The Sin of Empathy
By now, we’ve all heard of one of this year’s most controversial books, “The Sin of Empathy” by Joe Rigney. The bright red book has an eyebrow-raising title, and readers know that it’s bound to cause controversy from the get-go.
I want to offer a critique of the book’s premise that empathy is dangerous and inappropriate. Therefore, we have to start this examination of the sin of empathy by defining both empathy and sin.
Empathy Defined
The book suggests that the modern conceptualization of empathy is to jump into the “quicksand” of someone else’s problems with them. It is to leave the safety of our own shores to effectively go drown with them. I’ll address this idea specifically at the end of this article.
The book identifies another more appropriate response to those who are metaphorically “sinking”: Compassion. This term is defined by Rigney as standing in a safe place and reaching out to the sinking person. An argument is made that this approach is more effective, more genuine, and even more “biblical”.
“Biblical” is used here as a synonym for righteous, just and moral. I think it is the wrong word to use, as “biblical” just means “in the Bible”. Lots of things are in the Bible. Slavery, sexual assault, debauchery are in the Bible, but are these things to be considered righteous, just and moral? One could argue that “biblical” means “promoted by the Bible”, but the Old Testament seems to promote genocide in multiple places. Is that righteous, just and moral? Clearly, we need to be more careful with this term.
To be clear, I am an huge fan of empathy. Empathy is necessary for healing and an important part of our educational development for building moral and social understanding.
“Sin” Defined
Rigney defines sin as becoming “untethered” from truth and goodness. He goes on to say that this disconnect leads to prioritizing emotion over morals. The result is overly coddling others without consideration of the wisdom of their actions. Another potential outcome of this is the “weaponization of emotions”, which can become coercive and manipulative. Rigney argues that the loss of oneself can eventually occur when an empathizer gets “pulled in” or overwhelmed by the emotion they feel for the recipient.
For purposes of this article, I will not try to define sin. It is not within my scope to try to define an action as being OK with God or not. I will instead let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone. Maybe we should be careful here to not think of equality with God as something to be grasped. It is less the sin of empathy that concerns me as the sin of self idolatry.
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He’s Wrong, But Not Entirely…
I cannot agree that it is wrong to offer comfort and solace by feeling the pain felt by others in an attempt to understand and validate them. But, as a younger therapist, I stepped over the line that Rigney is describing a few times. My desire to help clients was so great that I sometimes took on their problems as if they were my own. Sarcastically speaking, this was at least the sin of poor boundaries, if not the sin of empathy.
I learned a few things from that:
- Some people actually openly resist this treatment. They’d rather bear their own burdens, thank you, and they don’t need anyone taking them on or sharing them. Some may even feel that sharing them lets someone else steal their thunder. These people may have avoidant attachment styles, childhood traumas, or just an independent character.
- Some people are all too happy to share their burdens. They want me to take them on, shoulder them, deeply feel them, overly sympathize with them, revel in them, and wallow in them. These people may unconsciously not want to actually resolve their problems because the problems feel safe and predictable, if not comfortable. Folks in this category may have anxious attachment styles, borderline personality traits, or codependent tendencies, among other things.
- BUT MOST people are open to talking about their problems and want genuine, honest responses from me that are also empathetic. In fact, almost everyone responds well to what Carl Rogers called the three elements that are “necessary and sufficient” to the counseling relationship. These are Genuineness, Empathy, and Unconditional Positive Regard.
How it Looks in Practice:
Sometimes in my earlier days, I would take a phone call from a client on a weekend that I would allow to last for hours. Other times, I would go out of my way to phone a client to check in. And these clients never seemed to “get better”, no matter what I did for them. In fact, they seemed to get more needy and clingy with less respect for my personal boundaries.
One client would call me every time I was out of town (because I over-shared my travel plans). Another would try to call me during active conflicts with their family, as if I could effectively intervene via phone (because I tried to once). Still another would influence me to make leading comments toward a family member on their behalf (because I had allowed it previously). This was when I learned another key concept: Someone else can’t break my boundaries. If they try, it’s on ME to re-establish those boundaries; it’s not on THEM. It can’t be left to them, because it would never happen. (See linked article)
Tough Love
Another key concept I learned was that of tough love. We show tough love when we set an expectation or a boundary after someone has demonstrated an unreasonable unwillingness to comply with reasonable expectations. And don’t get me wrong here – Their unwillingness has to be prolonged and overt, and our expectations have to be clear and entirely reasonable before tough love should be practiced.
Using tough love usually means cutting off access to ourselves or to our compassion when the other party continues to cross the line. This is an extreme form of boundary setting. Tough love isn’t the absence of empathy, because it actually requires empathy to even show love in the first place. Sometimes we have to say No louder when other people don’t seem to hear it the first several times.
Rigney’s Big Miss in The Sin of Empathy
Simply put, empathy is required for healing to occur. Rigney argues that taking on the problems of another person is wrong and not practicing “goodness” or truth. But, true empathy isn’t sharing the actual burden with the hurting person. Instead, true empathy is sharing the pain and the emotion with the person. We do this by taking their perspective, even if only briefly.
Think of a time when you were hurting on a deep emotional level. What was the one thing that you wanted the most? Likely, it was to be heard and understood by another human being. You probably wanted someone – anyone – to validate that what you’re feeling was not “crazy” or unwarranted. Perhaps you wanted someone to agree with you and affirm you as a legitimate human being with big emotions. That’s empathy.
The most helpful and concise definition of empathy I’ve ever heard comes from one of the fathers of modern counseling, Dr. Alfred Adler:
“Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.”
Healthy Empathy vs Unhealthy Empathy
Healthy Empathy means being willing to feel with another person. It also means being willing to intervene in safe, effective and concise ways to help them.
Unhealthy Empathy means helping too much and shouldering too much of the responsibility. It is an unhelpful theft of an opportunity to enable someone else to not have to grow or change through distress.
Here’s a metaphor to help illustrate another important point: Imagine that you are in a small dingy about two miles off the coast when you see a large passenger ship sink. It is winter in the north Atlantic, and the water is too frigid to survive in long. There are far too many survivors for the ship’s lifeboats, and hundreds of doomed people are in the water. They’ve seen you and flagged you down, but your little boat can only hold a few of the literal hundreds of people. What do you do?
You have two options: A) Row toward the people. B) Row away.
A) You commit Rigney’s sin of empathy and go toward the people. As you arrive, about twenty of them desperately thrash at your boat to try to save themselves. The small vessel can’t stay afloat and it sinks rapidly. Your life is now in the same position as those you had hoped to save.
B) You don’t help. In this option, you row away listening to the screams and pleas of the doomed. While you will carry this for the rest of your life and sometimes wonder if you did the right thing, life has been preserved for you.
No Good Answer in The Sin of Empathy
There isn’t a clear-cut “best” answer here. But in option B, you survive. The conundrum posed by “The Sin of Empathy” seems a lot like the popular thought experiment that Philippa Foot called “The Trolley Problem”. Neither option is good, but one is perhaps more tolerable. The “best” answer is a subjective matter of opinion.
I soon learned as a young therapist that I cannot help everyone. As a human, I have my own weaknesses and flaws that do not play well with the weaknesses and flaws of some other people. If I try to help these particular people, I may soon wind up in a bad position from which I am unable to help anyone at all.
I don’t know if it would be a “sin” to help someone in a way that leads to your demise. That’s not my call. BUT, I also know that we can also become too distant and disengaged when we try to help. In fact, one of the most common complaints that I’ve heard from the former clients of other therapists is that there was no connection or care felt in the previous clinical relationship.
Social Implications of the Sin of Empathy
Rigney proposes helping from a distance without getting one’s own hands dirty. I much prefer dirty hands over disconnection.
My concern is that Rigney’s ideas could be taken too far. If his concept was taken too literally, then his social policy might offer protection for the wealthy by insulating them from the need to ever share anything with the poor. His healthcare plan might require a patient’s merit to be demonstrated before treatment is received. Rigney’s policies toward the disabled might offer very little aid to those in need, lest any well-to-do person get their hands dirty by offering more than platitudes.
There’s a slippery slope on both sides. Healthy empathy is a balance of compassion and boundaries that can be very hard to find.
Your Empathetic Therapist
I work with creative professionals across Georgia who deal with Anxiety, ADHD, or Autism (Level 1). If you’d like help with these or related issues, give me a call at 770-615-6300.
You can also schedule a session here. I offer both telehealth and in-person sessions, and I’m in-network with Aetna and United Healthcare insurances and Lyra EAP. We provide paperwork if you want to file with your out-of-network insurance.