unfortunately, i have empathy.

I think empathy can be a curse.

I know that sounds dramatic because empathy is supposed to be one of those qualities we can never have enough of. We are always telling people to be more understanding, more compassionate, to put themselves in somebody else's shoes before judging them. And obviously, I understand why. The world could use a lot more people who actually give a shit about each other.

But I also think you can understand people too much.

I've been thinking about this lately because I have always had this need to get to the root of why people do the things they do. Especially when they do something that hurts me. I don't just sit with what happened; my brain immediately wants context. Why did they do that? Where did that reaction come from? What happened before this? What are they dealing?

And the problem is, there is almost always an answer. Maybe she was going through a horrible time and felt like she had nobody, so she turned on everyone around her. Maybe someone grew up being neglected and now has no idea how to maintain a healthy relationship. Maybe they were abandoned, abused, unheard, or constantly made to feel like they weren't enough. Maybe they learned really shitty ways of surviving and carried them into adulthood. Maybe they're scared. Maybe they're ashamed. Maybe they're depressed. Maybe they're struggling with addiction. Maybe their entire life has basically taught them that people leave, so now they destroy things before someone else gets the chance.

There is always something if you dig deep enough. And that's where empathy gets dangerous. Once you understand why, it becomes incredibly easy to start changing the way you feel about what happened.

You can know something was wrong and still find yourself defending the person who did it. You can be hurt and simultaneously feel bad for the person who hurt you. You can start thinking about their childhood while you're trying to process something they did to you as a grown adult. You can find yourself saying, Yeah, that was fucked up, but you have to understand what they've been through.

I've done that more times than I probably realize. Sometimes I've created the justification before the other person even gave me one. The worst part is that the justification isn't always wrong. That's what makes empathy such a mindfuck. Someone's childhood really can explain a lot about them. Trauma can follow people into adulthood. Being abandoned can change the way someone attaches to people. Growing up around chaos can make chaos feel normal. Abuse can completely distort someone's understanding of love. Poverty, addiction, grief, mental illness, neglect; these things matter. People don't just wake up one morning and become who they are for absolutely no reason.

I can look at someone who was neglected and abused as a child, passed around, sexually abused by people who were supposed to protect them, kicked out at eighteen, left to figure out how to survive, and then struggled socially and mentally as an adult, and I feel something for them. How could I not? There's a part of me that thinks, Of course you have issues. Look at what happened to you.

There's another part of me now that thinks, Okay. But what are you going to do about them?

That second part took me a while to develop.

I think I used to believe that understanding someone's past meant I had to keep making room for what it produced in the present. Now I don't think that's true. I can understand how someone became the person they are without believing everyone around them should have to suffer because of it. At some point, being an adult means inheriting the shitty job of dealing with things you didn't cause.

And I hate that. I genuinely do. I think it's incredibly fucked up that we can become responsible for fixing things we weren't responsible for breaking in the first place. Something can happen to you at any point in your life, completely outside of your control, and somehow you're the one left dealing with whatever it changed in you. Someone else can create the damage, life can deal you a horrible hand, or something can just happen for no good reason at all, and you're still the one who has to figure out what the hell to do with it afterward.

That's unfair. There really isn't a prettier way to put it. Sometimes healing feels like being handed a mess you didn't make and being told it's yours to clean up. But as fucked up and unfair as that is, eventually it is yours. Not because you caused it or deserved it, but because you're the one who has to keep living with it. Nobody else can do that work for you.

I think that's where my empathy has changed as I've gotten older. I have an enormous amount of compassion for the child someone was. I have compassion for teenagers who are still trapped inside circumstances they didn't create. I have compassion for adults trying to untangle what happened to them, too. I don't think there is some magical birthday where trauma expires and suddenly you should have your shit together.

But there does come a point where your pain cannot be the permanent explanation for every person you hurt.

I feel similarly about mental health and addiction. We desperately need better mental-health care. Treatment is expensive, inaccessible, stigmatized, and sometimes fucking terrible even when people finally manage to get it. Addiction is complicated. Trauma is complicated. Money matters. Support matters. Having somewhere safe to live matters. Telling someone to “just get help” can be such an empty thing to say when getting help isn't remotely simple.

But I also think you have to want something to change.

People can offer money, therapy, treatment, a place to stay, emotional support, resources, second chances, third chances, twentieth chances, but at some point there has to be participation from the person whose life is falling apart. Nobody can want your life for you more than you want it yourself. And this is probably where I sound a little mean, but I have also gotten exhausted by victim mentality.

Not being a victim. Those are completely different things.

People are victims of horrible things every day, and acknowledging that isn't weakness. I'm talking about the point where victimhood becomes an entire way of moving through the world. Something is always happening to you. Someone is always against you. Every consequence is somebody else's fault. Every broken relationship happened because the other person was terrible. Every attempt to help comes with a reason it won't work. Every bad decision has an explanation ready before anyone even asks.

After a while, it becomes exhausting to watch someone live inside a house that is constantly on fire while refusing to stop playing with matches. And empathy can keep you standing inside that house with them. That's the curse.

You understand why they're playing with the matches. So you stay.

You understand why they lash out, so you forgive it. You understand why they're terrified of being abandoned, so you tolerate things you normally wouldn't. You understand why they're struggling, so you make your needs smaller. You understand why they can't show up for you, so you keep showing up for them. You understand why they crossed a boundary, so you move the boundary. Then you move it again.

Eventually, you can become so understanding that there is barely any room left for your own feelings.

I think I've experienced that part more than I would like to admit. There have been times when I've compromised things I genuinely didn't want in my life because I understood why somebody behaved the way they did. I've tolerated disrespect. I've tolerated disloyalty. I've stayed in situations where I didn't always feel valued. I've swallowed feelings because somebody else's seemed more urgent.

I've even been hurt by someone and somehow ended up comforting them because they felt terrible about hurting me.

That one still gets me. Because how the fuck did we get here?

There is something almost cruel about being able to feel somebody else's sadness while you're still sitting inside the sadness they caused you. Their guilt makes you feel guilty. Their crying makes you soften. You don't want them to feel like they're a horrible person. You start reassuring them. Suddenly you're saying, I understand, before you've even had the chance to understand yourself.

And I think that is where empathy can become self-destructive.

It can make you suppress perfectly reasonable emotions. Anger especially.

I've noticed that anger tends to be one of my last emotions. I'm sad first. I think. I analyze. I understand. I give grace. I try again. I give another explanation the benefit of the doubt. Anger usually arrives after something has happened enough times that I'm finally exhausted.

By the time I'm genuinely angry, I've usually tolerated way too fucking much.

I'm starting to think anger deserves a little more credit than I've given it.

Anger can be ugly, obviously. It can make people cruel and reckless. But sometimes anger is just the part of you that finally realizes something isn't okay. Sometimes it is the emotion that shows up when you've spent too long explaining something that never should have required that much explanation in the first place.

Funny enough, this becomes incredibly obvious when somebody hurts someone I love.

Then I'm suddenly very clear-headed. I can see exactly where the disrespect happened. I can see what shouldn't have been tolerated. I can say, Absolutely not, without needing to know what that person's childhood looked like.

But when it's me? Apparently I need the prequel, sequel, director's commentary, and complete psychological profile before deciding whether I'm allowed to be upset. That probably tells me everything I need to know. I don't think empathy itself is bad. I don't want to live in a world where people stop trying to understand one another. If anything, I think we desperately need more empathy in a lot of places.

I just don't believe anymore that empathy should be limitless.

Because people are responsible for their lives in the same way I am responsible for mine. We can be shaped by things we didn't choose without allowing those things to decide everything we become. We can need help without making another person responsible for saving us. We can have explanations for our behavior and still owe people accountability for what that behavior did to them.

And maybe that's the distinction I was missing before. Empathy can explain. It cannot erase. It doesn't erase disrespect because somebody was struggling. It doesn't erase betrayal because somebody was insecure. It doesn't erase the impact of someone's behavior because their intentions were different. And it doesn't require me to keep standing somewhere that is making me miserable just because I understand how the person beside me got there.

I think the darkest side of empathy is that sometimes it makes you believe somebody else's pain deserves more protection than your own.

And if you do that long enough, you start disappearing inside other people's problems. I've felt that before. Like someone was sucking the life out of me so they could feel alive while I was left completely drained. And I don't think I realized how miserable I had become because I was too busy understanding why they needed so much from me.

I don't want less empathy. I just don't want empathy that requires me to abandon myself.

There are things people have lived through that I will always have compassion for. There are people I will probably always understand even when I don't agree with them. I will probably always wonder what happened beneath the surface before deciding somebody is simply a shitty person.

But sometimes people are shitty.

Sometimes somebody has been hurt and still chooses to hurt everyone around them. Sometimes a person has been given help and refuses it. Sometimes you've given enough grace. Sometimes you don't need another explanation. And sometimes the most empathetic thing you can do is hope someone heals from everything that happened to them, without letting them have access to you.