The Empathy Crisis
Sometimes, when something in reality is just too awful and horrendous to fully digest, disbelief acts as a buffer between us and the sheer reality of the pain and horror of the thing itself. Defenses like this act as a sort of emotion-numbing plexiglas between us and the terror of disempowerment, of lack of control.
“It Is What It Is”
When I hear people say “it is what it is,” it is often said with an air of dismissal, of invalidation of the dis-ease the person is experiencing because of a difficult situation. It is a collapse response - our mind and body saying that there is nothing we can do and so we must surrender because there is no other choice.
“But you can’t-”
Yes, they can.
We have all experienced incredulity or disbelief at someone’s actions - the actions of someone we love, or maybe someone we don’t know that well at all. And many of us have probably further had the experience of telling people in our lives what they “can’t” ever do again. For better or worse, the other person absolutely can do whatever it is they want or choose to do, and us telling them they “can’t” will not stop them. In fact, it may imply or foster a power imbalance we do not want in certain relationships - those we have with a partner or close friend. Just because someone does something we do not like does not mean we have the right to deny them their agency.
“New Year, Still Me”
When we say “New year, new me,” that’s one way we can try to make a commitment - and our bodies don’t always get the memo. If we are burnt out at the end of 2025, flipping the calendar over to January 2026 doesn’t send an instant message to our nervous system that says it’s time to do a reset for a software update. We are carrying from one year into the next whatever experiences remain unprocessed
Are you “processing,” or are you ruminating?
…Sometimes, however, we almost lose time cognitively analyzing something - that fight we had with our boss or colleague and how many outcomes we can imagine instead, or that embarrassing thing we did in high school that still rides the nightly thought carousel when we’re trying to fall asleep. These re-imaginings can feel like a scratch on a record, can get our heartbeat racing, and can interfere with our ability to be present in the moment at hand.
Moralizing Mistakes
Where did you learn to moralize your mistakes? At what point in your life did you learn that making a mistake means something about who you are as a person?
Endings
Endings bring up a lot of things for many folks, and so the end of the year is often both a time for celebration as well as a time of grief. Culturally, the former feels safer and cleaner to talk about than the latter. When people share with their loved ones that they are feeling sadness or grief about someone they lost - whether in the past year or many years ago - there is often a rush (at least in a large chunk of Western culture) to provide assurances, platitudes, and move on from the pain as quickly as possible. It is easier to be mindfully present when the experience is pleasant; when it is painful, we have learned to push away, to avoid. That includes our own discomfort in the face of someone else’s pain - and our own.
“How is it strategy?”
It is a totally valid and universal human experience to see ourselves doing something over and over again, knowing it does not align with our long-term goals and values, and yet still feel powerless to change it.