Babies in body bags, protestors being shot, mothers crying for their children, people scared, cold and hungry. It’s a dagger right to my heart and like a punch to the gut it sucks the air out me. I can’t breathe. My heart breaks right open.
Our leaders talk about killing other human beings, dissociate themselves from the human tragedy and keep score of who’s winning like it’s a Warcraft video game. For me, it’s not about whether these wars are justified or whose cause is the most righteous. It’s not about who’s right or who’s wrong. It’s about the ripple effect of suffering. My nervous system cannot keep metabolizing endless tragedy.
Are you feeling it too?
I’m on empathy overload. I’m worried about my dog who is having trouble holding herself up. And although I’m exhausted by my mom’s caretaking needs, I do feel for her. Her whole life has been upended since my dad died. She’s angry and confused. I feel raw and open and emotionally vulnerable.
I’m reminded of a time when I was a little girl around five years old, and my parents and I were driving from Pennsylvania to southern Alabama where my dad’s family lived. We were in slow-moving traffic crawling along as we made our way through center city Birmingham when we came to a stop. It was a blistering hot day, and I had the back seat window rolled down. I leaned my head out trying to catch a breeze. We had stopped right next to a dilapidated clapboard shack needing paint. On the sagging porch sat an older Black man in overalls. He had the deepest, saddest, most soulful eyes I had ever seen. I locked my gaze on him. He held it and didn’t look away. I could feel his pain and suffering and poverty. I strained to look back as we started moving. One of my parents told me to look away. I didn’t.
I think about that memory from time to time like now. I wonder if it was a defining moment for me, creating an empathy I have carried with me all my life. Or, was it genetics? Did I just come into this world as an empath? Both?
Or maybe it’s just me being woman who’s lived a life. I used to think midlife was about reclaiming yourself, working through pain and victimhood, and reigniting your soulfire. While that is true, by midlife and beyond most of us have lived through enough heartbreak to eventually soften us a bit. We have cared for children or aging parents. We have lost people we love. We have watched friends struggle with illness, addiction, divorce, disappointment. All of it cracks our hearts open in ways our younger selves rarely understand. And once the heart has been opened by life, it becomes harder to ignore the suffering of others. What once felt like open wounds now feels more like doorways to compassion.
Earlier in my life, my energy went into building an identity, having a career, family roles, achieving and proving myself. I was focused on my own story and making a mark in the world. When these structures settled or fell away, something deeper started to emerge. My heart became more central. My empathy became part of how my wisdom expressed itself.
Then something happened. I felt the spiritual call to service, a desire to help, contribute and ease suffering. Empathy pointed me to where my presence might matter. I did a 180 midlife career change at this point becoming a psychotherapist.
Empathy + Wisdom = Love in Action
Which brings me back to where I started, empathy overload and my way of coping. What I learned as a psychotherapist is that I am a witness to each story. I gently hold those stories until each woman can transmute it and hold it for herself. I am not the keeper of the story. It is not my story. But I do honor it. I give it blessings. In this way, my heart can remain open without becoming responsible for all the pain of my clients. It’s a sacred boundary.
Empathy then stops feeling like a burden and starts functioning as a form of wisdom and love in action. Really what is empathy but a form of spiritual perception. We empaths feel, see the big picture, and understand in an instant. We can see the divine orchestration in all things. But if we don’t put boundaries on empathy, it becomes suffering.
For me, I move into a conscious witnessing instead of absorbing. I move out of my emotional body and into my soul space, from pain to love consciousness. I silently acknowledge the suffering without taking it into my body. My heart remains open. Believe me, this is a practice. Moving out of my emotional body takes awareness and conscious effort.
I do know this for sure. Empathy is not a commandment to suffer endlessly.
It is an invitation to love more consciously.
Instead of feeling the oneness of others’ pain, why not let them feel the oneness of your compassion.
Love in action.
