More compassion and empathy, please.
When I stopped drinking, I referred to it as “taking a break” versus having a drinking problem or being an alcoholic. Alcohol is so normalized. In society, we drink when we’re happy or when we’re sad — both ends of a continuum. We see parents (myself included!) joking about drinking in order to maintain sanity when raising our kids. My challenge was that I drank when I was happy, sad, frustrated, exhausted, you name it. I felt justified because I was successful in my career, a good mom and a good person — generally speaking. I’m grateful that I couldn’t continue to keep living this lie.
Much like I had been running from myself for years, when I stopped drinking, there was a large part of me that considered it different from when I stopped using drugs. In reality though, it was no different. I was left with the same internal conflicts and struggles that had caused me to start using drugs over 20 years ago. After all, they’re substances that help me numb myself of things I cannot control, do not like about myself or provide me with the warm and fuzzy feelings I’d been lacking. I realize now that this was another attempt to close off my past from my present. I was adamant for years that my old self wasn’t me anymore! But, it is me. It’s all of me because it’s my story. I’ve overcome many hurdles, some of my own making, but this is how I am the person I am today. It’s how I can be empathetic, compassionate, understanding, and a trusted confidant to others.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m a huge Brené Brown fan. While I had read some of her books prior to the pandemic, in 2020, she was my lifeline. I started every single day with one of her newly produced podcasts and preached it like she was paying me! I reread all of her books along with her newest one, Atlas of the Heart, in 2021. Atlas of the Heart is such a beautiful book, a book of language, that I think all young adults should be required to read. If I had had this resource in high school, I truly believe I would have understood myself and others much better.
When I think about what we need more as a human race, it’s compassion and empathy. Brené Brown does a fantastic job defining both compassion and empathy in her book Atlas of the Heart.
“Compassion is fueled by understanding and accepting that we’re all made of strengths and struggle — no one is immune to pain or suffering. Compassion is not a practice of ‘better than’ or ‘I can fix you' — it’s a practice based in the beauty and pain of shared humanity.”
“Empathy is a tool of compassion. We can respond empathetically only if we are willing to be present to someone’s pain. If we’re not willing to do that, it’s not real empathy.”
Brené goes on to break down empathy into two elements — cognitive empathy and affective empathy.
Cognitive empathy “is the ability to recognize and understand another person’s emotions.”
Affective empathy “often called experience sharing, is one’s own emotional attunement with another person’s experience.”
Many people think that in order to be empathetic, we need to have experienced what someone else is going through. That’s not true, though, and I think it’s often used as an escape from being present with someone who’s in the shit. It’s too painful. It’s more comfortable to chalk it up to never having been through that particular thing. The truth is, if we can be present and learn from one another, we may be better set up in the future to support another friend, family member or our own child, when they experience something similar.
Brené captures this concept as well in her book Atlas of the Heart. “We need to dispel the myth that empathy is ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’ Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences.”
This is the core of why I’m writing. If there is one sentence that I write that resonates or strikes someone in some way, then it will fuel that person for another conversation or experience. If we can be genuinely and kindly curious about one another, it can give us permission to be ourselves and open up to one another. We all have our armor and masks that we’ve been wearing since childhood. What if we could take it off sometimes or for good? Wouldn’t that be freeing?!
Sources: Brown, Brené. Atlas of the Heart. Random House, 2021.