{"id":28107,"date":"2022-01-27T10:46:28","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T18:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=28107"},"modified":"2022-01-31T07:05:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T15:05:25","slug":"empathy-tonic-or-toxic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/empathy-tonic-or-toxic\/","title":{"rendered":"Empathy: Tonic or Toxic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite parts of a trying story from the Old Testament comes from Job and his friends. Job\u2019s companions get so much wrong in the story. They offer shallow answers to bottomless pain. They espouse theological misunderstandings that only add to Job\u2019s misery. They offer platitudes when there are no answers. What the friends get right in the story appears when they only sit with their grieving friend and offer no words or advice. They carry out a ministry of presence that offers better help than attempts to fix or explain. For some time, that picture defined empathy for me, entering the pain in a way that communicates caring. Such a positive view of empathy makes a diatribe against it sounds counterintuitive, even wrong.<\/p>\n

In a second engagement with Friedman\u2019s seminal work on leadership, A Failure of Nerve, <\/em>I reread a chapter about the \u201cfallacy of empathy.\u201d My reason for returning to this topic centers on a positive trait titled so negatively. Friedman, a pioneer in family systems theory, shatters soft notions of empathy when he states, \u201cAs lofty and noble as the concept of empathy may sound. . .societal regression has too often perverted the use of empathy into a disguise for anxiety, a rationalization of the failure to define a position, and a power tool in the hands of the \u2018sensitive.\u2019\u201d[1]<\/a> Friedman contends that those who lack power introduce concern for empathy as a way to force those with power to adapt to their anxiety. What sounds like a comprehensive rebuke instead eviscerates empathy gone wrong. If one lets Edwin Friedman explain, he gives valuable and relevant insight into a lofty ideal misused in the hands of the unhealthy.<\/p>\n

Friedman rails against the corrupted expressions of empathy expected by those entrenched in a nervous system. Sensitive sounding calls for empathy can hijack agendas and suppress personal responsibility. Empathy goes wrong for the leader when he or she holds themself responsible for the feelings of others who cannot distinguish between opinions and feelings nor hurt and harm. Friedman offers a rationale for the growing perversion of empathy as \u201csymptomatic of the herding\/togetherness force characteristic of an anxious society.\u201d[2]<\/a> He does have a place for empathy, but other dynamics must accompany it. When a leader presents a \u201cwell-defined presence\u201d and \u201cregulates the systemic anxiety,\u201d they are leading to thwart efforts to remain locked within a nervous system, \u201cthey (leaders) can afford to be empathic.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

In my leadership journey, the kind of harmful misuse of empathy described by Friedman expressed itself with a recurring phrase: \u201cPeople just want to be heard.\u201d On the surface, it seems hard to argue with that desire. To listen, understand, and communicate with people, mark appropriate responses by any leader. In the hands of the unhealthy, however, a positive desire masks attempts the halt needed change. In the fable The Frog and the Scorpion<\/em>, a pleasant-sounding scorpion convinces a na\u00efve frog to ferry him across the river. Concerns over being stung by the poisonous scorpion are allayed, and the journey begins. Halfway across, the scorpion does sting the frog. When asked why he did what he said he would not do, the scorpion answers, \u201cWhat can I do? This is my nature.\u201d[4]<\/a> I wonder if Friedman might say, \u201cLeaders, beware. A scorpion is a scorpion no matter how well words sound at first.\u201d<\/p>\n

With some exceptions, \u201cpeople just want to be heard\u201d meetings came in times of leading adaptive change. Those meetings included people \u201cconcerned\u201d about the changes proposed or underway. In the early years, I believed I could bring anyone around to support any change if I had enough time and opportunity,. Experience knocked the wind out of those optimistic sails. No wonder the pastor who hired me called me Pollyannaish in my first review.<\/p>\n

It did not take long to comprehend the veiled threat: if I am being heard, change will cease, or else. On one occasion, one frustrated member left my office, and called the regional executive asking how to remove a pastor. My thinking over time about the principle darkened to assume that people who want to be heard want their way. Edwin Friedman\u2019s insights into empathy and personal responsibility reinforce a more nuanced position. Healthy people do want to be heard, and leaders should listen to them. Unhealthy people do not want to be heard. Leaders need to guard against entering their anxious state or withholding personal challenge due to hurt feelings and accusations bound to follow.<\/p>\n

If I could ask Rabbi Friedman a few questions, they would include:<\/p>\n