about emotions and how they work.
2. Start trying to be aware of when you are having a feeling. Being aware of your own feelings is the most important building block in all of the EQ skills.
3. Increase your emotion vocabulary. This involves learning and using more emotion words in your everyday life. You can find a link to a free download of an Emotion Words List below.
4. Build your capacity for empathy. You may already have plenty of ability to empathize (many who grow up emotionally neglected actually have too much empathy). But if it is rare for you to feel someone else’s feelings, you can learn how to be more empathetic. To do this, start by practicing when you are watching TV or a movie or reading a book.  Try to feel the feelings of the characters. Then move forward to trying to feel the feelings of the people around you.
5. Practice assertiveness. Assertiveness is saying what you need to say in such a way that the other person can take it in. It requires you to know what you feel and be able to put it in words that will not insult the other person or put them on the defensive. It is speaking your truth but with compassion for the other person.

Of all of the things you can work for in your life, emotional intelligence is one of the most fruitful. As you study and pay attention to the world of feelings, you will find yourself changing in small but remarkable ways. You will find yourself feeling more. You will become more connected and more attuned to the people in your life, and they will feel it too.

Slowly, gradually, but with purpose and intention, you will stop neglecting your own feelings and become better able to handle others’ feelings.

What can change your life?

Emotional intelligence.

To learn much more about how CEN affects different areas of your life sign up to watch my CEN Breakthrough Video Series! It’s free.

To learn much more about how to increase your EQ skills and apply them in relationships see the books Running On Empty and  Running On Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships.

Childhood Emotional Neglect can be hard to see and remember. To find out if you grew up with it Take The Emotional Neglect Test. It’s free.