Are you someone with a lot of empathy and compassion? If so, you might just have a blind spot, one that will leave you totally bewildered in relationships and in human society at large. One that can cause you a lot of pain and a lot of wasted energy. 

If you are a compassionate and/or sympathetic and or empathic person, you have a deep ability to understand and share other people’s feelings. You may even feel them so deeply, you feel them as your own. You probably feel and show sympathy and concern for others. The thing is, people tend to assume that other people are the same or are similar to us, this is often called the false consensus effect and the assumed similarity bias. People are prone to projecting themselves onto others. People are often stuck in their own perspective and have a really hard time perceiving other people’s perspective. And this goes even further when it comes to empathy and compassion. 

People tend to assume empathy and compassion in others because it allows them to trust and form relationships in which they can feel connected and safe. They assume empathy and compassion because of social norms and ideas of goodness. It is accepted that people value goodness and that goodness implies understanding the way someone else feels and with this understanding, they will do what is good for others. So, it is assumed that people in general do understand the feelings of others and that if they understand the feelings of others, they will act with care. People also assume empathy and compassion because of the expectations we hold that other people are motivated to alleviate distress. When witnessing suffering, it is assumed that a person’s mirror neurons will cause an automatic, reflexive identification that will cause them to feel the urge to act to alleviate that suffering. Reciprocal altruism was a part of the evolution of our species. In many ways, an evolutionary progression. We are wired to think others will care because mutual care and mutual aid is a foundational element of what makes us human. 

Because of this assumption, in relationships, we appeal to other people’s compassion and empathy all the time. Our partner does something to hurt us and we spend six hours trying to get them to get how much they hurt us and why, subconsciously hoping that they will learn never to do that to us again and to take some other loving action towards us. We get pulled over by the cop and we tell him a story about having a medical emergency, hoping he’ll feel sorry for us and let us go without a ticket. We do something bad to someone and we come up with excuses to defend ourself, excuses which make them see us as the victim, so they will forgive us and not cause us pain. 

Ready for what is hiding in your blind spot? Some people do not feel other people’s emotions, do not experience empathy, cannot put themselves in other people’s shoes, and do don’t experience compassion. But what’s worse than this is that even if people have the ability to subjectively perceive and share someone else’s feelings and experience, it does not necessarily translate to compassion. For some people, there is a “snip” between empathetic abilities and compassion. A detachment. Basically, them being able to perceive and understand the feelings of others does not necessarily translate to compassion, which is them being concerned enough to act in the person’s best interests or to treat them with care. This is a chilling reality to contend with. 

Some people learn the adaptive skill of not tuning into the way you feel emotionally as a self-protective measure. But instead, also as a self-protective measure, tuning into you mentally. They can go into your perspective and mentally imagine how you might feel and what you might think. They can mentally attune, so as to be able to endear themselves to others and manipulate them. This helps them stay safe and get their needs met socially. 

There are many people who have cognitive empathy in that they can tune into your feelings and understand your personal experience so as to exploit, control and harm you. They can do so without feeling the same feelings that you feel. Undercover cops use this skill to get the intel they need to convict someone. Con artists use this skill when they are pulling off the perfect con. Unethical politicians use this skill when they are trying to win the vote or get civilian support for their agendas. Codependents learn how to use this skill to get their own needs met. People who have coped with the relational pain in their life by learning to manipulate others, use this skill to be better at manipulating. There are many people who use this skill of cognitive empathy purely to gain information or gain trust or influence, so as to better suit their own egocentric aims.

The biggest problem in my opinion is that when we talk about people who lack empathy, sympathy or compassion, we picture a monster. We don’t picture the rather normal people who make up the vast majority of those with whom we will have the experience of being treated with no compassion or care, despite our pain. Every day people who get stuck in their own perspective. Or who feel so much pain themselves, they decide they can’t care for our pain. Or who refuse to really see and accept and feel how much they are hurting us because it damages a self-concept they are determined to preserve. We certainly don’t picture the person who gaslights us with compassion by saying “I will not be like everyone else who just up and left you”, when if you think back about that statement, it is not about you suffering, it is about not being willing to take an action that will decrease their own self-concept. We don’t picture the person who proves that when they feel it is us or them, they are willing to throw us under the bus. We don’t picture the people or who start out by feeling empathy, but it doesn’t matter because something gets in the way of them being compassionate, showing love and acting in our best interests. We certainly don’t picture the person with self-centered empathy. The person who focuses on how their own emotions mirror yours and who therefore ends up feeling so bad for themselves that you are suffering.  

Think again about yourself trying in every way possible to explain and show and prove to another person how and why you are suffering, in the hopes of appealing to their care. In the hopes of getting that breakthrough of them getting the pain you are in and this causing a breakthrough of compassion. And this causing them to behave in a different way towards you. And that never happening. So, you become convinced that they just don’t get it, and if they only will get it, if you can only succeed at getting them to get it, it will happen. This is a sobering and terrifying experience. If you realized that in this moment, you are assuming empathy and assuming that compassion will come as a result of them feeling empathy, how might this change what you are doing? 

A person may truly not get how you feel and what your experience is and if they did, things would change. But you may need to consider that a person who was acting from a place of empathy and compassion, would not have been able to do what they did in the first place. 

So, if you recognize yourself trying to appeal to someone’s compassion, consider the following: 

1. Are they actually trying to understand you and your pain and experience and perspective? Are they acting like they are concerned with their impact on you? Are they asking questions and initiating this attempt to “get it” and to work through it, so both you and they feel good again? Are they actively listening? Or is all the effort one sided? If they aren’t putting in any effort to “get you” or make things better, they are probably stuck in self-interest and are not going to act with care or compassion.
2. If you have showed them and explained to them your pain and your experience, does it create any responsiveness? Do they stare blankly? Do they actively try to find a solution and suggest ones or do they passive aggressively keep things the same? Does it lead to them taking actions and offering solutions? People who actually have compassion and actually care, will show it in their actions. People who have the capacity to understand other people’s emotions and experience, but for whom there is a snip between this and compassion, will gaslight you with words. Their words will suggest care. Their actions will not. There will be a mismatch between their caring words and their uncaring actions. People without compassion use manipulative language. All this tells you how connected they are to your experience and the degree of care they have for your experience. This will show you whether they have any empathy or compassion. Or whether they have a snip between empathy and compassion or whether something is in the way of their care and compassion. If you want to, you can put the pressure on them by telling them… “I have to assume at this point that you understand how I feel and you get what is causing me pain. But that you don’t care that I am suffering. So, I need you to explain to me either why you don’t care or what is in the way of you doing what is necessary to alleviate the pain I’m in (i.e. demonstrating care, compassion and love).”  
3. If you realize that you are with someone who currently either does not feel empathy or someone for whom empathy is not going to convert to compassion and care, STOP trying to appeal to their compassion. Stop trying to make them see how they have hurt you or are hurting you. Stop trying to get them to care about you. You can’t make that happen. You are currently with someone who is in the camp of their own best interests. And who is willing to play a zero-sum game. So, the only way to be safe is to appeal to their best interests and practical benefits of what you are hoping they will do if they did feel empathy or compassion. Also shift towards making them aware of how they lose by doing whatever they are doing that they currently think is in their own best interests to do. 

As people, to master relationships, to make this human society one that we all want to be in and want to leave for our children, we really must develop empathy, sympathy and compassion. But so many people have not grown up in environments where they experienced empathy and compassion, instead they learned they must vie for themselves against others. They learned how to play a zero-sum game and have normalized and accepted that this is just the way of the world. In a world where people are not conscious and are not engaging in conscious relationships, it is a mistake to assume empathy and compassion. And it is wise to realize that most people are far more motivated by what is in their own best interests, by their own wants and needs and by what is hurting them than they are motivated by your wants, needs, best interests and pain.