Having empathy for abusers?

[mary_poppins]

Hi all, hope this post won't trigger many of you. Just wanted to get your opinion on someone's advice online regarding healing from childhood trauma. This guy is a childhood trauma coach and one of the steps of recovery that he created in his program is to 'have empathy for your abuser(s)'. I felt off listening to his explanation for why we should give empathy. He said something along the lines of 'if we don't have empathy for the abuses that the perpetrator went through as a child (which led to them becoming abusive) we wouldn't be able to have empathy for ourselves in our healing journey.' All abusers were abused and some suffered horribly and he kept talking about what THEY went through. Ah, ok, but I don't really care about them so why should I give an ounce of empathy to these people?

PD people CAN discern between right and wrong, they know what they are doing to us IS bad, abusive, terrible. And yet, they choose to abuse us because hurting us is not a concern to them. Their main concern is feeding their ego and securing that narcissistic supply daily/often enough. So, why should I have empathy for someone who's doing this?

I am mature enough to give myself empathy WITHOUT having to give empathy to people who are purposely trying to hurt me and take advantage of me. Sure, I don't mean harm to them, I pray for their peace and for them to have a good future (without me in it) but trying to understand them and give empathy for what they're going through is NOT a prerequisite for healing.

What are your thoughts on this? I'm not sure I wanna continue listening to this 'coach' after hearing him say that.

[Call Me Cordelia]

I would tend to agree with you. Very often empathy for our abusers is what pushes us toward the codependent/fawning responses that keep us stuck in the cycle of abuse. How many of us had empathy and care for our parents and believed that the abuse was our own fault? I think for most people getting Out of the FOG, getting ourselves to have empathy for the abuser is most emphatically NOT our problem.

[blacksheep7]

I personally would do not trust a coach for my healing.  Their training and expertise is not comparable to a psychologist or psychiatrist, IMO.

Although even in the latter, we could get a bad experience.  My sister was just told to forgive our Pd Raging father.

That coach is off to suggest so strongly on the empathy for the Pd.

[moglow]

Respectfully, I beg to differ with the coach: all abusers weren't abused and neither do the abused all become abusers themselves. Look around just within this group and you see it all around you. His experience may well have been that and I don't discount it, but the reality is different for each of us.

I can have empathy for what others have experienced, while retaining much needed empathy and compassion for myself as well. I'm sorry for what anyone may have suffered - and believe it's our responsibility to do better regardless of our history. That doesn't mean I have to excuse or justify chosen behavior the abuser should have addressed themselves.

Some coaching gurus seem a bit too fond of throwing out platitudes and absolutes that simply aren't true for all. There's no way they can be. It sounds good and may even feel good, but the realities for too many are very different indeed. Plus as mentioned, how many of us have been commanded to excuse, justify, overlook abuses to us because of another??

That's one of those cases where I'd tend to take what I need and leave the rest. I'm not one to discount everything but neither do I brush off whatever feeds me.

[Liketheducks]

Maybe he's confusing empathy with forgiveness?    I've forgiven my parents, doesn't make me want to be around them.   They're dysfunctional.  I know WHY.   Whether or not they were abused is incidental to that.   They're dysfunctional because they haven't, for whatever reason, done the work to heal and grow beyond their own difficulties.   I can empathize with them, but that doesn't mean I'm going to tolerate being abused myself....just because they were.   Forgiving them, accepting that this is the reality of our relationship, was a gift I gave myself.   

Suddenly, everyone is an expert in NPD.   I question the training for most coaches.   In my mind, They can do more harm than good.   

[moglow]

 absolutely that!! 

[SeaBreeze]

Ugh, I think this coach is waaay off-base. Having empathy or sympathy for my abusers only ever got my co-dependant self into trouble. Now, I do feel sadness for my mother's abusive childhood and my stbx's abusive childhood. But I also feel sadness (and anger) over the abuse they both, as adults, then subjected me to. My stbx has always had access to the same healing resources that my children and I do -- the same libraries, websites, Podcasts, health plan, licensed therapists or counselors -- but he chose to disregard all that as "quack science" or ignore the help available to him, and instead repeat the cycle of abuse with me and our children. Meanwhile, we have all been doing "the work" to heal ourselves, which has been so much more helpful than extending empathy toward an abuser ever has. Much better to show ourselves some empathy!

[Defiantdaughter1]

The only sympathy they deserve is that they have an illness. However, they don't deserve sympathy beyond that when they refuse to get help for the condition. The majority of them aren't self aware enough to see they have a problem.

[Happypants]

Alarm bells going off here!!! Cognitive empathy?  Maybe.  I've definitely benefitted from trying to understand how they've come to be the way they are - that process has helped me have more empathy for myself and has made it all feel slightly less personal.  But EMOTIONAL empathy is a different beast altogether and one that I personally dont feel that i have any choice over.  I either do or don't feel that way for someone under certain circumstances.  There's one pd that i do feel emotional empathy for because i can feel their sadnessness, bitterness, anger, and most of all, their hurt from their own experiences.  I can see it all disapating when they dump their rubbish on me.  There seems to be internal conflict there.  Others throughout my life (i'm happy to say not many), i've witnessed their enjoyment through manipulation and believe that they're completely aware of what they're doing - I see no internal conflict or battling with themselves.  I couldn't feel emotional empathy for them if i tried but probably would if they were suffering.   

[mary_poppins]

After reading your posts and reading many discussions on this topic, I concluded that we don't really need to have empathy for our PDs. On the contrary, having empathy for them might be detrimental to our healing. Because our empathy is what brings these abusers closer to us, we let them in our lives because we care about them and don't want to abandon them. You can call this 'toxic empathy' if you like.

@Call me Cordelia: exactly, giving them empathy is not our problem, why should we bother with this after all they've put us through?

@black sheep 7: I know, coaches for narcissistic abuse are not licensed but some of them really help. Example: Richard Grannon, Mary Toole, these are wonderful people with helpful content but no qualifications. However, yes, I agree, not being trained in psychotherapy should be a red flag.

@moglow: I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment. Not all abusers were abused. This is what I read, too. It was impossible for me to believe in the past that there are abusive people out there who did not have childhood trauma or abuse growing up. Did you read 'Why does he do that?' by Lundy Bancroft. That's the book where it is explained why abusers behave the way they do and that many of them did not come from abuse. I love the book, it is groundbreaking.

@Seabreeze: and what's mindblowing is that, although these abusers have had the same access to therapy, resources and books like we had, they refused to access them with the intention to continue to hurt us. Why? Was it easier for them to continue our abuse than changing and going through their own grief regarding their past/traumas?

If this is the truth then I don't see how I could ever forgive them..

@Liketheducks: no, he didn't mention forgiveness but empathy. He said to start and think of how hard the abuser's life was growing up and to have compassion for the little girl/boy experiencing that abuse and growing up hardened to the world. Because if we extend compassion to them we can then extend compassion to ourselves..

[mary_poppins]

@Happypants: I can't feel empathy either for someone who does not show that they're suffering. My PD mom doesn't show an ounce of feeling, she has definitely cut herself off from her emotional world. And she is not sorry for what she is doing to others. We live in a rational world, though and so having sympathy/empathy for abusers doesn't make sense to me. I rather offer my empathy to the children in Cameroon, Africa, they had it worse than my abusers.

[Liketheducks]

@Liketheducks: no, he didn't mention forgiveness but empathy. He said to start and think of how hard the abuser's life was growing up and to have compassion for the little girl/boy experiencing that abuse and growing up hardened to the world. Because if we extend compassion to them we can then extend compassion to ourselves..


One can have compassion for the little girl/boy who experienced abuse....but the reality of the situation is that these people are no longer little children.   In my experience, I had to extend a ton of self compassion before I was able to chalk up the abusive behavior to their upbringing AND the fact that they were either unwilling or unable to grow past the abuse they endured.   It was backwards for me.  I had to reparent myself, in order to grow to a place where I had greater compassion for them.

[moglow]

One can have compassion for the little girl/boy who experienced abuse....but the reality of the situation is that these people are no longer little children.  In my experience, I had to extend a ton of self compassion before I was able to chalk up the abusive behavior to their upbringing AND the fact that they were either unwilling or unable to grow past the abuse they endured.  It was backwards for me.  I had to reparent myself, in order to grow to a place where I had greater compassion for them.

This is also true for me, albeit to my understanding my mother wasn't abused, far from it. I've been told all my life how cosseted and pampered and protected she was. No one was allowed to discipline or contradict her - in all likelihood because of the massive shitstorm that would occur should they try. She was raised with the entitlement that she could do and say whatever she wished to whomever whenever and it would be brushed off as "that's just how she is." There's no consideration or empathy for others, it's all about her and always has been.

All that said, I can absolutely have empathy and compassion for that child who grew up not knowing or caring about anything better. It's the reality that galls. They -WE- are no longer toddlers and children with no choices and no champions, allowed to carry forth no matter our whims. We -like they- weren't given tools needed to grow into normally functioning adults. The difference is, we're trying to choose better, change our futures, just as we were unable to do anything about the past. Plus, frankly we're held to a massively different standard, where we're "supposed" to do this or that, contrary to their treatment of us on a consistent basis throughout our lives.

Having compassion for others doesn't negate the reality that many of us have seen them [the disordered in our lives] absolutely choose when and where they will exercise control. We've [at least I have] watched in sheer disbelief as massive rages took a temporary backseat during the appearance of an "outsider" and continued right where she left off when that person was no longer there.

I let my anger and resentments eat away at me most of my life. Letting them go and refusing to allow that woman to live rent free in my head have been some of the best things I could ever have done. I've rediscovered compassion, both for myself and others. I understand that she is simply not capable and has chosen to not try. My mother will likely leave this world as alone as she has spent so much of her life, mired in the bitterness and anger she's carried with her throughout. She CHOSE that, chose to not see anything else. I choose otherwise - to allow all of that back into and hold it within my life is to risk becoming the very thing I dreaded most: becoming my mother. I can't and won't do that.

[Call Me Cordelia]

This is also true for me, albeit to my understanding my mother wasn't abused, far from it. I've been told all my life how cosseted and pampered and protected she was. No one was allowed to discipline or contradict her - in all likelihood because of the massive shitstorm that would occur should they try. She was raised with the entitlement that she could do and say whatever she wished to whomever whenever and it would be brushed off as "that's just how she is." There's no consideration or empathy for others, it's all about her and always has been.

IMO that is abusive, too, to create an alternative reality for the sake of the parents' comfort. At least, they majorly failed in their duty to their young daughter and created a spoiled, entitled monster. And the dividends of that get passed down the generations.

But I'm 100% with you on the double standard, where the scapegoated ones are exhorted to forgiveness and being the bigger person and how we have to be understanding of the inner child of the people who harmed us if we expect to be healed. All the responsibility lies with us. Anger at this is I think justified. Of course we don't want to stay there forever, but yeah, it sucks, and the anger is what helps us put a stop to it. We in fact are entitled to better than we received and it's their damn fault. I'm more of the "You gotta feel it to heal it," mindset. I do not believe we can forgive and rationalize our way to rising above it all. It's the life coach version of the perfectly healed Barbie who can just smile vapidly in the face of all the shit and be affected not at all. And if you can't do that... It's Barbie's fault. Nope. Classic victim-blaming.

[moglow]

'Delia, you hit the nail!! It's somehow all *our* responsibility, as we've been told repeated and by damned near everyone all our lives [and not just those who chose abuse]. Where is their responsibility as the parents? Where's their "set a better example and rise above"? Where's their "We can't allow mistakes and abuses of the past to hold us down"? It's thrown at us over and over as justification for *their* behavior, with little by way of understanding or compassion for ours. Mother's terrorized everyone around her, all her life, yet it's always someone else's fault? They "made her" do xyz. Really?? Really.

Now I/we get "she's old and alone and ill and and and ..." And I'm sorry, but did all that happen in a vacuum, without their full awareness, you know that's expected of the rest of us?! Rhetorical this, but it just steams me, the endless list of platitudes and excuses and justifications - for ABUSE.

[Call Me Cordelia]

It just occurred to me... If the narcs were hearing exhortations to be the bigger person and forgive and stuff, nobody would ever know it. Least of all the narcissist!

As a child I did hear my uPD mother try to tell my uPD grandparents not to let the past make us bitter etc. They were Holocaust survivors, for what that's worth. It didn't ever go well, to put it mildly. But neither did my mother have any empathy for what they'd suffered that made them so afraid and overall disordered. She just wanted them to stop making her life difficult. I think that's what most people are after with that kind of messaging. Life coach or whoever else. The consequences of your pain are inconvenient to me.

[JLS]

@Liketheducks: no, he didn't mention forgiveness but empathy. He said to start and think of how hard the abuser's life was growing up and to have compassion for the little girl/boy experiencing that abuse and growing up hardened to the world. Because if we extend compassion to them we can then extend compassion to ourselves..

It's a thin line but I'm going to offer my experience with my mum.  After years of hearing how I am difficult, bad, no apologies for her actions which were hurtful etc I did reach a place where I looked at her and realised hurt people hurt. This doesn't excuse the behaviour but having compassion that my mum had her own experience and whether she was able to get help or not, chose to get help or not, delving into seeing how other people have flaws, PD's and seeing it from a place of compassion did open up space for me.  It created space where I finally was able to not feel like I had to fix anything or accept the blame.  In holding compassion towards her I did finally extend that compassion to myself.

I think the word forgiveness for me opens up thoughts that this okay's the behaviour, that it excuses the behaviour which for me was hard to swallow since there never were any apologises or acknowledgement that the behaviour was hurtful. There was only blame.

The thin line is that once compassion came through there was a feeling that I could be in her company, and I would be ok. It took a little longer for my compassion for myself to grow and I finally acknowledged that she was right in saying that my feelings are my business, however her actions are her business. I was able to reach a place where I now accept her as she is but realise that I also don't need to place myself in harms way.  So, I have accepted the relationship for what it is rather than wanting it to be what I believe a mother/daughter relationship should be.

At the end of the day my mother has her own path to walk in this life and if she is unable to do the healing work I feel compassion for that.  However, I don't feel responsible for it. The compassion is ultimately what led me to finding emotional space and finally healing. Healing is a process and different for each person.  For years I told myself I didn't care and was so angry but really deep down I did care otherwise I would have been able to walk away easily.  That compassion and looking at her hurt is the first time I was able to see that her behaviour wasn't about me.  I feel this is what he was trying to say.

For so long my mother told me, it was all me, I believed her for so long and held onto my anger.  However, over time I was able to see that my concept of what a mother/daughter relationship should be isn't what I had. I had to accept what I had, I had to accept she is a human with flaws, with hurt, with a PD and that this is ok.  It's also ok for me to distance myself and not subject myself to that behaviour.  Although her actions were hurtful I also, although found this incredibly difficult to do, I had to acknowledge that I was the one hurting myself by reliving it in my head, ruminating on it, holding on to the anger.  Compassion for myself let me finally work on my own emotions without constantly being distracted by her. So, compassion for me has been incredibly healing leading to forgiveness which for years I felt was impossible.  The compassion is not for them, it's ultimately for you.

[mary_poppins]

JLS: "At the end of the day my mother has her own path to walk in this life and if she is unable to do the healing work I feel compassion for that.  However, I don't feel responsible for it. The compassion is ultimately what led me to finding emotional space and finally healing. Healing is a process and different for each person.  For years I told myself I didn't care and was so angry but really deep down I did care otherwise I would have been able to walk away easily.  That compassion and looking at her hurt is the first time I was able to see that her behaviour wasn't about me.  I feel this is what he was trying to say."

YES. This is what he was trying to say. He said in order to heal and accept everything about them you need to extend compassion to what happened to them as little children. He also said not many can reach this state because it's very hard and uncomfortable.

So, thanks for sharing that you healed based on taking this approach. I think I'm struggling with rumination, thinking on and on about her behavior and blaming myself for not going NC as soon as I turned 18. Louise Hay is another proponent of the 'empathy for abusers' approach-she healed, btw.

I'll have to talk about this subject with a therapist.

[Sneezy]

I was able to reach a place where I now accept her as she is but realise that I also don't need to place myself in harms way.  So, I have accepted the relationship for what it is rather than wanting it to be what I believe a mother/daughter relationship should be.

At the end of the day my mother has her own path to walk in this life and if she is unable to do the healing work I feel compassion for that.  However, I don't feel responsible for it.

This is exactly what I am striving for.  I'm not there yet, but I sure wish I was.  It's tricky - how to accept my mom as she is, and how to let go of the anger and sadness I feel at not having the kind of relationship I wish we had, while keeping myself out of harm's way.  As she gets older, it gets trickier, as she needs more practical care.  Thankfully, this forum exists and is full of practical advice.

[JLS]

Hey Mary-Poppins, it is uncomfortable and really it was something I came to many years into my healing journey.  For me I had a period of needing to feel validated, then so much anger to process, hurt to process, learning about PD traits etc, however at some point it felt like the natural next step. 

I so relate about rumination.  I found I was drifting throughout the day thinking about the past, thinking about her actions, it was non-stop and that would lead to me feeling low or angry or depleted.  Although doing the work is needed to gain insight, I reached a point where I needed to stop myself. There is a beautiful day in front of me and I would find myself lost in thought about her, getting angrier and angrier. I was reliving it again, feeling the pain all over again, this was something I had to work on to stop. I still have to work on this, the habit is strong. I have also spent so much time being angry at myself for not doing something sooner, healing sooner, compassion for self though really helps with the blame.  We are so hard on ourselves and yet whose voice is that ours or theirs.  I found when I started being kind and loving to myself my healing started in earnest.

Sneezy, thankfully this forum exists, I know I gained so much from being here. Although the term 'empathy for abusers' does sound tacky I hope people don't automatically write it off. It may not be for everyone but at some point for some it may help with the healing journey.