Empathy vs. Boundaries: Striking the Perfect Balance
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[00:00:00] Empathy versus boundaries. Now empathy when it's done correctly can be extremely helpful for yourself and for other people. But when empathy runs dry and isn't really practiced, Mindfully, I guess I would say, then turns into enabling, which then turns into resentment on your part, which then actually robs you of your ability to have empathy anymore.
It's important , if you are like, a very empathetic person, or if you just want to at least communicate to someone that you have empathy that you understand the line between. Helping and enabling between empathy and boundaries. I was chatting with Campbell and I said, Campbell, what'd you got to say on this topic? She said, empathy and boundaries ride together on the same bus. And I thought that was a good metaphor in my mind. I pictured I don't know if you guys remember riding on the bus. I rode on the bus, still in the little green seat, and in my mind, it's I pictured empathy and boundaries sitting on the little green seat, like two, like [00:01:00] besties, like talking about everything together.
And I think that's a great metaphor because when you can use these things together, and they work in sort of coordination, then it works really well. But when you practice empathy without boundaries, it leads to a big old mess. Let's talk about how that happens first. And then maybe we'll talk about how to get that train back on the track.
Get those two in the same bus seat together, being friends again. Pretty often we get new family consults. And what is going on a lot of times is the family, they'll be telling us the history and everything, which is totally normal. And you can tell that the family member has a great amount of empathy for the person.
Usually not necessarily because they have the empathy for the addiction, but what they have empathy for is usually Some past struggle, this person has gone through or some current struggle. This person has gone through for example, if they know that the person has a lot of anxiety, or if they know the person has a history of childhood trauma, or sometimes
the parents have a lot of empathy and [00:02:00] maybe even a little guilt wrapped in there about maybe there was a divorce and they feel like maybe something they did is causing the addiction. And that's all well and good to have empathy and understand someone's perspective and to feel for them and to care for them.
But when that empathy crosses over to enabling it, what happens is that empathy turns into this compelling feeling inside that makes you feel like you need to somehow. Fix the situation for them, or make it better, or make up for a certain situation. That's when we cross over the line into unhealthy empathy.
Empathy should be a thought, feeling, a statement, a communication. It shouldn't necessarily be a bunch of behaviors involved in fixing, making excuses for, giving money for, all that kind of stuff. What happens is you feel like you're compensating for whatever difficult thing that this other person is facing [00:03:00] in life Because you really do see where that would be really hard in it And you do care about them and you can understand things from their point of view.
So you try to Mitigate it somehow like I said make up for it fix it or some kind of way, but when you do that It leads not to a great place because typically when you're so empathetic that you're fixing everything for someone, you never learn to fix the thing for themselves. And that's when you move over into enabling.
One really easy way to remember this and like a little formula that I have, but when you're helping someone. You leave with a really good feeling always doesn't help in anyone. You really good feeling. You help because you feel good about it. When you're enabling someone, you usually leave with a not great feeling, usually some level of resentment because when you're enabling.
It's forced helping. It's like helping that you felt like you had to do for some reason and you didn't really want to do it, but you did it, but you didn't want to, so you have resentment about it. That's how you know you're [00:04:00] over into the enabling category and not into the helping category. Think about it.
Think about Organizations you've helped in the past, people you've helped in the past, you feel great about that. You feel good. Even if you go and you donate things to goodwill, you feel good because you're like these things are going to a good home and maybe they'll help someone. You feel good about it.
But contrast that with the last time that you helped someone usually because they like, Asked you for something or because you noticed that they were Going without in some kind of way or they weren't taking care of themselves in some kind of way And then you jump in there and you start trying to fix it.
What happens to you is you eventually maybe not in the first five minutes, but eventually you become resentful of it because What you're going to notice is you're doing and doing and they're not doing and doing and then It's really bad because then they start expecting you to do it And then, maybe you help with money, or you help with babysitting, or you help cover someone's shift, or something like that, and now they're asking you to do [00:05:00] that regular, more than once, then you end up having this resentment towards the person, which in the long run will make you become a not very empathetic person.
And this is what we see inside of. Families where addiction is happening. So usually if it's your loved one, your spouse, your kid, your parent or whatever. And you do feel for them, like I said, you care about them, you love them, and you start fixing things for them because you have that empathy for them, then you're fixing it, but you usually have a bad attitude about it.
So the way you interact with that person becomes toxic. And if you guys have watched these videos very much, I call it the bad guy role. Then you find yourself in the bad guy role and that comes from this energy that you're carrying around that comes from this Resentment because you're doing things that you don't want to do and you ultimately feel Taken advantage of I don't know if you guys have ever heard of something called the drama triangle if you haven't Kim and I did a video on this a while back [00:06:00] But they talk about these sort of these three roles the persecutor role the hero role and the victim role and so what happens is If you jump in there and you're the rescuer and you fix things for someone eventually, which is an unhealthy role, eventually you fall down the victim role, because then you start feeling like you are taken advantage of, and then you move over to the persecutor role, because then you get agitated about it and you usually say something nasty or you put little passive aggressive comments in, or your energy is just cold or you start avoiding the person.
It's going to come out of you. in some kind of unhealthy way. We've all been there before. It's hard not to fall into this.
Especially if you're raised this way you may have even been overtly taught this maybe through a religion or just through Your family history and culture and what your family taught you was right and wrong. And like I said, it's always okay to help. And you will feel good about it and you'll have a good attitude about it But when you are like I said when you're using that empathy and you're doing more than you want to do And then you have that [00:07:00] bad attitude guess what then they have an even worse attitude back at you and now you're really mad Now you're like, oh I did this and this and now you're sassing me Now you got like the toxicity of the power struggle and the bad guy role And we're all up on the drama triangle with the victim, hero, rescuer, perpetrator, all that kind of stuff.
All those unhealthy roles. And you lead yourself into a really bad boundary situation. So I feel like an easy way to think of empathy is think of it like a feeling that you have a care or concern, and you should use that care and concern and empathy to communicate that to the person. I don't think you're ever going to go wrong communicating some kind of empathetic.
Statement to a person that must be really hard. Gosh. I don't blame you for being upset. Like I can see why that happened. I can see why it's hard to pay the bills. Whatever it is, use that empathy. You have to communicate very empathetically with the person not to fix their situation.
When you communicate empathy to someone, [00:08:00] you actually change their brain a little bit in a really good way. You actually. Turn down the volume of their emotions. If they're feeling like in crisis or they're stressed out or they're anxious, it's almost like it soothes that uncomfortable emotional state, which then allows their brain to kick in and allows them to actually think and sort through and solve their problems more effectively.
So I do think you should use your empathy with people. I just don't think you should use it. To fix their situation now, that's not me telling you can never help someone. Remember I told you help is always a good thing You help anyone you want as much as you want give a million dollars if you want to build my house, get my car, whatever But if you'll stay in that formula that I gave you, you'll have a good feeling about it and they'll have a good feeling about it because you're going to be doing it from a good place in your heart and not doing it from a place of feeling obligated for some reason.
And if they're helping themselves, if someone's trying to better [00:09:00] their own situation, if someone's trying to dig out of a hole, even if they created it doesn't even matter because we all create our own holes, right? Dug my own holes a million times, right? You can still have empathy for someone who put themselves in a situation because we've all done that before, right?
If they're taking steps to fix it, And you're coming alongside them and you're matching them one for one or something like that, you're going to be fine. If somebody is working hard and maybe they've dug a big financial hole and they need some help paying some kind of bill, but they're working hard and they're paying the other bills and they got a job and they're trying to get caught up, you're going to feel okay about that.
What you're not going to feel okay about is when you're paying somebody's electric bill again this month and you've paid it the last three months and they're not even working. You're not going to have a good feeling about that. You're not going to have a good feeling about it if you're covering someone's shifts.
Maybe you work with someone and maybe they're a single mom, right? And you have empathy for them. You're like, Man, I don't even know how she does it. She's got three kids. She's a single mom, right? And she[00:10:00] has, one of the kids are sick one day or whatever and you cover for that person. You'll feel fine about that, but if it keeps happening over and over, and you feel like the person isn't trying to help the situation themselves, that's when you're going to get into a not good place in your heart about it, which is going to lead to not great behaviors and vibes, and then you feel upset with them, and then you feel upset with yourself because you feel like you were weak, and why did you cave in, and you shouldn't have done that.
And now everybody just feels bad and they can feel that coming from you. Having those good healthy boundaries will allow you to care for someone more effectively and more properly. Here's an example that I sometimes give to like young people who I see in counseling or, and this doesn't have to do with addiction, , I can remember I was counseling this young girl one time, she was like 18 or 19.
And she had this little house it was a small little house, but it had two bedrooms, and she was living in the house, she was going to college. And she had a friend who she worked with, but who had no [00:11:00] family support, I think they worked at a fast food place or something like that. And she wanted to let the friend move into her house with her to help her out, because she really didn't have anywhere to go, this friend of hers.
And we were talking about, and she said I'm just going to let them live there for free. And I said let's talk about that. That could be a problem. And she's, this is a young girl and she's thinking why could that be a problem? I said, because. It's going to start out by being a problem because if this other young girl is living in your house for free, she's going to feel like, not like it's her home.
She's not going to feel as comfortable just being there. She's going to feel uncomfortable. It's just going to make her feel weird because she's going to know inside that she's not paying anything. And let's say you let her stay there, and then she starts leaving her dirty clothes somewhere.
Now you're really going to be mad. You're like, oh, now you're taking advantage of me. I'm letting you stay here. What if she like, quits her job or something? Now you have this bad feeling towards her. You're like, I'm going to stay here for free with no rent. And now you quit your job. You see how this can lead to bad feelings?
When, another example of [00:12:00] when a boundaries issue can come up is if you need some help for something and you want to help and you want to ask other people to help you for free, that's what friends do, right? You can ask a friend to do something for you once, maybe twice, and you're okay. But, If you know you're going to need help with something more than one time, even if you have a friend who's willing to do it, who says, I'll totally do it for you for free.
It's nothing if it's a little thing, and they can just do it as 1 time. So friends are for right, but if for example, my, I have some people in my family who do like technology or whatever, and I could say, hey, could you like, build me this website or whatever. They might even be like, I'll build you this website or whatever.
That's a bad deal, because that's a huge undertaking. That's a giant project, and they're going to end up having a bad feeling towards you. You're going to end up, Feeling guilty about it and then maybe something they built on the website isn't wanted it But you're not going to want to ask them to fix it because they already did it for free It just creates all this uncomfortableness between you guys so [00:13:00] allowing Friends to help if it's one time or whatever is totally fine Even if you feel like helping out a friend if it's one time a small task It's no big deal like totally do it get a piece of advice about something But if it's an ongoing thing that's gonna keep happening That is almost always going to lead you to a bad feeling.
And ultimately, it doesn't ever help that person in the end the way you want it to. Because it feels I'm just going to give them a leg up, but then they don't ever gain the skills that they need to gain to get themselves out of that situation or to keep themselves away from that situation.
We're we get ourselves in bad situations because we make mistakes. We all do that. But it's the muscles and the skills that we develop all of those come from working our way out of bad situations. So when you're that's what enabling means, right? You are enabling someone to stay stuck. And not only is it not helping them, but it's not helping you.
You're going to have bad thoughts. You're going to have a bad attitude. No one is going to benefit from it. So the next time you feel [00:14:00] tempted that's what I want you to remember. I want you to think, No, I care about you so much. I'm not going to ruin My relationship with you by doing more than I'm comfortable with doing.
Now, can you set that boundary in a very kind, living way? Totally. Don't make the mistake most people make, which is to do the thing. But not express the empathy. Most of the time it's like we, we help someone out, but then we have that resentment.
So we're sassy with the person or sarcastic with the person. And it really should be the opposite way around. I want you to be kind to the person. I want you to express that empathy. And if it's a one time thing every now and then, totally help them. But don't always fix the problem. It will not get better if you're doing that.
Debbie says, what is the formula just came on?
There's there's really a couple of formulas. One formula that I, this is just my way of understanding enabling is helping leaves you with a good feeling. Enabling leaves you with a bad feeling. That's how you're going to know which category am I in. If you left and you felt great about yourself, you helped.
[00:15:00] If you left and you felt bad about it, and you have a nasty thoughts, and you're mad at yourself for doing it, and you're mad at them for putting you in the position that for you to have to do it. So that's 1. And then there's that 2nd formula as far as how much to help is you can help as much as they're helping themselves.
If they take a step, you can take a step. If they take 20 steps, you can take 20 steps. There's no limit on the amount you can help someone. It's they take a step and you take a step. As long as that's happening, you will feel like you're helping them and you will have that good feeling.
If you're taking all the steps, you won't have a good feeling. Emily says my 18 year old son isn't working. He has two tickets he has to pay for and we are not paying for them. I have expressed empathy and I have made it clear that we are not bailing him out.
Five gold stars, Emily. He seems to have money for fun and marijuana. See, this is a perfect example, Emily. I'm so glad you said this because if you go pay those tickets And then, he goes out and hangs out with his friends [00:16:00] all night on Saturday. You're gonna be mad. You're gonna have a really bad attitude because you'll be like, What?
I went to work. I paid for your mess and you're out there partying. And then you know what you're gonna do, Emily? Is then you're gonna be nasty about it. But the thing that gets in our way is when we overdo, and then we feel bad about it, and it makes us turn into that resentful person
lots of gold stars, Emily. How do you stop the unhealthy enabling after so many years of doing it? Ooh, that's a good question. It's really hard to back out of it, . It's always helpful to start with a stricter, harder boundary and loosen up later than it is to start with a lax boundary and then bring it back into control.
But sometimes we find ourselves in that situation. I think probably what I would do is, it depends on how bad the enabling is, but probably the first thing I would do is just acknowledge that you're changing the rules of the game and saying, I know in the past. This has been the deal the arrangement or I always did this or whatever, I'm working on that I'm going to cut it back and just explain it to them.
Just say it What you don't want to do is you don't want to [00:17:00] say look i'm sick of dealing with your crap I'm sick of paying your bills. I'm sick of fixing your tickets when you're out smoking weed because then you're not expressing the empathy right and then plus the amount of you because Probably thinking, dude, you just did that on your own.
I didn't make you do that or whatever. So you want to give them the heads up. You want to take ownership of the fact that you put yourself in that situation, even if they are constantly the one asking you to do it. And you can say, no, you feel like they're pressuring you to do it. If you did it, it was your choice to do that.
So you have to own that. Don't blame them for your over empathy. And then if it's very extreme, and we do see this sometimes, especially when it's like parents and kids. Even like adult kids like you've been paying everything for them for like ever, then you probably want to taper back. And if you're in a situation like that, and you're not sure what to do.
Handle is 1 of our family therapists here. She's the expert at that. Like, how do you back out of that enabling thing? And she usually puts you on a taper plan. So it's not just like an immediate cut off. If [00:18:00] it's like a lot wrong, you might have to step back from it. What else we got? How do you stop overdoing if not doing can have a negative effect on you?
I think what you're saying, Kara, I could be wrong about this, but maybe you have a husband who's. Alcoholic, and you're over helping by making sure he gets to work and doing everything for him, but if he doesn't go to work, you can't pay the bills. You're going to have to figure out any ways that you can possibly to get yourself in a better situation, whether that's like separate finances or whatever you can do to mitigate it falling onto you, but then ultimately you need to face that consequence too.
You need to be willing to face it because You're trying to outrun it, you're trying to fix this thing for this person, and you're going to run out of gas, you're going to run out of steam, and you're never going to get out of the hole as long as you're doing that, which I get, sometimes it's scary. Get yourself as independent of a situation as possible.
And then start backing out of it.
A [00:19:00] new beginning says, what if it's done out of fear? That's very similar to Kara's question. What if it's done out of fear? The things that can make you unable are usually over empathy, fear, and sometimes guilt. Those are the sort of like the three things that are most likely to make you be helping in a way that you don't want to help.
A lot of times, I know this is going to sound terrible, but for most people that fear is like, what if I lose my loved one? What if they're homeless on the street? Those are usually like the big daddy fears. The thing I would say when I know this doesn't sound nice is you've already lost them It's already happening if their addiction is so bad that you're like if I don't fix this for them They're gonna be on the street then that your loved one that you remember isn't even in there So the question isn't what if the bad thing happens?
The question is could we possibly get them back? It's sometimes people say if I kick them out, they'll be out on the street And it's not that I tell people you have to kick a loved one out because I don't, but I'm also saying their misery [00:20:00] isn't really any worse when they're on the street than when they're in your house, they're not any safer on the street than in your house, that, that's all an illusion that you're putting on yourself.
Now, you might be more miserable if they're on the street because you're actually going to be more worried about it than they are. And the reason you know that is, is because if they were worried about that much, they would fix them. They would solve the problem. Like, when it comes to the homelessness, there are shelters everywhere, there are programs everywhere, you can call them and you can say, hey, I found this program, this shelter, will you go to it?
And they won't go to it. That's how you know you're worried more than they're worried.
Fruity Mango says, feels like I'm being punished for trying to help my husband quit his 20 year weed addiction. He tries to band aid. Childhood trauma. He's sober one and a half weeks and will find any reason to get upset and blame me.
He refuses to get any kind of therapy and address his childhood trauma issues. I think he has a pride issue and his mind thinks it's a sign of weakness.
This is actually really common. What I [00:21:00] would say to you first is if it's only been one and a half weeks I'm gonna give him a little extra room just to be moody. I'm not saying like abusive or dangerous Okay, i'm just saying being Moody and grumpy and irritable and impatient and whatever because it's dealing with draw.
So at one and a half weeks in, the person is still going to be in withdrawals. I'm just going to give them some space. It's not going to have that many conversations with them. And then what I would say, even though you're frustrated, because It's like, why don't you get help at least to deal with the childhood trauma.
If you just validate the fact that they're trying really hard to stop the marijuana, if they're one and a half weeks over, if you can say, you know what, I know this is really hard. I know your anxiety is crazy. I know you probably can't sleep. Those are the empathy statements. This is where they come in.
That's where they're helpful. And I really appreciate you doing that. I know it's not easy. So if you can just appreciate the steps that they are taking, they're actually more likely If the childhood trauma wounds come back after they quit using, they're more likely to get some actual help for them.
What happens a lot of times is once someone addresses [00:22:00] their addiction issue, the, I'm not saying the trauma goes away, but the anxiety symptoms and stuff like that usually simmer down like a lot for a lot of people. It's not like the trauma is not there anymore. But for a lot of people, Okay. It's manageable because the addiction has actually been putting all that on hyper overdrive because of the rebound effect in that country.
And then if you ever get your moment and the timing is right, then maybe you can look at the video we did a couple weeks ago on art therapy. That's not art as in coloring and painting. It's art as an accelerated resolution therapy. Because that's the. The quick therapy that you can use to alleviate the symptoms of trauma, and you don't even have to talk about it if you don't want to, and you don't have to go to therapy every week and talk it's like a quick one or two session thing, so if you get that moment where you think they might be open to it, you might want to throw that on there as a, as an option or a solution, because that's pretty acceptable for people, especially the ones that don't want to do talk therapy and all that.
Emily says my 18 year old son barely lives with us, [00:23:00] spends most of his time at girlfriend's house because anything goes. How do we talk about that? But we see that a lot in the young adult situations where they're with their parents and it ends up, the parents end up feeling dude, I'm not the hotel.
The boundary around this is if he's living in the house and he's just leaving a mess everywhere and he's not even helping, he's leaving like dishes with food in the room, he won't even take the trash out or do anything to help around the house. Then you set boundaries around that behavior.
If that's what the issue is, if the issue is you just want him there more. You might be moving more on his side of the street. The issue in Emily, you're the one that said it was about your son had the fines to pay. The fines are where you want to set the boundary more than how much time he spends at the girlfriend's house.
If he steps in and starts to address like working and stuff, that will help with the girlfriend thing. The other boundary you can set on that if you want to is if it bothers you that he comes in late, you can say, if you're coming home, I need you to be home. Before 11, because we lock the door and we go to bed and, we don't want to have to worry about it after the, you can say, I need you to be [00:24:00] home by a certain time.
If not, then I'll send your spending. That's an appropriate amount. But after they're like, 18, 19, 20, trying to control that is stepping into their side of the street. Now, you can ask them to communicate to you because I call that just good manners. I don't care how old you are. If I was staying in someone's house, and I was going to be out late till 2, I would tell them, Hey, I probably won't be home till 2.
Not because I'm a child, not because of the boss, but because that's good manners.
Anu says he's in treatment and he wants to come home. I don't feel safe with that. But if he goes to his parents, mom does drugs, what now? Okay, this is an example of what if I'm enabling because of fear. If you don't feel safe with that, when you say you don't feel safe with that makes me think it's not safe.
There's a reason why you're saying that. And you have to always put safety in front of what's necessarily therapeutic. The fact that he doesn't have somewhere else to go probably is part of the consequences of his choice.
He can probably, he can go to sober living. There are plenty of other things that can be done to help that. You can help him come up with some options, but I wouldn't necessarily fix that.
[00:25:00] Alexis says There is a course that my husband has expressed interest in and it seems like something That may increase his motivation for productivity and healthy lifestyle. However, it's a seven thousand dollar investment My question is if you think that something you think could positively impact him toward recovery or too big of a risk since he's not yet fully sober?
I think if he thinks it'll help him and whatever this thing is has something to do with personal growth recovery any doesn't have to be specifically right recovery but it's about being a better person moving forward. I'm not necessarily saying you should pay the whole thing for it but if it's something that looks Like, it might be helpful and he thinks it's helpful.
I would say let's do it. Anything.
If you can't afford it, I wouldn't like, take a loan out to do it. Necessarily, or put yourself in financial jeopardy to do it. Prairie Mama says. Child has special needs and needs to stay local to her school and after school care. She definitely is living on the edge, but I feel like I need to help because of my granddaughter. Where [00:26:00] do I draw the line? The most complicating situations you can find yourself in is when there's like another child involved.
But when a child is involved and still with the addict, it's not the same. Yeah, the child becomes collateral damage. You can't just leave them on the street. I have a daughter that has an alcohol mom. This is really complicated. And I can tell you that I've been there myself.
I have a sister who's had an addiction for as long as I can remember. She has six kids. They're older now, but they were really young for a long time and I would have a really hard time not. Fixing things. I'll get phone calls. Can you pay the electric bill? Can you help me get tires on my car?
But why and you because immediately you think about those kids and you think oh my gosh If I don't do it, I'm hurting the kids and that will hold you hostage. It held me hostage for a very long time. If a kid is in a situation where it's not safe and it's not okay for them, then you should probably take action on that.
Like call child services, , see if there are ways to help the kid, but what you're going to find is. You're [00:27:00] gonna find yourself in a situation where it's like you're constantly keeping her up. You're constantly doing everything trying to help the kid. But then the kid is still living in a bad situation.
So it's really tough.
Colleen says, Nephew is prescribed methadone 17 years. Can he ever be successful getting off? Sure. Yeah, someone, people can be successful getting off. It's not easy to get off. I did a video on the channel, this has been a good while back, about a young guy from Canada who was on methadone for a lot of years, and decided to come off, and he did it the right way, and then he like, rode his bike across Canada, it was like this whole thing, but yes, that can happen.
What I would say is he being successful on it? If he's on it and he's stable and he's going to work and he's doing okay, and he's functioning, then I say he's okay on it. If he's on it, but he's still not functional and he's still relapsing all the time and this and that and the other, then. We need to do something else.
All right. It looks like we got to the end of our questions. Thanks everyone
