Myth #1: Can empathy become self-sabotage?

We’re officially into March and I can’t believe this year is zinging past the way it is!  It’s the year of the Fire Horse in the Chinese Lunar New Year tradition, so we’re looking for rapid change and bold action.  This will be fun!

I want to take this month to look at some of the myths and misconceptions about empathy, and why it’s important to know the difference, especially for those in leadership. 

Let’s start with a big question I keep getting in the podcasts I’ve been on recently – can you have too much empathy?

This is actually a question I get a lot, and let’s be real: as a human, you can have too much water. You can have too much air. You can have too much of…well…anything!  But before we decide if we can have too much of something, we need to decide if we’re talking about the same thing.

When people talk about ‘suicidal empathy’ or ‘toxic empathy’, they’re usually not talking about empathy at all. They’re talking about being a doormat.  Heck yeah you can have too much of being a doormat.  People-pleasing is self-destructive, no question.  But that’s not empathy.  Empathy is about perspective taking.  I’m not sure how you can take the other person’s perspective too much unless you lose yourself in their perspective and that’s not empathy. 

So just on the basis of a solid definition, there’s no way you can have too much empathy, just things disguised as empathy.  That’s why it’s so important to understand what empathy is.

If someone thinks having empathy is lowering standards, blurring accountability, or fostering an unwillingness to make hard decisions, that’s not empathy.  Nor is it being a doormat, or allowing others to run roughshod over you.  (As an aside, a real use of self-empathy wouldn’t allow for that anyway, but that’s another conversation).

A lack of boundaries becomes chaos while boundaries without empathy becomes tyranny.

Empathy done right isn’t suicidal, and in fact, may be the thing that saves us all. Before we start demonizing empathy, let’s be clear on what it really is.  And how we can use it as a targeted, strategic tool.