Empathy Gone Sideways...

Empathy is a wonderful engine.  However, boundaries are the steering wheel.  Without both, you eventually crash.  Today's blog post is about understanding pathological empathy aka "hyperempathy", "toxic empathy", "compassion fatigue", and "emotional enmeshment".  Get your seatbelts on.  This will be a ride you are not likely to forget.

Most of us have been taught that empathy is always a good thing.  Be kind.  Be understanding.  Put yourself in their shoes.  Care deeply.  These are certainly valuable qualities.  However, there is a difference between caring and carrying.  There always has been.

Empathy can stop being healthy and start becoming harmful when they lead to this basic problem:  caring so much about another person's feelings that you lose track of your own.

Healthy empathy connects you with another person who is hurting.  It does not consume you.  When you are practicing healthy empathy, it says things like:

"I understand you are hurting."  "I care about you."  "I am willing to help you with that."  

Yet, healthy empathy also says:  "Your emotions belong to you."  "My emotions belong to me."  "I cannot live your life for you."  "I cannot make your decisions for you."

Toxic empathy, on the other hand, can start out innocently enough.  You notice someone is suffering and you want to help him/her/them.  Then gradually:

    .    You become preoccupied with their problem(s)

    .    Their mood determines your mood

    .    You begin to feel responsible for fixing them

    .    You spend increasing amounts of time rescuing them

    .    Your own needs begin disappearing

Eventually, the relationship revolves around their distress and your response(s) to it.  That is no longer empathy.  That is emotional over-investment.

Some people are good at recognizing the distinction between healthy and toxic empathy.  Repeatedly giving money to him/her/them, solving their crises, fixing their mistakes, absorbing their personal responsibilities—these are examples of toxic empathy.  You do not exist to constantly rescue people from the consequences of their own actions.  

This is, sadly, a common mistake of highly successful "parents" who are then finding themselves enmeshed with an under-responsible adult child (or children) who expect their own brand of save/fix/rescue handouts on demand.

For the hyperempathic "giver" in this type of situation, you are going to feel exhausted by the relationship with your adult son/daughter/grandchild/their family system.  You feel drained, overwhelmed, anxious, and emotionally depleted.  Yet you continue giving.  You confuse helping with loving.  You believe that love requires toxic levels of sacrifice, self-denial, and/or endless availability.

Many highly empathic people learned early in life that their value came from taking care of others.  Perhaps he/she/they learned to:

    .    Keep the peace

    .    Manage parental emotions

    .    Support an addicted family member

    .    Attend to unpredictable caregivers

    .    Become the "responsible" one in the family

Over time, helping became part of their self-identity.  Their self-worth became tied to being needed.

And then they wonder how they get addicted to their need to be needed over time?  Uh, not a big stretch there when you think about it!  

People stuck in toxic empathy often unconsciously ask themselves, "Who needs me?" rather than "Who is healthy enough for me?"

As a result, they frequently find themselves attracted to:  chronic victims, crisis-driven people, emotionally unstable partners, highly dependent friends, and people who refuse responsibility.

Not because they enjoy suffering, but because being "needed" feels meaningful.

The hidden cost of being excessively empathic produces anxiety, burnout, resentment, depression, emotional exhaustion, physical health problems, lost friendships, and loss of personal identity.  

The helper becomes so focused on another person's life that they abandon their own life in the process.

Empathy says:  "I feel your pain."  Which is very different from Compassion which says:  "I see your pain, care about it, and remain grounded."

Know the difference.

Empathy jumps into that hole in the sidewalk.  Compassion throws a rope.  Compassion helps without jumping into that hole with you.

Your life is your responsibility.  Compassion, boundaries, and reality allows you to engage in healthy caring without carrying the burden of someone else's life on your own shoulders.

Until next post...

"More people would..."

I was cleaning out a desk drawer yesterday and came across this piece of paper I had tucked away with a printed (copied) quotation on it.  It said, "More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them."  

No kidding.

Speaking of quotes, I just published my first book to do with quips and quotes I have created after nearly 25 years in practice as a mental health clinician.  It came out earlier this month (August 2026) and it's called Resilience:  Quips & Quotes to Change Your Life One Truth at a Time.  It's available for purchase in either Kindle e-book or paperback formats through Amazon.com.  I wrote it because people are often challenged by remembering truths presented as part of any general conversation.  Let's take the difference between genuine fear and anxiety for an example.  It's one thing to say:  "Genuine fear is when you are at risk of imminent life-or-death danger, given the immediate circumstances.  Anxiety is when you imagine "what if" that terrible thing is going to happen and then worry about it."  In my book, I put it this way:  "Genuine fear is when your pants catch fire;  anxiety is when you worry about them because they're your favorite pair."  On healing, "Healing is when you realize you were never too much, you were merely surrounded by people who preferred less."  Like that.

I have categorized my quips and quotes into sections by topic:  Fear & Anxiety, Pain & Suffering, Courage & Change, Control & Surrender, Hope & Healing, Gratitude & Grace, and The "G" Word:  God.  This is the first book in my series on Resilience and resilience-based living.  My second book Living Between the Fault Lines  Poetry Then.  Wisdom Now. (1996-2026) will be available sometime before mid-September, 2026.  That book presents seventeen poems I wrote when I was 40 years old and believing my healing and recovery work was all "behind" me.  How mistaken I was.  I found those poems 30 years later as I was cleaning out my office.  Since becoming an LLP Psychologist in 2003, re-reading those poems made me realize how much further I had come in my healing as a lifelong "work in progress".  My insights appear in the book next to each poem, along with more of my "Mary sayings" to introduce each poem and the lesson(s) learned from them since 1996.  I hope you will consider checking it out as well once published.

So, back to the front here about why living in the truth is so important for all of us.  

Many of us grow up fearing truth.  That's it.  Plain and simply stated.  When we get in "more" trouble for telling the truth than we do for lying about it, do you have to wonder why we deny so much while we are here living life on Planet Psych Unit?  I don't.  Going back to my opening (and borrowed) quotation about mistakes and denying them;  of course it's easier to deny what we would rather not face and then work to solve ourselves!  That's true for anyone and everyone.

As any adult child of an alcoholic will tell you, life is very hard being raised in an alcoholic household when everyone in the family has to walk on eggshells to make certain the alcoholic either (1) remains in the background of everyone's life within the family, (2) is "watched" and/or "protected" to ensure he/she/they don't say or do anything that could impact the family name/image/reputation in a negative manner, (3) is treated like royalty so as to hope he/she/they will remain "stable" (whatever that means!) often enough, and/or (4) doesn't die/kill/seriously injure someone else as a result of his/her/their drunken antics.  Double that when physical and/or sexual abuse is part of that package involving the other partner/parent and/or their child(ren).  I didn't mention verbal and emotional abuse just now because it's already going to be present when being raised by and/or exposed to an alcoholic adult on a regular-enough basis as a child.

What a way to live, right?  But millions have anyway.  When the children grow up, they are left with some major choices:  don't ever indulge in alcohol and/or drugs, drugs o.k., but no alcohol, don't "be" with anyone who drinks or does drugs, and/or drugs are o.k., but no alcohol.  There is another choice.  Repeat the pattern without realizing you're repeating the pattern, and then find someone else who is just like you—or only does drugs and doesn't drink—or who lives a clean and sober lifestyle.  

So—more people really would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them.

End of.

Until next post..

Yes, I created the artwork for the cover. (Acrylic pour painting) ;-)