Toxic Empathy

Today's topic again extremely powerful , extremely near and dear to my heart and , I think , is going to create a huge difference in your life , especially if you implement it . We're going to be talking about empathy today , and I have talked about it previously , but this is a different take . Today , we're going to be talking about empathy and how it turns toxic .

Women who have a very high likelihood of being an empathic person in a relationship , have also a very high likelihood of living in toxic empathy , something that's actually harmful to you . Toxic empathy is a form of emotional entanglement that feels like love but functions like control .

It happens , when you become over-identified with somebody else's emotions , that you can't tell where their pain ends and your nervous system's pain begins . You convince yourself that it's compassion , but it's not . It's toxic empathy .

Empathy is supposed to stay in your system for a flash of a moment until you're able to gather information from the people around you what they're experiencing and how , if possibly , you can help them . Toxic empathy keeps you entangled with their emotions constantly , which is extremely burdensome and very metabolically and mentally tolling .

And to get over that emotional turmoil that you're constantly feeling , in the name of empathy , you attempt to control other people just so your internal chaos calms down . Your attempt to soothe yourself comes by trying to manage everyone else's choices .

You don't want them to spiral , just so that you don't spiral , because if they spiral , then that means that your emotional safety is threatened . So you try to preempt their pain . You try to control their choices . You offer advice that they might not have asked for .

You subtly or not so subtly , try to get them into making decisions that would bring you relief . It looks like support , but it's not . Underneath all of that there's a subconscious avoidance of your own discomfort .

So instead of sitting with your anxiety , your helplessness that you're feeling on account of others , from the fear of watching yourself suffer , you externalize all of it and you try to control others so you don't have to feel their emotions . You make their healing your project . You make their journey your responsibility .

And for many Muslim women it's more than a tendency , it's a learned survival strategy . As Muslim women , you might have been raised to carry emotional labor without complaint to anticipate other people's needs before they're spoken , and through toxic empathy , this comes at an expense of your own sanity .

So when someone you love is hurting , instead of pausing to ask , is this pain mine to carry , is it even my responsibility , you dive in headfirst trying to fix other people just because you think that you're doing the righteous thing .

But in these cases you're avoiding your pain that toxic empathy is creating that you don't have to live in and you're over-functioning trying to control other people . This is definitely not empathy , not the healthy kind at least . This is emotional codependency and it leaves you and your relationships worse off . Toxic empathy is when your care becomes control .

It starts with over-identifying with someone else's emotions deeply and completely that you lose the ability to separate their experience from your own . Not only do you feel with them , you feel responsible for them and because of their sadness , anger , anxiety . When they're feeling it , you're feeling it in your body and at times it becomes unbearable .

So you start to fix things , not out of love but out of your discomfort . You think if they would just calm down , if they make the right decision , then we could both stop spiraling and I could finally breathe again . That is a trap of control .

And in this trap you're not responding from compassion , you're reacting from your own emotional dysregulation and from this trap you're not responding from compassion , you're reacting from your own emotional dysregulation and from this place . When you try to manipulate others , you're trying to manage everyone else , to attempt to control your nervous system .

Spiral contagion is what happens when someone else's breakdown becomes yours . Their frustration becomes yours . It might look like you're trying to be supportive , that you're feeling what they're feeling , but you're not in a place of where you can control how you're feeling .

So while it might look like support from the outside , it's emotional chaos that's activating inside of you . And for many Muslim women , especially those raised with high emotional attunement but low emotional boundaries , this becomes a patterned response . You're taught to care to give , to anticipate , but not to regulate yourself .

So when this faucet of empathy turns on , it gushes like a fire hose . There's no gate , there's no filter , there's no control , just emotional flood . And in your attempt to not drown yourself , you swing to extremes .

You either fuse with the other person's experience and lose yourself in the pain , or you slam the door shut on the relationship and you cut off that connection and you call it boundaries and protecting your peace , but both of these extremes are hurtful . Over enmeshment burns you out . Emotional cutoff leaves you isolated .

The problem isn't empathy , it's unregulated empathy . It's toxic empathy , especially when you haven't learned the basics of emotional regulation yourself . And coaching is one way how you learn how to dial that in not to completely disable it , but to engage in it in a controlled manner . So I've told you about my soulful intelligence paradigm in my program .

That changes everything in this regard . It teaches you that the solution isn't to shut yourself off or to blame empathy . The solution is to build gates , not barriers , but gates that you can open and close at your discernment , gates that respond to how resourced you are , not how guilty you feel .

With soulful intelligence , you'll realize that you don't have to carry someone else's pain to prove that you care . You offer presence without absorption of their pain . You can say to yourself this isn't mine to carry , and you still show up with compassion .

The toxic empathy does not flood you . You're able to control it with resources and healthy boundaries . This is the ability for you to stay connected without being consumed . This is empathy with regulation and this is a radical shift from how most of us are engaging with empathy , especially the high-functioning , heart-centered Muslim women .

You're taught to love and you're taught to give , but instead of rescuing others to feel safe , in this case , you root yourself in your own nervous system and then you offer help . You stay regulated and then you provide empathy , and then you provide the nurturing and the care that everyone else might need .

So , like this , instead of drowning in the flood , you start to flow with the water and it becomes much more natural and it keeps your peace much better .

You choose when to step in and when to step back , not because you fear your burnout or you want to control others , but because , out of respect for both of your capacities , a deeply empath , empathic Muslim woman holds a lot of power , like a raging river , powerful , instinctive and , a lot of times , god-given .

When that empathy rushes in the moment of somebody else's pain , it wants to soothe , it wants to fix , it wants to absorb , it wants to carry . And if all of us are not attuned to the power that empathy can carry , the river will start to flow unchecked .

But building soulful intelligence through coaching helps you build floodgates , and this is not just so you can drown gracefully , but how you can control the energy behind your empathy and the raging river being in your soulful intelligence and being resourceful . That doesn't make you dam up your river and pretend you don't care .

It teaches you how to build gates , intentional openings that regulate how much of empathy you want to allow to flow in any given moment to a relationship . You still care , you still feel .

You just don't get washed away with the current Gated empathy means you can stand beside someone in their suffering without taking it into your body like it's your responsibility . You can hold space for their pain . You can understand it without making their healing your responsibility . You carry care , but not the weight and the burnout of their experience .

And this distinction changes everything , because now your decision to lean in or lovingly step back comes from a place of wisdom , love , resourcefulness , and you don't do any of this to avoid , and you have a lot of your own energy available to be able to provide the empathic care that everyone else might need .

In this case , you honor what your nervous system can hold in a day and you stay present with boundaries . This level of wisdom and inner strength makes your empathy sustainable . It makes it safe for you and your loved ones . Okay , so , besides the learning to manage the floodgates of empathy .

There's a second , equally important shift that's very often overlooked , and that's learning to turn empathy on its head and using it to connect with others through positive emotional states , not through just their pain and negative emotional states

. So since in human beings our nervous system has more of a propensity to attach to pain , we forget that empathy can be used to attune to other people's positive emotions , and that is a huge gift .

If you're a kind of woman who can notice a slightest change in tone , if you're a kind of woman who can notice the slightest change in tone , shift in expression , you're accurately responding to other people's feelings and energies .

This is a powerful gift , but it only feels like a burden if you don't use this attunement power to borrow other people's joy , happiness , peace . Most of you are only using this sensitivity to track pain , stress and instability . When you train yourself to anticipate tension , conflict , disappointment , that's the only thing you're going to see .

I'm asking you , through this podcast , to start practicing training yourself into attuning into laughter , joy , awe , a lot of love . When you mirror other people's low states but not their high states , then you're not using your empathy correctly . Then no wonder that you're feeling drained all the time .

But the beautiful design here is that you're actually not absorbing someone else's emotion directly . You're responding to them through your own nervous system . That means that when someone around you is stressed , your brain predicts their emotional state very effectively and your body begins to stimulate it .

But the same thing can be done when the other person is experiencing happiness and excitement and connection . Since your thoughts through your nervous system is what's creating the emotional experience in your body , then you can consciously choose to shift them towards the good .

If you believe someone is in a moment of gratitude or calm , you can allow that state to echo in your body and your nervous system as well . The same neural pathway that mirrors other people's fear or frustration can also help you attune to their peace , their delight , their appreciation , their deep gratitude , and this is a powerful attribute of empathy .

Think about the last time when you saw somebody laughing so hard that they were in tears and you were laughing because they are laughing . This is emotional mirroring . Your nervous system already knows how to do it .

You just have to direct it to do it so that you're not always overwhelmed with negative emotions , and in the beginning this skill is going to require some redirection .

Just like you're on your way to learning , control the floodgates so you don't drown in somebody else's crisis , you can now open the gates selectively to let in what feels nourishing If somebody is in deep awe for a sunset , or if they are in pure joy for a dua that was answered for them , or anything small like how they enjoy their baby's touch or how their

tea tastes that day . If your brain is already scanning for other people's emotional cues , then choose to notice those moments as well . Let them register , let them land in your body , anchor it within yourself . You will notice that after a few exercises of doing this , you will feel so much better .

And this kind of approach makes you so attuned to your empathy and so proud of it , instead of feeling like it's always a burden .

And you can do that with a full disclosure to your mind that right now I'm attuning to their positive emotions , because the more you practice attuning to somebody's joy , the less likely you are that you'll collapse when they're in pain . The less likely it is that you will be completely dysregulated when they're in anger or frustrated .

This way , you're training your nervous system to recognize that not every interaction needs to be an emergency . This way , you're building emotional resiliency with empathy , not despite of it , not outside of it . This way , slowly but surely , the entire experience of being an empathic human being shifts .

This way , empathy is not just something you give , but something that fills you as well . Empathy has always been about connection . That includes the full spectrum of human experience Pain , yes , but also celebration , contentment . You don't have to carry other people's emotions if you don't want to , but when you do notice that choice ,

absorb and enjoy the good emotions as well . This is what makes your empathy sustainable . That's how you turn it from a constant flood to a life-giving river with strong gates , clear awareness and an ability to decide moment to moment what you want to let in .

If your spouse is tired after a long day of work and you know he tends to get irritable your empathy will start predicting his emotions before he even walks through the door .

Without realizing it , you'll spend your entire day mentally and emotionally bracing for his frustration and , because your empathy is so refined , your body will start feeling his emotion and recoiling from it as if it was your own . This is classic toxic empathy that puts you into overdrive and overfunctioning .

You can care that he has had a hard day at work without letting his mood hijack yours . You get to choose how much of his energy you want to allow into your space . Sometimes the most loving and the empathic thing you can do is giving him and yourself space . And the same applies to your child .

Let's say you've decided to cut back on their screen time or their sugar and they're having a meltdown about it . Your nervous system will immediately flare up . I don't want them to feel deprived . I hate when they cry . Maybe I could just give in a little bit .

But your job isn't to avoid your discomfort through their discomfort just because you're feeling it so intensely . Your job is to tolerate your discomfort while staying anchored in what's best for them . While staying anchored in your own regulation .

You can hold empathy for their big emotions without collapsing into guilt of your own or trying to rescue them for feeling their discomfort . Toxic empathy wants to control other people's feelings . It wants them to never feel any pain , especially if it's somebody you love .

But their emotions are not your responsibility , or if you're in a position where you manage other people or run a business . This toxic empathy might show up every time you hesitate to give honest feedback . You worry that they'll take it personally and you feel embarrassed for them .

You feel upset before you've even had a chance to give the feedback , just because you're predicting they're upset with high accuracy . When that happens , you soften your language to a point where your whole feedback message gets lost or , worse , you avoid the conversation altogether . But here too , empathy with boundaries is what matters .

You can care about their growth and still say what needs to be said . You're not responsible for how they feel . You're responsible for how you communicate . This is controlled empathy , where you're highly attuned to what you have control over within yourself , and this is what keeps your relationship strong without burning you out .

One of the most common patterns I see in my coaching , especially in Muslim women , is the tendency to over-empathize to a point of emotional entanglement and enmeshment . Of course , as predicted , this dynamic becomes unsustainable . Empathy is not the problem . It never has been . Lack of regulation . When you're feeling your emotions through , empathy is the problem .

Most of you never learned how to dial empathy up and down . Most of you either shut it down and adopt a version of toxic individualism that sounds something like what you feel is not my problem . I'm not responsible for it . I'm out of here .

Or , on the other hand , you stay in the relationship but you try to control the other person so that when they finally feel better , you can feel better . But no one likes to be controlled in relationships . When that is happening , it does not

feel good to either party . You can't create a healthy relationship this way . So what you really need is not to kill your empathy , but to refine it . When used skillfully , empathy is a golden gift . It's how you connect , it's how you love , but it's only safe and sustainable and it only contributes to your .

I can care deeply about what someone else is going through without carrying the weight of their experience inside my body . This is a flash of empathy , what it's supposed to serve you . I can honor someone's struggle , offer presence and even feel moved by their pain , without making it my job to fix it . And I know you want to fix their problems .

It sounds very honorable job to fix it , and I know you want to fix their problems . It sounds very honorable , but their problems are theirs to fix . That's the difference between carrying care and carrying burden . When I internalize somebody else's emotion to the point that it costs me my own peace , I know I've entered toxic empathy .

Soulful empathy means I stay connected and I stay rooted in myself . I say this matters to me and I can offer help to the other person if they're open to receiving it . This is not detachment , this is not toxic individualism , this is wise discernment .

And the kind of boundary you create through this discernment , through this soulful empathy , does not create a disconnection the way judgment does . When you judge someone , when they're having an experience , you pull away from them and you feel superior just to stay safe .

But when you set an internal boundary with empathy , then you understand why they're feeling the way they're feeling and why you are choosing to step back . It actually deepens your connection with the other person and yourself . From this place of self-awareness , connection to the other person becomes very honest and very sustainable .

You're not pretending , you're not rescuing , you're simply honoring your limits and you're able to see the other person for who they are . This happens only if you're not too enmeshed , only if your empathy is not fusing very tightly with the other person's experience , only if you can tell what's yours and what's theirs .

This way you can step away from the situation if you feel an emotional flood coming . Step away from the situation if you feel an emotional flood coming , and once that level of skill is developed , your nervous system will thrive instead of trying to control the situation .

So , like I showed you guys , while empathy can turn very toxic , very easily , it can cost you your sanity and peace it can also very easily be turned into a golden currency that saves you your relationships , empathy that you use to stay connected to yourself and your loved ones .

If you are given a lot of this currency of empathy , develop the skill of how to spend it , how to use it . Being able to absorb other people's positive emotions like joy , ecstatic experiences , excitement that is one of the most important advantages of empathy . So use it , and use it wisely .

With that I pray to Allah SWT . Ya Allah , you gave me a heart that feels deeply . Now teach me how to use it wisely . Let me stay connected without getting consumed . Let me care without taking control . Guide me to know what's mine to carry and what's to let go .

Ya Allah , make my empathy a source of peace for me and everyone , a means for love and not over functioning , and let my empathy be always a means to find a way back to you . Ameen , ya Rabbul Ameen , please keep me in your duas . I'll talk to you guys next time .