For many of us, we learned that taking care of the needs of others and minimizing our own meant the preservation of our survival.
In response, we learned to always give people the benefit of the doubt, create stories and excuses for their behavior, provide them with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tries, or offer them more compassion than we would show ourselves—at the cost of our energy and sense of stability.
This pattern gets reinforced when people say how kind and caring we are. We might have made careers out of tending to others over ourselves- and not quite grasping the consequences of this pattern until we faced severe burnout.
Let's break down the difference between empathetic bypassing and empathy:
Empathetic bypassing is making excuses for other people's behavior as a means to override and deny our response to the situation or person. It's a way of reenacting the lack of validation and support for expressing our emotions and needs we experienced when we were younger.
On the other hand, empathy is the ability to connect with another person's perspective, thoughts, and feelings—even when you can't fully understand them. Genuine empathy is when we can be in relation to someone else's experience and our own. In other words, attending and connecting with their lived reality does not override our own.
Empathetic bypassing sounds like this:
My parents just didn't know better and it was a long time ago, so I'm fine.
They are just so busy and overwhelmed—they are doing the best they can.
My response to this situation is just an overreaction—they have a valid reason for not meeting my needs (even after I expressed them).
Empathy can sound like this:
That sounds really difficult; I'm here with you.
I can understand my parents didn't know what they were doing, and I can honor my anger and hurt that is still present.
If you use "compassion" to deny yourself of any emotion like anger, disappointment, sadness, confusion, joy, etc., take some moments to honor why there might be suppression of these particular or all feelings, and see if you can connect with what's beneath the overriding.
