The Death of Empahy

When I was a kid, I quickly learned to hide my true reaction when someone said or did something that was intended to wound me. Sometimes I laughed with the other kids when they laughed at me—or I acted like it didn’t matter or that I didn’t understand what they were saying. Which worked, in part, because I didn’t talk in school until halfway through third grade; I was so shy that, if I tried to speak, no sound came out. So teachers didn’t bother to call on me. For that reason, as well as others, I came to believe I was stupid.

Any time other kids were in groups with no adult providing structure or authority, I became a target. Normal social experiences were a source of anxiety and pain for me.

My arch enemy

My arch enemy was Mary Kozowski. Mary was pretty, blond, athletic and popular. She lead the other kids in taunting me. But if no other kids came out to play, we found ourselves on the concrete top of a storm drain on the edge of a front lawn where, surrounded by shrubbery that created a green cave, she would confess to all kinds of secrets and fears.

I never betrayed her confidence. I never even indicated to the other kids that Mary treated me differently when we were alone. I somehow knew that the quality that I had that allowed her to tell me her deepest thoughts when we were alone was the same quality that made me the target of her cruelty when other kids were present.

My empathic nature

This quality that invited her vulnerability was my empathic nature. I literally held her pain as if it were my own because, the moment she shared it with me, it became my own. 

And the sharing of their pain was what the cruelty of the neighborhood kids was about. The transfer of pain—and the exaggerated identity with and defense of privilege—is what cruelty is about.

I believe that one lens we can use to view what is going on currently in the U.S. (as well as other places) is the epidemic of the death of empathy. George Floyd and others like him would be alive today if the officers arresting him had had empathy. Empathy allows us to feel another’s pain. It allows us to put ourselves in someone else’s position because, in the moment, we are aware that we could be in that same position if circumstances were different. Even more, we are aware that all of our positions are shared positions.

Empathy is connection

Empathy is the real maternal instinct. It is not just the result of connection, it is the means of connection. Without empathy, there is no true, authentic connection—and no authentic community. There are merely transitory moments of opportunistic alliance and predatory loyalty.

When we hide our pain and empathy from those who commit either overt acts of cruelty or minor, casual ones, whether to us or to others, we actually position ourselves to be like those who have killed their own empathic nature, cultivated a stoic, easy, relationship with injury and murder, allied themselves with bullies and bullying.

Breaking through the disavowal of my feelings

I literally spent years breaking through my own stoicism, my own disavowal of my feelings, through pretending to not care or pretending to join in the “fun” if someone said something wounding to me. I developed a plan: I wanted to learn to either say, “ow,” or to stop dead in my tracks, look the person who said something wounding in the eye, and let their ugly words hang in the air. And, at last, I did it! One day someone threw a verbal jab at me. I stopped. I said, “Ow.” They looked shocked. They never did it again.

As I began to be more authentic and challenge the hurtful remarks that came my way, they stopped. My relationships improved. The habit and practice of inflicting pain, whether through so-called humor, or through hate, anger, fear, law “enforcement, ”authoritarianism,” or for any other reason, flourishes in the lack of an authentic response.

Show the pain

Now I allow myself to be shocked and act shocked, be hurt or act hurt. I allow myself to feel the pain and show that I feel it—or allow my authentic response, whatever that might be.

As I explored my own, authentic responses to pain, I discovered insecurity around my intelligence, behaviors designed to proved my intelligence, and layers and layers of the belief that I was stupid. As I worked my way down through those layers, I asked a few of my siblings, had they thought I was stupid? I was answered with a definitive, “no.” But there it was, the feeling, the belief, that others had believed I was stupid.

Then I went back to St. Louis, where I’m from, for a wedding. At the end of the ceremony a family member, who I hadn’t seen in five years, crossed the front of the church and made directly for me. Without first greeting me, this family member asked if I had been cold during the ceremony. Taken aback by this question I said, yes, that the air conditioning had been blowing on me off and on and I had been freezing when it was on. The family member looked me in the eyes, and with a great deal of authority, pausing after each word, said, “Then you’re stupid.”

Without a thought, I burst out laughing.

They came up to me two more times at the reception and said, “You’re stupid.” Each time, without intending to, laughter bubbled up from within. On the third time, as I laughed, I saw panic in that person’s eyes, and I knew that the hold they had had on me since childhood had broken—and we both knew it.

That person walked away. That was the sum total of our conversations on that occasion.

The spell is broken

Strangely, three years later, at another wedding, they said the same thing. This time, I smiled and said, “You know, where I live now, people don’t say those things to each other. We only say positive things.” They looked shocked, said something about buying me a drink but, instead, walked away and sat down, staring into space, as if I had utterly confused them.

Empathy has been dying for a long time. Let’s stop the process. Let’s not only revive our empathy but value it. Use it. Show that we are using it. Use it when someone says even a slightly cruel or demeaning thing, saying that they only meant to be funny. Feel your pain—or your disbelief—and allow your reaction to communicate your experience, whether painful or utterly ludicrous, to the person who felt the need to inflict pain.

Our stoic silence or our lack of a genuine reaction to the attempt to inflict pain on us or on others is part of the equation that has allowed empathy to die.

Your true nature is empathic. Be your truest self. Be empathic.