‘I am really angry with you.’
‘Why?’ I reply.
‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘What makes you think I’m not listening?’
Martha pauses, apparently considering the question, ‘Okay, so you do listen but I don’t think you get me, I don’t feel seen and you don’t show empathy. It’s like you have no compassion.’
‘Ah,’ I reply; this is uncomfortable to hear, ‘I know how bad it feels not being seen,’ I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m trying to recover from an apparent lack of empathy; that would be defensive and besides, I partly agree with her.
Martha eyes me with what looks like suspicion and says, ‘I feel like I’m on my own right now.’
Although I want us to see each other, showing empathy and compassion would, for me at least, be self-abandonment.
Martha seems to want me to be with her in her pain, but in what way? And which pain? There is the pain of not being seen, of feeling alone, of being unmet, and then there is my apparent lack of empathy and compassion; and it could of course be something else entirely.
It struck me that although Martha had said I seem to lack empathy and compassion, she had not said that this is what she wants, and if it is, what is it she expects them to do for her?
Psychotherapy is not about client or therapist getting what they want, even if they knew what that is. Whilst psychotherapy is about wanting, it is also about love and things more important than love.
If Martha wants empathy and compassion she is not asking too much; she is perhaps asking too little.
***
‘You feel alone, and I seem unable or unwilling to reach you,’ I reflect back, ‘it could also be that you are unwilling to reach me.’ Although this is empathic it does not sound like empathy; it does not have the register of affectation or emotionality that usually characterise verbal empathic response. It is more of a challenge; it is as though I am saying, ‘I am here – find me.’
If empathy is about entering the client’s world, as important as this may be, at times it is important to stay out of it – at some point the client has to enter the therapist’s world.
If my apparent lack of empathy and compassion suggest an absence of love, this might bring up a fear in Martha (and myself) that either I am unloving, or that perhaps she is unloved and even unlovable.
The fear that our love is not powerful enough to be able to reach the other is greater than the fear of being unloved. I think many therapists resort to compassion out of a fear of the former.
***
The main thing that has influenced my understanding of empathy is my experience of receiving it. This has mainly come from having had eczema since childhood. Living with chronic eczema has enabled me to develop an awareness of when people express discomfort disguised as empathy.
If empathy is primarily about being with someone, it is worth questioning the quality of being that thinks it necessary to signal its presence.
The problem with sympathetic expressions of empathy is that they rarely free anybody; instead they tend to further bind us to our personal narratives. This may be the personal story of the one receiving empathy, or the therapist and the preferred stories they tell themselves about their clients.
Empathy does not require verbal disclosure; it is primarily a silent activity. As a form of observational attunement it often requires a quiet and respectful bearing of the discomfort and impotence experienced when confronted with pain so deep that words neither reach nor comfort.
If you gaze into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
For therapists working with chronic conditions like childhood trauma or human being, attempting to find the other person with empathic words is often no more than a flight response.
I do not think I can reach Martha with empathic words; however, by inviting her to find me I let her know that I am within reach and that I want her to find me. I also reassure her that she is no more or less alone than I am.
***
‘I don’t know what to say to that, and I don’t know what – if anything, I want from you,’ Martha now seems more exasperated than angry, although exploring her wanting feels to me like an opening.
During fifty minutes each week Martha and I are the world to each other, and despite appearances, the world and our world are full of love.
It may sound odd to describe the world and our work together in this way, after all, everyone knows what it is like to feel at odds with the world, and how easy it is to see it lacking in love. We create the world in our own image using the day residue of fear, hope, trauma, drama and personal narrative, and also by living on a daily diet of the horror-show we call ‘world news’.
If love characterises my relationship with Martha and the world, it is not able to determine the nature of either relationship.
There is perhaps no better place to look than to the world when determining the nature of a relationship characterised by love. The world wants nothing from us, it does not ask us to change, become better, or be anything other than who and what we are. We can see and feel this as love when we love the world as it is, this is not requited love: our affirmation of the world enables us to see how full of love it is.
I would not ask Martha to change for the world, nor do I ask the world of her: when you love the world as it is, you already have it.
***
I am not entirely comfortable with the word love; in some ways I dislike it; I continue using it despite this, and perhaps because of it.
Even when love is not quite the right word it can be the best one: it is often best placed in the wrong place. Unlike most other things, love, and the word love, can have greater value when they seem inappropriate. In this sense there is perhaps no better place for love than in psychotherapy.
***
Martha is right to question my compassion: I have no compassion for her.
I do not feel pity for Martha anymore than I have sympathy for her; nor do I see any value in the nonsense of trying to suffer with, or on her behalf. Compassion is all of these.
The ‘compassionate’ step down to be with the unfortunate sufferer while maintaining their ‘elevation’. It is quite telling how people often describe themselves being moved by compassion and moved to be compassionate, whereas no-one can be moved to love.
The compassionate retain the power of their elevated position even as they seek (or pretend to seek) its transcendence. Although psychotherapy is alert to the power imbalance between therapist and client, many therapists continue to think compassion is integral to it. Since love has no such implicit power imbalance, why be compassionate if you are able to love?
I would not subject Martha to compassion anymore than I would subject myself to being compassionate.
Love is more intimate than compassion: compassion puts us in relationship to, whereas love puts us in relationship with. Compassion sits better with religious practice and charitable causes; it has no place in psychotherapy. Whether giving to the people I work with, or to charity, I do so with respect: out of love, not compassion.
***
‘I don’t know what to say either,’ I reply. ‘I know what you’re referring to, but I am listening, I am here…’ I notice how my words begin to walk a tightrope suspended above defensiveness on the one side and explanation on the other.
If Martha thinks I lack empathy and compassion she might think she has (again) chosen to be with the wrong person, or she might think she is the ‘wrong’ person in the sense that there must be something wrong with her for me to apparently have no feeling toward her.
‘Hang on,’ Martha interrupts, ‘I am not criticising you.’ I was not expecting to hear that- that’s a relief.
Martha continues: ‘The way you work often makes no sense to me, but that’s not a criticism.’ I notice I want to speak but my tongue seems to be stuck to the roof of my mouth.
‘I know I’m not easy, and with all I’ve been through, am going through,.. t’s dark, really dark stuff, but I see how you listen week after week, you remain neutral and you facilitate a space for me to heal. You don’t make it about your needs or expectations, and yet I criticise you for lacking empathy and compassion when that’s exactly what you provide.’
Before I can say anything Martha adds ‘But you do make me angry,’ to which neither of us seem able to suppress a smile.
It was not so much that we had made a connection, it was more like having the realisation that we are already connected. However, since “oneness” is not an experience or a feeling and the mind is unable to recognise it, seeking connection is understandable, unnecessary, confused and generally confusing.
‘You put it beautifully. It becomes a space when we don’t fill it with need and expectation, and yes I do facilitate, but you see it because we created it together.’
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Nietzschean Psychotherapist 