The Empathy Trap: When Feeling Understood Doesn’t Create Change

What if empathy may help you feel seen, but may also be keeping you stuck?

In this episode, I explore what I call The Empathy Trap, a subtle but powerful dynamic where empathy focused only on the story can create connection, but not change.

We’re often taught that empathy is always helpful. And it is. Feeling understood reduces shame, softens defensiveness, and helps us feel less alone. But through both my personal therapy experience and my work with clients, I’ve come to see that empathy can sometimes be incomplete.

Most empathy focuses on the story: what happened and why it makes sense. And while that matters, staying there can unintentionally reinforce the very experience we’re trying to move through.

In this episode, I introduce an expanded approach: empathizing not just with the story, but with the nervous system state beneath it.

Because when we understand what’s happening inside our body, not just in our circumstances, we create the conditions for real movement, not just empathic validation.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why empathy is essential, but sometimes limited
• What “The Empathy Trap” actually is
• The difference between story-based and state-based empathy
• Why feeling understood doesn’t always lead to change
• How nervous system awareness creates movement
• A simple way to practice expanded self-empathy

Empathy helps us feel seen.  But expanded empathy helps us move.

If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat! 

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Transcript

Empathy That Keeps You Stuck

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Hello, and welcome to the When Depression is in your bed podcast. There's something that I don't think we talk about enough when it comes to empathy. We're often taught that empathy is always helpful and connecting and key in making relationships better. And in many ways, that's true. But over time, I've come to realize that there's a way in which empathy can sometimes unintentionally keep us stuck, where we feel deeply understood, but nothing actually shifts. And that's what I want to talk about today. I'm your host, Trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. So let's get started. In the last episode, I talked about a shift that I have made over the last several years when it comes to how I understand and use empathy. And today I want to expand on that because not only did this shift help me in how I work professionally, but it had a deep impact on how I relate to myself in my own healing journey. And I've been able to use this shift to really be able to create some behavior change in a way that I struggled with doing for a number of years, even when I was doing what I considered really good work with really good therapists. And I have come to think about this as what I call the empathy trap. And before I explain more about what I mean by that, I want to talk about what empathy is and define it a bit. When you hear people talk about empathy, you will often hear it described as feeling with someone. And this is how Brene Brown talks about it. And I think that it's an excellent definition of empathy. Empathy is truly about being with someone in their emotional experience, even if it's different than the emotional experience that you might have in a similar situation, but truly understanding where they are at so that they can feel less alone and more connected. And in Imago relationship therapy, which of course I practice, we agree with this definition, and we also see empathy as a teachable, definable skill. And you've heard me talk about the Imago intentional dialogue before. And my husband and I have done recorded dialogues for the podcast before. And the third step of the dialogue process is empathy. And so in Imago, we use empathy for that very purpose, as Brene Brown describes it, to be able to feel with someone. And in the dialogue process, empathy is the last step of three. The first step is a mirroring step where you really get all this information directly from the person that you're trying to understand. Often in Imago therapy, we're talking about your partner. And just for the sake of ease, I will talk about it through this lens. But you can have a dialogue with anyone, including your children, your family, your coworkers, your friends, anyone at all. So in the Mago dialogue process, your partner would talk about their experience and you would mirror that. And then when you really understood what it was like for them, you would validate them and say something about how it really makes sense that they have their perspective. Again, even if it's different from your own. And then after having all of that information, you would close with an empathy step, really imagining how that person is feeling given what you heard. And again, this may be different than what you yourself might experience in a similar situation. But this skill is seen as very important in Imago therapy. And having empathy as the third step, as everything is in the Imago dialogue, is an intentional choice. Because very often when we hear about someone's experience and we don't really know enough about what they are actually experiencing, we make assumptions and interpretations based on what we ourselves would experience in a similar situation. And there's nothing inherently wrong with this. This is how we often connect and understand people's experience by comparing them to our own. But when we do this, our empathy might be a little bit off because we might imagine that somebody else might feel how we would feel in that situation. So we might say something like, Oh, that's really no big deal. I don't know why you're upset about that. I wouldn't be upset about that. And that really can be invalidating to a person's experience and make them feel more isolated, less understood, and can create relational rupture and more disconnection. So empathy is an incredibly important thing. And like I said, for a MAGO, we look at it as a skill and we try to help partners truly understand one another by getting a lot of information about the experience that someone had from their own perspective, so we don't have to guess, so that we can have the most accurate empathy experience possible. So in general, when you think about empathy, saying something like, Wow, it sounds like what you're going through is really tough. It sounds like you're in a really hard spot right now. That could be considered empathy. In a MAGO, we have a very specific operationalized way of conveying empathy. And in a MAGO, we would say something like, I imagine that you might have felt frustrated or alone or overwhelmed or something in that situation that you just described. So you'd have more information. It's still your best guess. Empathy is not about being psychic, but you do have more information when you're using it as part of the dialogue process. And regardless of the specific approach you use with empathy, empathy done in a truly aligned way, really trying to attune to someone's experience and communicating that you get them in that way really can help reduce shame and reduce defensiveness and of course create connection. And so I want to be very clear here that I do think that empathy is incredibly powerful and very necessary for connected relationships. And I'm not bashing empathy in general. When I say that I refer to the shift that I've made as the empathy trap, I am not in any way saying that you should not empathize with your partner or other people in your life. And I'm also, by the way, not saying that you shouldn't empathize with yourself. I think that self-emphyis is an incredibly important skill and it's also a part of what I'll be talking about today. So what I'm saying is while empathy can be so incredibly valuable and is so incredibly necessary, there's also a way that we don't always realize where empathy can actually be limited in certain ways in certain situations and can sometimes create stuckness. And I say that because of what I have noticed personally and professionally over many years. Most empathy tends to focus on the story, what happened, why it makes sense, how hard it is, how challenging something is that someone's going through. And of course, all of that truly matters. However, here's the trap. When we only stay with the story, whether it's someone else's story, what they're experiencing, or our own story, as I've said, we sometimes can unintentionally keep ourselves stuck in that place. So again, empathy itself is not the problem. But what I would think of as incomplete empathy or only empathizing with the story can truly cause certain problems, particularly if someone is trying for movement. Grief comes to mind certainly as an experience where very often empathy in and of itself is absolutely what is needed to say, wow, that's such a hard experience. It's so tough to lose someone, or it's so incredibly painful to have a loss in that way. And so, again, just to be very clear, I'm not saying that there's never a time and a place for empathy as we traditionally think of it, because in a grief experience, you certainly might get to a place where you want movement, but there's a lot that happens in a grief experience where you just really do, in fact, want someone to be feeling with you. And that is what is healing and supported and needed. And with that said, that is not the only function of empathy, or at least it doesn't have to be. And to illustrate what I'm talking about, I will share a very memorable moment in my own therapy experience several years ago. I was talking to my therapist and I was in a very familiar place of overwhelm with too much work, too much to do, too many responsibilities, not feeling like I had enough time, and feeling like I couldn't keep up and that I was drowning in all of this stuff, and also not feeling like I was as far ahead as I thought I should be or could be if I could just kind of get everything together and figure this stuff out. And my therapist responded in a very appropriate way, I would say, like a very therapist-y way. And she responded with empathy, and she said something to the effect of, wow, that sounds so hard. You have so much on your plate. And of course, that was true. I did, in fact, have a lot going on. Her empathy was accurate and I did feel seen and I did feel understood. That was true. However, I had also been in therapy for many years, and I was very well acquainted with the empathy response. And I will take pause on my story here just to note that I do think that empathy is incredibly important for many of us. It certainly was an incredibly important step for me earlier in my therapy, and certainly at other times, not in a linear way, like it was only helpful at the beginning of therapy. I needed empathy, and many people do need empathy because we don't necessarily get it other places in our life, or we didn't get it in the way that we needed when we were growing up and things like that. And so empathy in this way can truly be healing, and I think of it as restoring the foundation so that we can build from there. However, I was at this place where I was like, okay, I've gotten years of empathy. And I actually said to my therapist something like, I don't need any more empathy. I've already had so much empathy. I appreciate it. Thank you for seeing that I'm not defective and there's nothing wrong with me, and that there's a reason that I'm struggling and suffering and this is hard. Thank you for all of that. However, and at that time, I thought I just needed strategies, and that's what I told her. I've done a lot of work on the foundation. Now I need to build, I need to move forward, I need to take action, I need to do something. And again, from where I stood at that time, I thought that I needed strategies. And in part, there probably were some strategies that I could benefit from. However, when I got a strategy, a lot of the time I couldn't necessarily follow through. And that caused a lot of frustration. And I found myself in this loop of feeling like the kind of empathy that I was getting in therapy and from friends and family and other important people in my life was not really what I needed to create forward movement. And in time, I started to realize that something else was happening and I started to understand what was more helpful for me. And it wasn't actually to have my therapist stop empathizing with me completely. It was more that I needed what I think of as an expansion of empathy. And what I mean by that is not just empathizing with the story and what happened and what was going through and what was hard and how it all made sense, but also adding in empathizing with our nervous system state. So instead of empathizing with the story, which might sound something like, wow, you have so much going on, that sounds really hard, you have so much on your plate. I get how you feel overwhelmed. Empathizing with the state could sound something like, wow, it sounds like your nervous system is really in a sympathetic state. And when your nervous system is in sympathetic, of course, it makes sense that you're feeling an experience of overwhelm and like you have to do everything on your own and you never actually get through your to-do list. And this shift was so incredibly powerful because it wasn't just about understanding my situation, what was happening, it actually went to a place of understanding what was happening inside of my body and inside of my system. And this is key because empathizing with the story certainly can help someone feel seen and reduce shame and create connection. Absolutely. Again, just to highlight, empathizing with the story can be very useful and it's very important for many of us in certain situations. However, some of the time it can also lead to a feeling of, okay, now what? What do I do from here? I feel understood, I feel seen, great. What next? And that's where empathizing with the state comes in because you get the same benefit of feeling seen and understood and feeling connected and having shame reduced. As a matter of fact, I would even make an argument that some of the time you might even have a greater reduction in shame because it's not like, oh, I can't handle my life, I'm just not able to keep up. It's actually like, oh, my nervous system is in this state where either I'm in sympathetic and overwhelm really goes hand in hand with the sympathetic experience and that really makes sense. Or oh, I'm in dorsal shutdown. And so of course I feel like I don't have energy and motivation. And when you take it down to this biological level, like my nervous system is functioning the way nervous systems work, and my brain and nervous system are working in this way that makes biological sense, then it's not my fault. There's nothing inherently wrong with me. And this is the very reason why this kind of empathy can now also give you all the goodness of traditional empathizing with the story and then add possible movement. And that is because this type of empathy can remind us that yes, your system got here for a reason. There is absolutely a reason that we can figure out somewhere along the line, the cues of danger outweighed the cues of safety and your system shifted into a survival state, either that sympathetic fight or flight or that dorsal shutdown collapse, and that makes sense. And if your system got here, your system also knows how to get back to that experience of feeling more grounded and safe enough. And if you've listened to my other podcast episodes, you may very well know that when our state shifts, our story shifts as well. And so for me, in that experience that I'm so very familiar with, of feeling overwhelmed and chaotic and like I can't make it through my to-do list or things keep getting added on to my to-do list faster than I can cross them off. Then I can say, okay, if I take pause and I realize what state my nervous system is in and understand that it got here for a reason, what are the cues of danger I'm experiencing? How can I reduce some of those? And how can I increase some of those cues of safety? And therein lies the change, the shift, the healing, the what do I do from here question starts to be able to be answered. So what I really want you to hear is, and what is key in this shift of shifting from empathizing with a story to including empathizing with the state is that of course, yes, empathy should validate one's experience. And it can also support movement out of one's own nervous system experience into a safer nervous system experience. And from that place, when the state shifts and the story shifts, we start to be able to problem solve in ways that may not have been accessible to us when we were dysregulated. And to be completely honest and transparent, I do think looking back after having experienced this shift, looking back at my work as a professional, as a therapist, I think that because my ability to empathize with somebody's story is actually so incredibly high, I am excellent at empathizing. I think that everyone makes sense and I can sit with somebody and listen and imagine how they feel and sit and how challenging life can be. I've been there, and if I've been there, I can certainly understand that someone else might find themselves in a place similar to that, which of course is very much in line with the way Brene Brown talks about empathy, to be able to find a place in you to connect with where somebody else is in a particular emotional moment. And that is really powerful. It's what I think of as therapist 101. One of the key therapist skills is to be able to empathize. And I'm super good at it. And I have also realized that there have been moments in my work where I have sat and held a client with such incredible empathy that was absolutely genuine on my part. And I think I probably have kept people in their story for too long. So that I may have unintentionally kept clients stuck, even though if they had talked about what's happening for them, many I think would describe it as feeling safe and understood and seen by me. I think that for the most part, people would describe that as a positive experience. But if you then asked, well, did you get the movement, the forward movement that you were hoping to get? Sometimes people might say, like, oh, well, yes, but it took longer than I had hoped for, longer than I expected, or eventually that kind of thing. And looking back, this shift or this expansion of empathy, I wish that I had had this perspective because I do think I probably would have been able to help people in perhaps a different way than I was able to previously, because empathy can sometimes reinforce an experience without helping shift it. And now having made this shift, I do show up differently with some of my clients. And again, I still use empathizing with the story because it's incredibly necessary. I just also spend time empathizing with people's nervous system states so I can help them understand what they can actually do from here. And for me, I think that this is a much more empowered perspective. And it's something that not only do I use in my clients, but again, I've talked about in the beginning about self-empathy. I use this expanded type of empathy with myself as well, which for me feels much better than just sitting in the yes, this is hard and this is understandably painful or challenging. And I think that compassion is an important part, often wrapped up in empathy of like, okay, this is what suffering feels like. Other people suffer. May I be kind to myself when I'm going through this experience? And I think all of that still applies. We're not really changing anything or getting rid of anything in this arena. Compassion is important, empathy is important, and adding this additional level or layer of empathy becomes really, really helpful when it comes to truly creating change. So if you want to experiment a little bit with this new kind of empathy or what may be a new kind of empathy for you to think about, I highly recommend starting with what I have been talking about as the self-empathy. First of all, I generally think it's important to start with yourself and get to know your own self and your own experience before moving out into your relationship with others, know yourself first. But traditional empathy or feeling with somebody is incredibly important. And sometimes that is what your partner will need, or your friend, or your child, or whoever in your life. And sometimes if you are trying to create movement for somebody else, they may or may not be ready for that kind of movement. They actually might just need someone to be feeling with them. And so this is something that you can sort of really start to work with on your own. And you can certainly share with other people. But there is a little note of warning here that encouraging someone else to move when they're not ready to move is not necessarily advisable either. So this is something that you have to be gentle with. But again, for myself, I have found it incredibly powerful. And as a therapist and a coach, I have found this to be an incredibly useful tool. So to be able to try to use this with yourself and try something new the next time you might be feeling, let's say, overwhelmed, in addition to telling yourself, okay, this is hard right now. I'm dealing with a lot, I have a lot on my plate, I don't necessarily have all the help or the resources that I need, which is great. You can absolutely start there, include that, try adding something like, hmm, I'm feeling this overwhelm and this chaos, and I feel like there's not enough time. Ah, I think my nervous system is in a sympathetic state. And notice what happens inside of you just by saying that, because this experience of feeling seen and understood, there can be, and for me, I feel it as a real sigh like of relief. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. My nervous system is in sympathetic mood. And I talk a lot more on other episodes, and you can certainly find a lot of great information out there on polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation. There's a lot of great info out there in the world today, which maybe in and of itself can be overwhelming to think about. But you can certainly check out previous episodes of mine and stay tuned for future episodes as well. This is core to what I talk about. But just feeling seen in this way and saying, like, okay, if my nervous system is in this dysregulated state, if I'm in this survival mode, what is one small thing that can help me feel a little bit safer, a little bit more grounded? What could bring me maybe a half a step towards feeling more okay? Or what do I need to feel more okay? And thinking in these terms, and if you really drop out of your head, a lot of times people are like, I don't know, I'm so overwhelmed. If I knew what to do, I would do it. I certainly relate to that experience. Like, if I knew how to fix this, I would. However, if you drop out of your head and you really drop down into your body, and I myself am somebody who has spent many, many years super disconnected from my body. So this was absolutely a newer skill for me. And in many ways, it still feels new as compared to the decades of time that I spent super disconnected from my body. Even me, who, like I said, has not always been very connected or very friendly to my own body and my own system. It has come very quickly the ability for me, or relatively quickly, I would say for me, to be able to drop down and say, What do I need right now? What's really happening? A lot of the time the answer is rest or a break or help or a breath or a moment or whatever it may be. But your system knows the answer. And this is also the incredible brilliance and the wisdom of being able to shift into empathizing with your state. Because when you can connect with your nervous system state and really see where you're at, then you can start to have this conversation in a completely different way than if you just empathize with the story. Because again, in the story, it's like, all right, now what? This is hard. Okay, I might feel helpless and powerless and feel like I can't do anything about it. But if you're like, okay, yeah, this is hard, there's things that are happening, and the stuff that's happening is making my system go into a self-protective survival response. And so I'm in some level of dysregulation, what do I need to feel safer again? And if you can really quiet down enough long enough, and this is certainly hard for people in different ways. So if it's not something that's coming easily or naturally to you, that totally makes sense as well. This is absolutely a practice. But if you can ask your system what you're really needing, you might be amazed what kind of answers you get. Because again, this idea of feeling understood is so incredibly important. And it's what so many of us truly need. I know I have absolutely needed it and still need it. Who doesn't need to feel understood? It's core to being human, I think, and being in relationship, wanting to feel understood by others, and also wanting to feel like you understand yourself, like you don't think you're crazy and you don't think others think you're crazy. That's a pretty reassuring feeling. But it is actually when our system feels safe enough that we can actually stretch and grow into new behaviors and new ways of being and showing up in this world. And it's actually even when we feel safe enough, when we start to be able to even think about what stretches we might be able to make or that we wish we would be able to make, or what we truly need to be able to shift our lives in the ways that we want to shift them. Because as I mentioned earlier, I thought I needed strategy. And again, strategy is great. I'm sure that there's still strategies that I could use and benefit from learning in my life today. However, many of us truly already know what we need, but we're so disconnected from our own inner wisdom because we're dysregulated and we're in this overwhelmed, sympathetic fight mode or that dorsal shutdown collapse and being able to expand empathy in this way from my experience, both personally and myself, and also in my relationship with my husband and in my relationship with my kids and in my relationship with other people I work with in the office. This shift has been powerful. And I hope that it can be powerful for you as well. Because while I absolutely want you to feel seen and understood, I also want you to feel like you are empowered to move and create what you truly want to create for yourself in your life and in your relationships. And this is where this shift is so incredibly key. So you can try empathizing with the state in addition to empathizing. The story. As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments because I want to thank you for showing up today. And I want to leave you with an invitation as you hit stop and move back out into the world on your own unique wellness journey. In order to move from where you are today to the place where you want to be, the path may seem long or unclear or unknown. And I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay. Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once. We don't travel a whole journey in one stride. And that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one. Any type, any size, in any direction. It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind. It can be a step towards action or towards rest or connection or self-care or whatever step makes sense to you. I invite you to take a step today because getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, more connected than the place where you are today is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed. If today's episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released. I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at trish.sanders.lcsw. Your feedback will help guide future episodes, and I love hearing from you. Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared. Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.