Empathize, Internalize, Personalize, Weaponize...

I wanted to explore something that popped into my mind this last week.  I find myself moving from one emotion to the next, and often I don’t know the difference between one feeling or another.  It’s like they shape-shift gradually enough that I could start with healthy emotions and end with toxic ones.

I've realized that some of my problems can be found in four words that move from healthy to unhealthy, often over the same situation with someone.  I’m speaking of a strength of feeling that occurs between people more than events or things. I wanted to try and flesh this out into words if only to help me catch myself in the subtle changes so they don’t end up eating me alive.  Who knows, maybe this will help someone else out there someday as well.

When something difficult happens in someone else’s life that I’m connected with on some level, I think, at first, I tend to…

Empathize. 

I know we all have different levels of empathy, but there is a natural bent for me to try and put myself in their shoes, to try and see where they are coming from or feel what they are feeling.  To suffer with someone.  To ache with them.  Maybe even cry with them.  

But there are also times when someone disagrees with me or criticizes me and the feeling of initial hurt accompanies the desire to see where they are coming from and to try and relate to what is causing the tension between us.  Part of me can move right to a posture of perceiving them as a threat and being defensive, but initially the empathy is directed toward what I could have done to cause someone else hurt that requires an apology and some reconciliation.

I think empathy is a powerful thing that leads to connection and compassion when it’s pure and motivated by truth and love.  But I find that not long after my heart connects with the emotion that the other person is sharing, I move to a deeper form of feeling where I…

Internalize.  

This takes it to a deeper level.  I let it get to places in me that affect/effect my life.  I don’t just feel it, I try and incarnate it.  It isn’t something that is momentary and then forgotten, it lives with me and in me even after the interaction is over.  And I let it.  In some way, I want it to linger so that I can carry it with a greater degree of feeling.

But this can be overwhelming depending on how many people I'm interfacing throughout the day.  It’s one thing to internalize a couple stories or causalities, but the human heart can’t take everything to heart, so to speak. Some things need to be felt and dealt with, no held onto for an indefinite amount of time.  I don’t shed things well, so a transference can happen with too many things I hear about or know about, and it can short-circuit my capacity to care.  When 'caring becomes carrying' with every human interaction, there is a threshold that gets tested and sometimes crossed and violated.  This leads to burnout of the soul.

But internalizing is critical in certain situations and leads to compassion moving to action.  It’s easy to just feel, but when you carry something, it moves you differently.  As it should.  And yet there is a 'crossing over' that occurs that may be the most destructive internal emotional shift, and that is when I begin to unknowingly…

Personalize.

Now, again, this has some merit if it’s important for me to dig into who’s responsible for what.  But what I find is that when I move to this emotional place, something gets unhealthy.  I take feelings and interpret them through the lens of either perceived threat or self-condemnation.  I begin to wonder if I could have done more or if what they are feeling is in some way my fault.  They could have an opinion about something, and you feel like it’s about you.  They are critical of an aspect of something you’re connected with and it’s like they are telling you that they ‘can’t stand’ you. 

Something breaks down somewhere in the sympathy, and instead of taking things at face value; I begin to read into things with a lens of finding fault or assigning blame, whether it’s me or the other person (or just plain old generic people out there).  I create stories in my head and heart.  I play out plots.  I dream and scheme.  It becomes dramatized as it becomes more personalized is what I’m saying.

I think there is a way to feeling deeply about things without turning everything into a courtroom of plaintiffs and defendants and juries and judges.  Every emotional exchange can’t wind up in this pitiful place.  But I’m amazed how many do and is it any wonder we have an epidemic of anxiety in our society?  Too many are carrying too much way too far.  It’s where we hear people interject: “You’re taking this way too far.” or “You’re overreacting.”  

I think it’s over-personalizing, at least for me.  And when I begin to accumulate a bevy of stories being melodramatized in my head, I’ve learned that I begin to…

Weaponize.

This can look one of two ways.  I can’t either isolate (without people knowing it) and live in a defensive posture with all my fox holes dug and my missiles pointing out in the event that someone tries to 'hurt me with their hurt'.  I don’t have healthy assumptions of others at all.  I view people as problems, not people with problems.  I don’t just isolate, I insulate myself from emotional connectivity.  I keep people at arms length and don’t let things as close to my heart.  At this level it’s contained and often passive, but still very guarded, like a bunker.

But it can also take on another form.  This form is aggressive and more pronounced.  It boils up like lava from the inside and erupts in the form of anger, sharp words, hatred, and revenge.  I can feel like I want to punish others for the way they have taken advantage of me, let me down, pushed my patience, disregarded my heart, misinterpreted me so badly, or injured my heart with their selfish feelings.  Mind you, they might not even know they did this, it could be something that occurs inside of me over days, months, or even years.  But the end result is the same.  Retribution.  Either by coldly cutting them off or going off on them.  

My feelings go from being a real blessing to a vexing burden.  A precious gift to a dangerous weapon.  And it’s this progression/digression that can undo me.  That’s why I’ve come to see the power of taking an regular internal inventory to make sure my feelings are cared for and guided.

________________

I don’t know that everyone feels all these cascading emotions that I’ve outlined, but for me, it begins to explain why God said in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, because it is the wellspring of life.”  Everything flows in and out of the heart.  It must be guarded.  Above all else.  It is life or death.

I hope to go through hard things without becoming hard-hearted.  I hope to protect this precious gift of emotion placed inside me. 

This is my desire, so help me, God.