Empathy Overload: Why Feeling Too Much Can Hurt Your Relationship (And How Compassion Heals It) (Episode #108)

There's something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh.

Welcome to the Human intimacy podcast as Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Meiseless, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, today I'm in Phoenix getting ready for a big training for therapist tomorrow. So my background's a little bit different, but absolutely excited to talk about today's topic. How have you been?

You know, Dr. Skinner, I'm really great. This morning I went out for my walk, and it was fighting cold. The sun was out, the skies were blue, and it was so cold and windy. And I realized I'm just. I was like, this is like taking a cold shower and what it does to your nervous system, but it enlivens you. And I was just so grateful that I could be outside. I was so grateful to be alive and especially to be here, because today we're talking about something. Can I lead in? Can I jump in there?

Yeah, you lead in.

I had a dry run at this earlier this week with one of my clients because we're talking today about empathy and compassion. And for my whole career, I've been teaching it wrong. And so I'm really excited to have this conversation. I've understood it wrong, I've taught it wrong, and I'm really grateful for us to have a space here to be able to talk about it and to start putting the research and the science behind it. And I think it's really misunderstood because I misunderstood it. So this is going to be a good conversation.

And for me, I've been talking about this probably for two or three years now in different ways, trying to format what I learned from Dr. Stephen Porges and what I learned from Dr. Stephen PorgeS shook me just like it did you. Because historically, I'm like, empathy is a good thing. Empathy is what we want to have. That's all true. But empathy can also be problematic. And that, Marianne, is something that we have not talked about is what happens when we get. There's a term here empathy overload. So today we're going to be talking about empathy overload as it relates with what happens in dynamics between individuals and couples and what happens in our relationships when empathy takes over to the point where it shuts us down from our autonomic nervous system. And I'm actually going to be talking about this at the upcoming Human Intimacy Conference, because I'm so. I've been concerned because I work with couples and I hear a phrase, and if you've ever heard someone say, my spouse has no empathy, they can't feel empathy. They just can't do it. I want to invite you to hold on tight for today's conversation because I think it might help you see your spouse or your partner in a different way.

And I have heard that oftentimes in my counseling office. So, as you said, for a couple of years, I've heard you talking about this, and in my brain, I'm just going to give a little bit of data, I'm going to give a little bit of context here. And years ago, there was a Brene Brown video, Compassion versus Sympathy. And it's got two little animated characters, and one crawls down into the hole, or one's down the bottom of the hole, and the other one comes down and says, well, at least this and at least that, trying to find a silver lining. And like, ooh, ooh, yuck. And kind of like walks away. And that. That's kind of been in my head for years. But what I've told my clients is empathy is we're not born with empathy. It's a tool. It's like a muscle. We have to build it. And I know we've had this conversation and it was probably, what, three, four months ago when we really had a good conversation about that, it finally made sense and clicked for me.

That's not easy, right? Because there's a point where empathy is unbelievably important. And then there's a point where some people feel too much empathy overload. And let me explain that to our listeners. Here's the concept. In the most basic form, empathy is a good thing until it's not.

I want to clarify at least what finally clicked is you read some research from Dr. Porges, and what I understood from it was empathy is a natural, almost instinctive. It's a sympathetic response that we have. So when somebody is vomiting and I go, that is my body reacting with empathy. It's almost. It's not something conscious, it's not something cognitive that I pull up and I think about and I say, I'm going to practice this right here. This is my body's natural response to something that I'm seeing or experiencing is somebody else's. And it's emotional.

And you're feeling it, you're experiencing it. You are having an emotional or physical response to. In that situation, someone throwing up, or let's say somebody slams their finger in the door and you're. Oh. You go instinctively, like this mirror neuron says, oh, that hurts. It wasn't even your finger.

I don't know if I can go here or not. But when you're viewing media, there are certain places where a male might get kicked and every male in the room seeing it might go, oh. And there is like that cringe, that body pulls back, that I'm feeling what that person's feeling, or at least I am connecting with what they're feeling completely. And my body's responding. That is the empathy. And it's natural and it's instinctive. And it is our body that's the part of the fight or flight system that our body's preparing. Am I fighting or fleeing? And, and you know, we, we. We've moved to a new YouTube channel, the YouTube.coman-imimacy. And so for those of, of you who Wanna watch this, Dr. Skinner is like pulling back. And there's a lot of body language that's going on here as we're talking about what our bodies do when we experience empathy. Check it out there, if there's. Where you can check it out.

So, so there's a general point here. Then empathy is a learned skill. This, at the same time, the problem becomes overwhelming to our body when we get overwhelmed by relating with other people's experience.

So can we, can you clarify that? Because I, I think that it's a learned skill and I think, I thought it. My understanding, it's just intuitive, that it's just our body reacting.

So both. You can't separate them out. So we learn to feel other people's pain. We learn to attend to it. Let me give a very. I'm gonna give two very specific examples. If you come to me and you say, hey, I am really worried about our child and you're worried about the child because something happened to them at school and it reminds you of something that happened to you at school, I'm automatically feeling what my child felt there. That is a natural. I feel that. How do I respond to it? If I haven't resolved that inside of me, it may trigger everything inside of me. I want more on a run down to the school, yell at the principal, yell at the school counselor, yell at the teacher, because my child was not protected.

And you were triggered to a past memory or experience.

And I'm feeling my child's feelings, I'm overwhelmed by it, and I blow up because something inside of me was triggered. So that's a learned natural empathic response. Also my own unresolved stuff.

Okay. Okay. So I have a scenario. Ten minutes ago, before we met, my daughter called on the phone in tears, hyperventilating, not able to Breathe. Tell me that something happened. And my husband and I both went like, oh, my gosh, what's going on? Are you okay? Like, like our bodies reacted, our voices changed, our bodies, physical, everything reacted to our daughter trying to figure out, like, oh, my gosh, what's going on? Our daughter is in tears on the phone, and she's okay. Thank goodness she's okay. But what was that? Is that our. Is that our fight, flight or freeze? Is that our empathy?

So you're going to feel fear for your daughter's safety. That's going to be natural. But now if I start to feel what she's feeling, like, if I start to think, oh, what's it like being where she's at and being in an accident? What is she experiencing now? I'm feeling the empathic pain of what she's experiencing.

Okay, so then when I say, oh, when I was your age, I was hit by somebody and this is what happened.

If you've. If you've processed through it, if you haven't processed through it, you're like, oh, are you going to be okay? And you may go back into your previous memory and align exactly with what you think your daughter's experiencing, what you think they're experiencing. That's where empathy overload comes in.

So that's the cognitive part that you're talking about, that we learn from our own experiences. So there's the natural reaction part, and then there's the. Here's where I've experienced that. I'm putting myself in those shoes just because I had that experience. And that's where we lead into that overload that we want to.

And if it's unresolved, then I could be putting my feelings onto what I think you are experiencing. And if I haven't processed through whatever that is, say, going down and yelling at the principal or fearing that my child's not going to be okay after a car accident, I may replay everything in my mind, what they should or what I think they should be going through, and I might not even be right because I have those intense emotions. I assume that you're experiencing it this way. So you'll often hear people say, I know exactly how you're feeling. Really?

So what you're saying is our empathy then, is really. A lot of it ties into our kind of like those first reactions that we have, how we're reacting to things. That is our empathy. That is what empathy is, is our

reactions, our automatic response to an event. Right. But now if I'm. If I'm training Myself, I might pause and reflect and say, I wonder what that's like for Marianne, hearing about her daughter in a car accident. So now I'm trying to be into this scenario with you. And here's the problem. If I don't have enough emotional strength, I could be overwhelmed by you sharing with me that your daughter got in an accident, because I might have my own unresolved stuff going on in the background. And so I'm triggered just by that story that you told me about your daughter's experience. So if I have an unresolved experience, Marianne, and it triggers inside of me an intense emotional reaction, I have this overload of emotion, like, oh, my gosh, what are you going to do? I mean, as a mom, what are you going to do? How are you going to help her? And you see, the problem there is I'm having empathy, but it's not productive, because it is feeling, assuming, experiencing it to the point where I could actually make you feel. Feel like I'm a burden to you because of my intense emotions.

Okay, can I let me fact check something here with you, then. So, 10th grade, I had to take Greek and Latin roots, and I also speak Spanish. And so I think I can pull both of this in here. But empathy, the M and path. Path means the feeling. And M is in. And so the in feeling is I am in feeling in my experience with you. And I think if we were looking then at the differentiation with compassion, compassion means that I'm with you, but I'm not in it. So that's where I can say I have also felt grief or pain or fear or whatever it is. I can go and sit and be with you in that, what you're feeling, because I have also felt that which is different than me being in that exact emotion with you.

So now you're introducing us into the difference between empathy and compassion. So let me back up one more part here for a second. Again, I want to say empathy is good. I want people to feel my presence with them, right? But by Dr. Stephen Porges's definition, if you feel my presence and I can stay within myself and not overwhelm, that's more compassionate, because I'm with you in your suffering, and I'm actually in an autonomic state or a physiological state. I present as a calm person. That's the difference when I feel you, and I get automatically triggered. Because Dr. Porges says that when we feel empathy, it should activate our fight or flight response. Because if I go directly into what I think you're experiencing, I could feel fear, I could feel anxious. I could feel all of those things. And if I don't know how to regulate my own emotions, then I could be triggered. And I'm literally physically, physically feeling what you're feeling.

And that's where, you know, I had a client recently say, marianne, I'm an empath. And people refer to being an empath empath in the feeling where I am feeling everything that you're feeling. And I don't have the boundaries to keep my stuff where it is and to not let yours come in and completely drown me. And that's the overload that I know that we want to talk about as well.

That's right. The upcoming Human Intimacy conference I'm doing on that first day. I'm doing this. It's actually for both partners in this, the betrayer, the betrayed. I'm doing this specific with examples of how to work through those moments, because let's just really now apply it to the coupleship here. When a betrayed partner, for example, is upset, angry, many of them may say, my spouse looks away. They don't pay attention. They're not present. Is it possible that that's now coming across and being read as, they don't have any empathy. They can't feel my pain. In contrast with. They don't know how to deal with the pain. It's overwhelming their autonomic nervous system. They're going into fight or flight, needing to shut down, dorsal vagal shutdown or going into fight or flight. So they may come back with a fight. Well, you're never going to get over this, are you? Or fleeing. And the body language, if you were watching us on YouTube, may be turning away from the spouse. And the only way that the spouse can read that is you don't care. And so we're missing an opportunity here to understand what's actually happening in this conversation.

So as I'm hearing you talk about this, I'm thinking about a couple of clients that I've worked with. Who their spouses. Because of their own childhood trauma, they haven't really learned how to have emotions, how to process emotions, and they've just put up big walls. And so when their spouse comes to them and says, like, hey, I'm gonna be vulnerable with you. I'm gonna share this. This is really important to them. That can feel really threatening. And I think that's what you're talking about, where I can't handle what you're bringing to me emotionally. I just don't even have the ability or the capability to feel it. It's so overwhelming to me. I've gotta turn away from it. I've gotta. Hearing that, right?

Yeah. Because they don't know what to do with the intense emotion. And so if I tried to lean into that emotion and I haven't done my own emotional regulation, my own work there, then I'm going to have the window of tolerance. Dr. Dan Siegel's window of tolerance. I'm not going to be able to stay within that window of tolerance because it overwhelms me like I'm going to drown.

I'm going to get run over, I'm going to get smothered, suffocated by all of your emotions that are just coming at me like a. Like a dam that just bursts. And I gotta get out of here because I can't handle it.

And so the interpretation is you don't care.

Right.

In truth, it may be entirely possible that they don't know how to in an effective way because their body's autonomic nervous system is saying, you're not safe. This isn't safe. You don't know how to help here, and I don't know what to do with your emotions. What happens there is we get a couple relationship that's stuck, what we talked about last week. They're stuck right there because you don't care and you're always angry. And in that moment, if we could learn the difference between empathy and compassion, I think we could completely change the dialogue in many relationships.

And I agree with you, because what I see happening in this space is if I'm coming hot and heavy with all my emotions and my partner is overwhelmed, overloaded, they turn away. And I know you and I have talked about this before. I'm even more angry because I'm trying to share my emotions. I feel so hurt that you have betrayed me. How could you. The normal response to betrayal. I was reading some research about the responses to betrayal. The immediate response is shock. How. How could you do that? That doesn't make sense. And then intense anger. And so if I'm not ready or if my spouse or partner isn't ready to receive that intense anger, then I'm the crazy one. I'm the one that's out of control. I'm the rachaholic because I've got all this intense emotion and they're turning away because it's too much. And then I feel. And that's what we talk about with betrayal, trauma. We feel crazy. There's a lot of reasons for that, but especially in These spaces if my partner can't hold it, well, and.

And yet. So that's actually part of what I'm going to be talking about at the Human Intimacy Conference. This is where going into the other part, that's where it becomes learned. I have to learn how to be with other people's emotions, and it not overwhelm my nervous system. That's a skill. That's what's learned. So that's where I want to learn empathy without it overwhelming my autonomic nervous system, which then translates it into compassion, being with someone in their emotional pain, suffering. And that's the shift shifting from a place where it overwhelms me to a point where I can be in your presence and I can be in me and with you.

I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and there's a phrase in there, to kill a Mockingbird, where they talk about, you can't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. Something to that effect. And that's the compassion part that we're talking about. I need to learn how to walk in your shoes and understand you. If there's a rock in those shoes, boy, I'm going to feel it right away. And I need to learn how to fill the rocks that are in the other person's shoes as well. And that is, as we're saying, that is the muscle that we have to. It's a cognitive muscle. It's not the autonomic natural, instinctive response. And I think there's two parts. I've got to be able to manage and handle my own emotions first before I can be able to be in a space where I can also understand your emotions and try to be with you in your emotions as well.

Right. And that's what I'm going to actually be talking about at the conference. It's how do we do that? With very specific exercises. Because if we don't know how to do that, we're going to stay in the repetitive cycle. You don't care. You're always upset, you're always angry. Or we'll have these marathon conversations. So, Marianne, I've created an assessment that I'm going to be using with couples moving forward to help them explore their personal response of that. And that's what I'm going to be introducing on the second day when I introduce the intimacy repair method. It's a part of the conference where I'm going to be introducing the intimacy repair method with an assessment that will go with it to help couples endpoint their Specific ways that they're responding to each other in their conversations.

And I know you told me about that earlier, and just the idea of being able to say, I can take an assessment and it's going to help me understand how I'm reacting to my partner.

Yep. It's the first of its kind where

I'm hitting fight or flight or freeze or what's going on with my body, with my system. And so I'm really excited to hear about it.

It will be the first of its kind because every assessment we have up to this point is more of how I'm responding to my own stuff. Right. Or my partners say, gaslighting. This is going to completely change from an autonomic perspective. I'm going to be helping people assess where they're at and then give them specific tools that they can implement to help gain that skill that they may be lacking in the most important conversations. So, to me, Marianne, this is. It's changing how I've been working with clients, and the more I do it, the more effective it is, because people are starting to finally understand that's why we're stuck. That's why we're not moving forward. So I'm absolutely thrilled. And if you have not yet signed up for the Human Intimacy Conference, please come join us, because you're going to get some information that you've probably. In fact, this will be my first time launching this material, Marianne.

And your therapist may have been talking

about it wrong for years, and your therapist might have.

It's a byword that we just use for everything. Kind of like there's narcissist. Oh, empathy. Like, these are just words that are almost like fads that we use, but we don't really understand them.

And that's the beauty of breaking it down and looking at what it actually means, so we can apply it in our relationships and in our lives.

So before we wrap up, Dr. Skinner, I would love to see. Can we model for just a minute, like, what it would look like in a healthy way. Are you okay? Are you?

Yeah.

So what's the scenario? So, yeah, so I can go with Kevin? Finally. You're finally home. You told me you'd be home an hour and a half ago. You haven't called. You didn't text me. I had no idea where you were. The kids have been out of control, and you just walk in the door and I see your face, and it's just like you don't even care what has been going on.

So, first response. Oh, here you go again. Here you go again. Right. I just get home. It's been a hard day at work, and you are just on me, literally. I walk in the door and you're on top of me. That's my fight response. Right. That's not going to go very well.

So gaslit.

Just at that moment. We're not going anywhere.

Right?

All right, Marianne, it's been a hard day for me, and I hear you saying that, and I'm like, oh, my gosh. I have not been aware of your needs. How can I help?

I'm still not there yet, Dr. Skinner.

You know, that's okay. What do you need?

Well, I need to understand what's going on, because this has been a repeated pattern, and I don't understand it, but I feel so overwhelmed and frustrated. I need to know what's been going on.

Going on at work or going on why I'm late.

Yeah. Yes. All of the above.

Yeah. I. Can. I. Whatever you need. I'm more than open, more than willing to talk with you. I know this is hard for you, so whatever your concerns are, whatever you want to talk about, I'm open to it. Let me just tell you, I. I have really been struggling at work lately with all the pressure and all the expectations, and maybe I need to communicate more with you to let you know what's going on, because I have been overwhelmed by the demands of my boss, and I really haven't been opening up to you, and that's not fair to you. So I hope that you know that I care about you and that you matter, and I. I really should have probably told you earlier about all the demands there, so I need to apologize for that.

All right. I'd like to talk about it more, but I need help getting the kids to bed. They've been out.

Absolutely.

They need some attention, and I think it's dad time.

Yeah. Let you. You go do whatever you need to do. I'll get him to bed tonight.

And do you have the energy for that?

Well, it doesn't matter. I know you've been busy. I'll make the energy.

Okay. I'd like to understand more about what's going on with your work and maybe set up some realistic expectations, because I do need you to. You know, I was worried you were in an accident. I was worried something happened to you. The kids were crazy. They were probably feeding off of my energy and frustration. It's been a rough night, so I'll

push pause right there. If I haven't sent you a text message right there earlier and saying I'm going to be late. Boy, that's on me. Right? That's completely on me. And I'm. That's not in that role play. But again, if you're going to be leaving work, if there's been any kind of betrayal and you're leaving work late, you need to own that. Look, I'm. Here's where I'm at. I'm at work. Please don't ignore that. The pain that you can create in the fear there is going to just make matters worse for you.

Yeah. And I would also say that my emotional level of what I just portrayed, if I've been betrayed and there was not that communication, I was probably about a 4 out of a 10 and I'd probably be at about an 8 or a 9 out of a 10.

And that's. Let's say it was an 8 or 9 out of 10. That's where the problems really come in. Because if I haven't done my own emotional work, I'm not gonna be able to handle an 8 or a 9 or a 10 in intensity.

Right.

So that's why I've gotta do my own work there and develop that as being able to stay present and true to me. So notice my response there. Like I did start opening up about what's going on at work. I did. Right. But I also wanted to pay attention to what you've been experiencing. That's the difference. I can stay true to self. If I'm being congruent there. I can't. I'm not going to shrink and lose myself in the. In your frustration. Because that's not congruent with my experience either. If I'm overwhelmed at work and I can't communicate that with you, and all you do is you're just like, you know, my boss, then what I'm doing is I'm adding fuel to a already difficult situation and the fire is going to go and go get worse. Very important separation there.

Right. And I, and I think, you know, if we were to flip it the opposite way, because that was a fight response. If we went into a freeze response, you'd come home and I'd be giving you the cold shoulder. I'd be ignoring you. I'd be curt, cold offish, silent treatment, maybe. And it's a hard place for you to come in and engage either of those places because what I heard you talking about was, hey, I've had a really long hard day and your energy's probably depleted and you're coming in feeling attacked. Either way, there's also that space where you're already coming in low energy, low reserves, probably low ability to even handle all of the emotions that are coming. And that might be a place to stop and say, do I need to meditate for two minutes before I walk in the door? What is it that I need to do? Do I need to, you know, get a drink of water, have a snack, something before I walk in the door so that I know that I'm gonna be ready to handle whatever. Whatever emotions come at me as I walk in as well.

So we'll come back. These concepts very important for us to talk about. And Marianne, I just wanna close with this. As we prepare for the conference, there's something that I'm learning about the experts. They're doing so much work in preparation for this conference. I'm so excited. And so with today's topic, empathy and compassion and helping us apply a compassionate approach to recovery and healing. I think as we really, as we talk about that and these types of concepts, it's going to be something that as couples start implementing these things and the tools that they're going to be giving at this conference, I'm excited for what. What the outcomes are going to be.

I think I'm really excited as well. I know last year I learned so much from every presenter, so I'm really excited to grow and learn as well, and to learn what I've been doing wrong and how to frame it better so that I can help my clients a little bit better as well. So thank you, Dr. Skinner.

Thank you. And to our listeners, you have a great week and we will look forward to being with you next week.