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About Empathy

This week’s blog comes to you as a result of a social media post we saw on narcissism. The main point of that post was about empathy. The post started OK, until they got to this point, “…empathy is a capacity you either possess or you don’t…”

Those of you who know us well are familiar with the soapbox we hop on, 

especially to address social media posts or terms or theories applied to abusive perpetrators and their behaviors.

Buckle up, the box is out today!

Empathy, What it is and What it isn’t!

Many people consider themselves empaths. The past couple of decades have enlarged the language around empathy. It has become popular to see ourselves or others as empaths. 

In addition, the rise of social media pop-psychology has expanded the reach of the belief that so-called addicts, abusers, or narcissists do not having empathy. The paradigmatic position for this population is that these individuals have little to no empathy, thus explaining a reason for the abuse committed against their wives. The companion construct for the victims is that if these men could rebuild this skill, they would understand their wives’ feelings about their abuse – and change!

In truth, empathy is constructed by the individual – in the mind and brain – through an active inference process.  It is not just a fabulous pro-social ability to be perceptive to another person’s feelings or life condition. It is likewise, not someone one has or doesn’t.

Predictions of another’s experience or even their internal states (feelings/emotions) are guesses. We don’t read minds or emotions. The best we can offer one another in terms of caring is in learning to understand what is different for us, but important to the other person. To make sense of another’s experience alongside your own requires emotional precision and granularity. Most abusive men do not apply this skill when interacting with their targeted victim because it serves no purpose to an abuser’s goals.

Context Matters for Empathy

Context from our human interactions is a combination of social and personal constructions. This means that we create our beliefs or adopt them from the world around us to make sense of our life experiences.

This is both important and true for pain, other signals in the body, and the cues in human interactions. How we interpret these events is dependent upon the situation and our past meaning of similar situations. 

Context and meaning sharing is not part of the agenda of an abuser. Perpetrators of ‘Targeted Partner Abuse©’ have a particular explanation or narrative about their actions that is foreign and inconceivable to a victim, or a healthy-thinking human being. 

Empathy is much easier to achieve when there is shared experience or meaning. This applies to the words we use to describe situations, people, or events. Abusive men do not want to share the meaning of abuse with their targeted victims. They control the meaning. They erase context. They blame the victim. 

There is no need to cultivate an experience of empathy when you do not feel sorry about what you’ve done or care about the feelings of the victim.

Empathy is Caring

When an individual controls a situation to achieve a desired outcome, without regard for those harmed in the process, the nature of their constructed emotions can often be discerned by the degree of pleasure or success they associate with the result.

Tragically, what victims want and need is not the game plan of the abuser. Victims need empathy when hurt. They want and need care. This is a real and legitimate need. It is just not going to be found in the abuser’s construction. 

This makes sense – and explains – the problem we often think is an issue with a lack of empathy in the abuser.

Is Empathy a Capacity One Possesses?

What then do we make of the statement from the social media post? 

One can possess empathy through the construction of the emotion. It is a choice to do so. It is not innate or fixed in the brain, meaning that someone not constructing empathy is not missing chemical or electrical brain functions. They are choosing not to apply the process for empathy construction that would be beneficial in social interactions.  

It isn’t capacity as much as it is a decision. The capacity of one’s empathy is based on that individual’s experiences with the emotion and their decision to construct it or not. It is much like compassion or any of the other value of charity. There isn’t missing wiring to explain why empathy isn’t offered to others in need. They are choosing to be amoral or without appropriate pro-social conscious character traits.

Empathy is Belief

Most humans believe that the appropriate way to interact with one another is through a value of caring; that value is intrinsic, or contained wholly within the individual who acts upon the principle. Abusers are not constrained by any socially prescribed values. Abusers’ values and beliefs are blurred to fit their standards.

Empathy in Children

Children, and even infants, have an almost natural disposition for empathy. They care about others’ feelings, often offering generously of themselves when they recognize sadness in a friend or family member. 

To make the statement, as this poster did, that empathy didn’t exist to begin with in an abuser is an egregious statement without evidence. This poster cannot possibly know the upbringing or lifespan development of every abusive man. Nor can they know the attitudes and values held within every individual. 

There is a consistent pattern observed in most abusive husbands that suggests a lack of APPLIED empathy. More accurately, these men often appear not to care, as shown by their disregard for their wives’ feelings, their apparent lack of remorse when confronted with the harm they cause, and their failure to correct their behavior. However, even if these patterns seem widespread among abusive men, it is important to avoid making absolute statements about this population.

A possible conclusion offered is, “Abusive men often withhold expressions of empathy and concern for the hurt they cause their wives due to the lack of care when operating from cruelty” (Coach Joi). 

Convincing or Compelling Empathy

It’s more appropriate to consider that for most wives of ‘Targeted Partner Abuse©,’ we will be unsuccessful in our attempts to convince or compel our abusive husbands to express empathy to us for the harm they cause. Most of us have experienced anger, contempt, and blame-shifting when we try to ‘help our husbands’ understand how we feel. Most men will say conversations of this nature ‘feel’ like criticism. 

As maddening as it is to have a husband say this when we are in so much pain, this blame-shifting statement is a topic for discussion for another day. 

In truth, there’s no reason to explain to an abuser that what he’s doing is wrong; they already know. They don’t care. There will be no empathy offered. There will be no point to a conversation of this nature with an abusive man.

It is not a matter of what ‘they get’ or  don’t ‘understand.’ It is a matter of having a different set of rules or values for how to interact with other human beings, especially their wife. A person’s beliefs and attitudes are evident in the words that person says or the behaviors they exhibit. It is not difficult to ascertain where others stand – it is simply a matter of watching what they do and listening to what they say.

The Rest of the Post

There is a lot more I could pull from that post that addresses the abuser’s identity or persona, but we’ll save those for other topics. 

What is important for this topic on empathy is to understand that, as human beings, our emotions are not something we have or don’t have. Every human being constructs emotions. The meaning we make for our own individual constructs may have roots in what we were taught as children, or observed in our family; however, this is also not a fixed state in our brains. Any conditioning, experience, or training can be modulated and adjusted as we make agentic decisions to do so, and as we navigate the human experience.

A child might learn from an angry father or a hurt mom, but wise humans discern that this one representation is not the only way to respond to life or people difficulties. We have the presence of mind to understand that generations and time change people and meaning, and therefore, when we look back, we should do so to learn (empathy) how the world impacted our parents and adjust accordingly for our children (wisdom).

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