Agonizing Empathy is a phrase that I have coined to describe the situation in which highly empathic people find themselves when watching a loved one going down a path that in all likelihood will lead to betrayal and a broken heart. You can literally see the heartache coming and feel desperate to prevent your loved one from being emotionally destroyed.

This piece was inspired by the writing of Josh Slocum from the Disaffected Podcast. In his recent piece about reading people, he talks about his ability to read ill intentions, as well recognize personality disordered behavior in other people as a result of his life experiences. He talks about the personal price that he pays for it. Here is the link to his article.

Disaffected Newsletter

Reading people

There’s an essay I enjoyed that I think you will too. It’s about how damaged people-people who have actually been abused and traumatized in foundational ways-develop skills out of that experience…

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4 months ago · 125 likes · Josh Slocum

In addition to those who have been raised by cluster B parents, people with high empathy and life experiences of connecting with people who’ve been through serious emotional abuse and other forms of trauma, can often find themselves voiceless and powerless in the face of loved ones being set up for emotional pain and abuse at the hands of toxic Cluster B individuals.

As a therapist, I have worked with a wide range of individuals. Over the years I have come to appreciate that not everybody thinks like me, or like most of you for that matter. That there are a subset of wounded people, that may or may not have emerged from a troubled childhood, who lack empathy, and are willing to take advantage of and use people to meet their own needs. These people are highly charming and cunning. There are manipulative people out in the world who will see your empathic and kind friend or family member as a resource for them to exploit to meet their own needs for power and control, with scarcely if any thought or how their behavior is affecting your loved one. And like so many of us therapists find ourselves doing, you will be there to pick up the pieces from the train wreck that you saw coming without the benefit of being one step removed.

It is never a good position to be the bearer of bad news. So people with high empathy and insightful forethought can find themselves in circumstances where they may be the first voice to call out a toxic situation. You may be known as a friend who will tell people the truth, whether or not they are ready to hear it. Some of this comes from your own desire to turn off the scary movie with the inevitable tragic ending that has hijacked your brain. Unfortunately many people are going to shoot the messenger. They are going to be upset with you for bringing to their awareness possibilities that perhaps they know on some deeper level but are not ready or prepared to deal with.

This is a very difficult emotional space to inhabit. When you have been witness to emotional trauma and you see a loved one blindly walking into a traumatizing situation, it is very difficult to admit that you are powerless and may not be able to do anything more than the audience member of a scary movie can do. Take some deep breaths and know that at some point, the movie will end.

I recently experienced this when a loved one found her way out of a relationship with a toxic narcissistic partner, who had no qualms about taking advantage of her and using her good will and kindness to his advantage. I had a strong feeling back in October that she was dealing with a very flawed individual and inevitably her heart would be broken. Fortunately, for my friend, she found the courage to cut ties and get away from this individual. During a visit with her recently, I very much struggled with whether or not to warn the next victim of this narcissistic person. I could see them lined up in the queue, ready to be harvested.

Somehow, in my mind I had equated my knowledge of what will happen to this new person to mean that I had some sort of power over the outcome. If only I could get to this woman and warn her. Explain to her that I’m a psychologist and I understand how these patterns happen and that she was in harm's way.. Could I somehow get her to see that she was a sitting duck and likely to be the next victim of this narcissist. If only that would work.

For my part, I had to accept the reality that I could not save this person. That in our present reality, the bearer of bad news is more likely to be scrutinized by the listener than to be heard. That telling someone bad news through an uninvited opinion will likely only bring me trouble. It will only paint a target on my back. That an abusive person will be abusive until the abused person in the relationship figures it out on their own. Unfortunately, there will be new victims.

In our particularly divided society, with people on both sides of the political spectrum living in their self reinforcing echo chambers of social media, differences of opinion are quickly perceived as threats and attacks. People feel entitled to never feel uncomfortable. We have cultivated such a fear of discomfort that simply saying something that may be true, that makes someone feel uncomfortable, is viewed as an attack and is met with a counter attack. Telling someone something that might be true, that is painful to hear can end up getting you canceled.

The truth is that the path through and away from agonizing empathy is to accept that our insightful knowledge does not equal power. That one can be acutely aware of how things could be different and how someone does not have to suffer the abuse of another person. ONLY IF… that person is willing to listen to those friends and family with an open mind and tolerate the discomfort of having their perceptions challenged.

Communication is always a two-way street and there are options for the receiver of uncomfortable information as well. One of those options is to recognize how protective we are of what we want to believe about others. To recognize how our minds protect us from learning things that have serious implications for happiness. We all want to protect those notions that make us feel happy and secure. Sometimes to the point where we’re really not as interested in hearing the truth as we are in hearing what feeds our sense of safety and our need for emotional comfort.

So we can decide to express gratitude for the heartfelt warnings that others might give us about our pending circumstances and the traps into which we may be walking. We can resist the urge to vilify the messenger and feel honored and valued that this person is caring enough to try to look out for us and tell us things we don’t want to hear about for our own good. That a message that leaves us feeling hurt and defensive doesn’t mean the person intended to hurt us or make us feel defensive. We can remember that people who really care about us will say those things that are hard to hear. Because a good, caring, and decent person wants to protect us even if it means that we may be upset with them.

For those of us who have this empathic forethought, we can take a stand and continue to reach out with honest and caring observations. Understanding that someone's decision to care enough to manage your defensiveness and emotional discomfort with them, is one of the greatest acts of love that any of us can do. And at the same time, we can work on gracefully accepting that some of our loving and accurate advice will be ignored and discarded.

Most of the time I choose to be that loving person who honestly shares what I think because that is who I want to be and because I believe the world is better for it. I want to be that friend or family member that you know you will get the truth from, even if it won’t bring me your accolades or validation. I simply have to accept that there is some truth to the saying that no good deeds go unpunished, and the people are allowed to feel however they feel about my observations. It is humbling to realize that my understanding and insight into the path of the inevitable suffering that is headed towards my loved one, is simply not enough to prevent them from being emotionally devastated.

In this moment of humility, I also have to acknowledge the times in my life when I have discarded very valuable observations and advice because it made me uncomfortable. That it took time and practice for me to learn the valuable lesson that my emotional discomfort is probably a sign that I actually really need to listen to what this person has to say to me. My emotional discomfort about someone’s observations is actually an indicator that there is some truth headed my way. Truth that I am ill prepared to swallow and digest. Truth that will leave me to make some very uncomfortable and hard choices.

So if Josh were to ask my advice about pointing out when people are in danger from the manipulations of cluster B personalities, I would probably encourage him to pace himself and keep doing it with his eyes wide open. To proceed with the understanding that it will be thankless most of the time, but there will be that occasional person who is ready to hear the observation. That his expressed seed of an idea and support for looking realistically at an abusive partner, family, member, boss, etc. may make all the difficulty worth it in the end. That regardless of whether or not people are receptive to your insight about the psychological danger they are in, you have been true to yourself and done the best thing by them, regardless of whether or not they recognize or appreciate it in the moment. Being a loving, caring, and honest truth teller to the people in our lives is one of the highest acts of love and courage that we will ever do. The world needs more of it.