“lack of empathy doesn’t mean you can’t show compassion,” is a good and important take, but let’s talk about “high empathy doesn’t mean you are compassionate”

I’m highly empathetic. I know that this doesn’t equal compassionate action. Because empathy just means that you feel what other people feel. Being around someone who is in pain is painful when you have high empathy. Others’ distress affects you profoundly.

This doesn’t necessarily translate to a desire to help relieve others’ suffering. High empathy can be prioritizing your own responses to others’ feelings instead of others’ feelings. High empathy can be getting upset and blame-y with people for needing or wanting your support. High empathy can be making others’ hurt all about how hard it is for you to witness it.

Also, having high empathy is exhausting. It means listening and learning about bad and harmful things that are happening burns you out very fast. It means that you can’t function well when surrounded by pain and stress. I’m struggling with it. I’m struggling with it a lot.

High empathy can mean you spend a lot of your life defensive and numb to the needs and issues around you because openness takes such a toll. It can even make it harder to be compassionate, because it can condition you into shutting down when people need your openness.

I know we joke about how we all used to know that One Person who made a big deal about being “empathetic” but were completely self absorbed, but consider: being empathetic and being self absorbed aren’t contradictory characteristics. They possibly were extremely empathetic—they just evaluated the importance of others’ feelings based on how they themselves were affected.

Empathy is nothing without sympathy and compassion. I try to remember this. Being highly empathetic doesn’t make me a good person.