Can you care about somebody without drowning in it? Empathy is not something you are given, it is something you grow. And there is a version that eats you alive.

There are two ways this goes. Disconnection, where you decide not to take on their pain at all, and the other version where you sink into it with them. Neither one helps. There is no use going round in the same grieving, deeply caring state they are in. That is not support. That is two people underwater.

One thing to try: Notice whether you are feeling with somebody or feeling instead of them. There is a difference.

In this episode

• (0:00) Being fully human, and fully accepted for who you are
• (2:24) Empathy is grown, not handed to you
• (5:07) Being stuck there a long time, or feeling like I was
• (7:16) Therapists, counsellors, and the two versions of this
• (9:34) No point going round in the same grieving state they are in

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Thank you for listening.

Steven

Links to Steven Webb's podcast and how you can support his work.

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Hey, welcome to Living Deeper Lives, the podcast that helps you to be fully human and to be fully accepted

for who you are and your purpose.

This week, I want to talk about empathy and healthy empathy versus unhealthy empathy.

What do I mean by this? And this is something that I've been thinking about more and more the last

few years. and it's not something I see much around. You see a lot of people talking about empathy and

what empathy is and what it means to be an empath, but I want to dig deeper into that, and

that's what Living deeper lives means. Let's dig deeper into empathy. Where does it come from? How do we develop

it? And what is the difference between healthy empathy and unhealthy empathy? So briefly, let's start with where

does empathy come from? Are we born with it? Well, no. I hate to burst many people's bubbles, but we're

not born in caring, loving, beautiful, empathetic creatures. We really not. We're born into this world as a

blank canvas. And then as life goes on, we develop an ego of what we want and what we enjoy

in life. And then as time goes up by we develop the things we like and

things we enjoy, and we have relationships. But then when the relationships start breaking down or when we lose someone

or somebody in our family passes away, we develop pain. We. We

recognise what it's like to be hurt and we feel grief. And when we start feeling the grief, we start

understanding what it feels like to be in pain. And then empathy really is just understanding someone else's

pain, putting ourselves in their shoes. So when someone comes along and tells us their story, we feel their pain,

we feel their discomfort and their suffering.

And the thing is, with all of these things we develop, when we develop them, once we're in them, we

feel like we always had them, but we really didn't. So that's one of the first big myths that I

would like to bust. When you suddenly think. When you suddenly feel like you're a really caring, loving human, you

suddenly feel that that's always been you down to the core, but it really hasn't. So recognise that empathy is

a wonderful thing we develop. It's a wonderful thing we grow and we learn to do. It's

not just given, because if it's just given, there's nothing to be proud of. It's like any born talent. If

we don't have to work at it, why be proud of it? It's like when people say, I'm proud to

be Cornish. It's Like, well, what did you do to become Cornish?

Nothing.

So why be proud of something that, you know, Be proud of something you work hard at. And empathy is

something you work hard at. Empathy is something you learn. You learn through having hard times and pain.

You learn through grieving and losing people. It's like when I lost my granddad and that loss developed pain

inside of me and developed grief. And with that, I learned what it was like to grieve for somebody. And

then when someone else could come along one day and say, like, I've lost my granddad, I can relate to

how they're feeling. Not exactly. Not entirely, because I don't know how close they were, I don't know their situation,

I don't know how caring they are anything but I can somewhat relate to it. It's the same with learning

any of the deeper feelings. We have to experience it to know what it's like. It's like, I can explain

what it's like to do a bungee jump all day long. Until you actually do it, you don't know what

it's like. I've never done a bungee jump, so I don't know why I use that example. But unless you've

lost somebody in your life, you'll never know what it's like to lose somebody. So that's the same with all

of our deeper feelings. But

what is healthy empathy and unhealthy empathy? Well, empathy, the same as any other skill, the

higher you get at it, the better you get at it, the the better your empathy is. And what do

I mean by better empathy? How can you how can you have like, how can you develop empathy as a

skill? Well the if you put it into levels, and I'm not necessarily putting in levels, but let's say we

do. When you first develop empathy, it's like, oh, yeah, I really feel for them. And then

we carry it with us we We find it hard to put down. We actually take on that feeling. And

that's what we might be labeled as, empaths. And I'm sorry, all you empaths out there, you're all going to

really. Not like this, but an empath, somebody that feels everything deeply and it really upsets them and

they carry along with them. And I was there for a long time, or I felt like I was there

for a long time I might have been kidding myself, I don't know. But when I felt like I was

there, I was. If someone come along and said, oh, you're an empath I'd be yeah I take on Other

people's feelings. I take on the world's problems and how do we live in this world? This world is a

really horrible, painful place to live in. Well,

that's unhealthy. Empathy. Taking on other people's pains. The next level of empathy has been able to feel

their empathy, but not. Not taking on, not carrying it and There's a wonderful Buddhist fable about this.

There's two Buddhist monks were walking down a lane, and they come across a beautiful girl that was wearing a

long black dress. And she said, I want to get to the other side of the lane, but I don't

want to get my dress dirty. And one of the monks looked up and said, well, I'll carry you across

So, okay. He picks her up and carries her to the other side and puts her down. And the other

british monk says online you really shouldn't have done that. We're not supposed to

carry them. We're not supposed to interact. We're supposed to let people solve their own problems and such like. And

he said, okay, well, it didn't hurt just to carry her across. Then later that evening, the British monk that

had a problem with her looked up and said to him, do you know what? I really think we did

the wrong thing today. I really think it did not fit what we're supposed to do. And the other one

looked up and goes, are you still carrying her? And

what it means by that is you take a nurse or a doctor, if they experience someone's

pain during the day and they take it to the next patient and they take it home, they cannot function.

They

cannot. They wouldn't be able to deal with life if they took on everybody's pains, if they took on every

person that passes away in their care or every illness they come across. And the

same as therapists or counsellors,

and and there is two versions here. There's the version of disconnection. Well, I'm not going to take on their

pain. I'm going to do it professionally. And it doesn't bother me they're not They're not me and my family.

That's disconnection. That's not empathy. Empathy is genuinely feeling their pain. It's putting yourself in

their shoes, in their story, in the best possible reference that you can have based on your

experiences in life. So you dig deep in your life and experiences to experience what they're going through.

But

then you let it go later. You let it go because it's not part of your life. It's not your

pain to share. It's not your pain. To pain and sorrow and grief to hold on to And no amount

of you keeping it and staying with it is going to help them.

You know, if my daughter phones me up and says, I'm really suffering today, me suffering as well, after the

bit of empathy, me suffering as well is not going to help her one little bit. What if I get

so um stuck in the suffering? What if I start going back to her and going, oh, I know, and

I'm really suffering now kemba your pain is really coming on to me and things like that. Now I'm gonna

make her miserable as well. So both of us are gonna be in a pit of misery. Well, that's unhealthy,

empathy. And I hear many empaths are very much like that. How do I deal with life when I feel

things deeply?

Well, we recognise that the empathy comes and goes, that we don't have to hold it.

It's the same with many feelings. It doesn't mean you're less caring by moving on later. And when you come

across them again, you can go, how are you feeling? And put yourself back in their feelings again. But there's

no point in you holding their feelings in the time when you're not with them or in the time.

But there's no point in you holding all the feelings in the time you're not with them. There's no point

in you going around in the same miserable um grieving feeling, understanding, deep, caring

way in which your experience their experience in their feelings and you experience in the same.

I hope that makes sense. I hope um you can see a difference between that empathy is a good thing.

I don't want you to misunderstand that I'm saying empathy is a bad thing because I'm not. Empathy really is

not a bad thing. It's a great thing and I wish more people would develop it.

But continue to develop your empathy, continue to improve it, make it better so you

can empathize in a deep, deep way without taking on their feelings. I'm

Steven Webb and I help people through troubled and hard times when they're struggling. And you can head over to

my website and download a free meditation and get started to find your own inner peace now Take care and

thank you. And if you can review this podcast or subscribe and follow, that would be really appreciated. Have a

good week and new podcast every Monday.