Conditioning to Consciousness

37. The War on Empathy: When Feeling Becomes a Threat

• Jess Callahan • Episode 37

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What if empathy isn’t weak — but dangerous?

In this solo episode of Conditioning to Consciousness, I break down a cultural shift that keeps coming up in my research -- a growing narrative that empathy is irrational, manipulative, or harmful. A quiet but powerful “war on empathy” is taking shape — and it’s deeply connected to emotional suppression, nervous system dysregulation, and the systems shaping modern Western culture.

We’ll explore:

  • How emotional disconnection starts in childhood
  • Why chronic stress and nervous system dysregulation reduce our capacity for empathy
  • The difference between empathy, sympathy, and compassion
  • The rise of books and public figures arguing that empathy is dangerous
  • What science says about emotions and empathy

If empathy improves relationships, leadership, mental health, and even physical health — why is it being framed as a threat?

This episode connects the dots between emotional suppression, cultural conditioning, and the systems that benefit when we stay disconnected. We’ll look at how empathy has existed across cultures for centuries — from Buddhist karuṇā to Ubuntu’s “I am because we are” — long before the word itself was coined in 1909.

Most importantly, we’ll talk about what changes when we rebuild emotional capacity.

Because empathy isn’t weakness. It's nervous system strength and capacity. It's inner authority -- and it might be the very thing that disrupts what keeps us divided. 

If this conversation resonates, share it with someone who’s ready to feel — and think — more deeply.

If this episode spoke to you, it would mean the world if you took a moment to leave a review or share it with a friend who needs it. And make sure you hit follow so you never miss an episode of Conditioning to Consciousness.

You can connect with me on Instagram @jesscallahan_, join my Substack community at conditioningtoconsciousness.substack.com, or explore more of my work at jesscallahan.com.

My Back in the Body Nervous System Healing course is now available! Find it here.

Thanks for listening — I’m so grateful you’re here.

Jess Callahan:

Hey guys, welcome back to the Conditioning to Consciousness podcast. Today's episode is solo. It's just me. And I'm focusing today on like empathy and emotional disconnection and how there's like this whole like cultural war on empathy taking place right now that I had no clue was happening. And so I'm gonna break all of that down for you today. And it's basically like an overview of how emotional disconnection starts really young for us, and how basically like it is the foundation that so much of the hard stuff that we're going through collectively really like sits on. So anyway, let's dive in. I had this like aha moment the other day, and um, it's it's really actually an aha moment that I have come back to time and time again. But this time it was a little bit different, and I'll I'll explain why. But but this moment, in this moment, I was like, empathy's the problem. Empathy is the problem. Why are we overlooking empathy is the problem? And it's like this double-edged sword catch 22, because in order to recognize that empathy is the problem, you have to have the capacity to feel empathy. So, anyway, that's what that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about emotional disconnection and empathy being the problem, but it's not it's not the problem as you know, some of you might be thinking, I don't know. I actually like over the course of this like the past few weeks, I guess, like I have become aware of this huge and growing war on empathy that I literally had like no clue was even taking place. No clue. Um, okay, so I want to rewind a wit a bit before we we dive in more. Okay, so I started a couple weeks ago, I started really digging in on emotional disconnection. I was gonna write a Substack article. I like woke up one morning and I was like, oh, I just have this idea that I have to like get on paper. So I started writing. And um, luckily, you know, it came in a time where I was able to kind of like just keep writing, and so I did. I just kept writing and I kept writing and I ended up writing for like two days straight. And by the time I really like stopped to look at what I had put down on paper, I was like, okay, yeah, this uh this is a lot bigger than a than a single Substack article. And so began this like happy accident of starting to write my book. So today I want to kind of just like go over one of the like core ideas that I'm covering in this book because it's just been such a, I guess, like powerful aha moment for me. Like I've always known that emotional disconnection was going to be a big part of my work. Um, but I wasn't like totally sure how. I knew all the pieces fit, but I I didn't have a ton of clarity around like exactly how they they fit together. And what I'm realizing is just that like this, the amount of emotional disconnection that we are facing culturally, like Western culture in the US specifically, it is a huge part of what's plaguing us. It's like it's a huge part of what's keeping us like hating each other, disconnected from each other, and allowing so many systems to like run unchecked while harming so many people. Emotional disconnection isn't just the like fuel or foundation that like so much of what is like harming us runs on, but it's also the thing that's preventing us from accessing so much of what is so like beautiful and fulfilling in life because we just we don't have the capacity to feel those things or connect with those things. And and you know, that's the subject for another day. I know I will be covering those, you know, in more detail later, but today I want to talk about just like empathy and emotional disconnection and how like basically these systems require us to stay tuned out, to conform to this like rule book that none of us really realize that we're like subscribing to, even in the face of harm and injustice, and and how it needs us to just keep looking away. Um, I want to talk about this idea that there is a war on empathy taking place, and I'll break that down a little bit later. But I want to start here. So, okay, let me ask you this. How many of you know what your personal values are? Could you name the like three to five values that like guide all of your decisions and um you just like your inner moral code? Because like we have them, whether we realize it or not, whether we've named them or not, they're still part of us. And so when we don't know them and when we're working against them, or when we're not making decisions guided by them, when we have like uh that like inner dissonance, that weird feeling that won't go away after we speak up or after we have an interaction with somebody that you know felt good in the moment, but then like we feel unsettled about it, like your values are still at play there. Um, but they help you sort of like resolve that inner dissonance more quickly when you know what they are. So a lot of us, you know, ultimately end up conforming to just like the values of the company that we work for or political party affiliations or other group affiliations instead of finding our own. And I think this is really just indicative of how like this disconnection requires us to not really like source decision making from inner authority. Okay, how often do you rest because your body's asking for it? Not because you've earned it or not because you've just reached the point of like complete depletion? Like, how many of you proactively rest? How often do you override your personal discomfort in order to keep things running smoothly? How often do you make like small sacrifices? Like I can live with it if it'll keep the peace. What do you do when you feel angry? When a situation makes you feel angry, do you lean into it, approaching it with curiosity? Do you work with the anger, try to release the anger, understand why you're angry? Or do you basically immediately like turn away from it? And that would be normal. It's, you know, we we are taught so often that like anger is dangerous, anger is a threat to our safety, and so instinctively we turn away from it instead of like processing it or working with it. And what do you what do you label as like normal when in fact it's like a product of chronic stress in your life? I think sometimes we wear burnout as like a badge of honor. Our culture says that, you know, you are admirable if you have worked yourself to the point of burnout. And so, like, where does that show up in your life? And what are you doing? How are you pushing yourself beyond, you know, maybe the point that you should, but you're like calling it normal? All of these are like basically like ways that we are feeling the impact of conditioning generation over generation, and the ways that like we are taught to normalize the impact of this conditioning and disconnection. And so as we stand here today, we're really like the product of centuries of conditioning that is designed to keep us disconnected from our emotions. Why? Why do we, why is it designed to keep us disconnected? Because, okay, think about the systems, think about like what's wrong with the world right now. And if you boil it down to certain things, this is by no means like a full and exclusive list, but like emotional suppression leads to numbness, right? So, in a system that say wants us like producing constantly, like focused on continuous output and not rest, a system that values men over women, a system that tells, you know, children they must be obedient to their parents, and that like we can only, you know, kids learn from their parents, not the other way around, or the system that wants to keep white people in power over any person of color, a system that wants to control human bodies. For all of these reasons, in order to like maintain conformity, in order to keep those systems thriving, they need a critical mass of people to continue looking away. It needs like they need people to stay compliant. So you see, even if like just think about the people who are looking away from the horrors taking place right now. It's natural to do that, right? It is natural to look away because we haven't been taught to sit in the very real emotions that these things are bringing up. I mean, trigger warning, right? But the largest child sex trafficking ring ever is being exposed right now. And we are struggling big time to feel the required anger to go through it, not around it. You hear things like, it's not gonna help anyone if we get so worked up about this, or like, I'm just not political. It's it's really like a capacity issue when somebody says to you, like, you know, spiritual guru or someone online who seems like they're like a mindset, you know, person, and and they say something like, Right now it's our job to focus on love and light, or it's our job to raise our vibration, or it's our job to just focus on the positive. It's not going to help anyone to live in this anger. And you know, those those are basically a permission slip for people to avoid feeling the emotions that they have to feel to go through this because you still have to feel them. It's still happening, it's still being revealed into the world. And if you bypass it and if you look away, it doesn't change that. But we just haven't been taught to work with the emotions that are coming up. And so it's easier to just bypass it. I want to go through just like a quick biology lesson. I promise this one's gonna be really quick, guys, but I think it's really important because if you've been here for a while, you know that nervous system regulation and grounding are integral parts of my work because I I really believe that we are, as a collective, chronically dysregulated. Um, our nervous systems are dysregulated. There's a reason that we we collectively don't know a lot about the nervous system. Someone said to me recently, like, why is a nervous system such a catchphrase right now? And like, can't they just make like some sort of device that you can wear on your wrist that tells you if you're regulated or not? And, you know, we've learned basics about the nervous system, right? Like it's like the brain connected to the spinal cord and all of the nerves that go out, but the most important understanding of the nervous system lies in the functionality of like how it switches. I mean, there's okay, I won't say most important because there's a lot of really important like functionality that comes through the nervous system, but through the lens of this conversation. The most important functionality lies in this like flexibility between parasympathetic and sympathetic states of the nervous system. So parasympathetic, rest and digest. That is where we're supposed to spend most of our time. It's like that relaxed state. Sympathetic is the activated state, right? Fight or flight. Um, it's, you know, the stories we hear, the bear and, you know, the bear in old ancient cultures or whatever that comes chasing a person and they feel that adrenaline rush and they run, and like that's fight or flight. And then you come back down into rest and digest, or the parasympathetic state of the nervous system. It relies on flexibility to go back and forth between the two. And flexibility lives in how we process the threat and release the residual impact of that stress of that stress or that threat, like from our bodies. But that's really like we've never been equipped with those tools. And I think there are a lot of us today who are like really understanding this and we're like, oh my gosh, you know, just like shouting from the rooftops, like, guys, this is like, this is the key to all of it. So I do think nervous system regulation is really, really important. But I think right now what I'm arguing is that like it's even like emotional suppression before nervous system regulation is like the original problem. And, you know, I could be proven wrong there for sure. I'm still working through this, but I do know that the emotional regulation is a major factor in nervous system dysregulation. And I'm gonna tell you why. So, okay, basically when you're not feeling emotion, it's sort of like the the um the values I was just talking about. Like just because you're not focusing on them, giving them any attention, it doesn't mean that there's not still like a subconscious impact taking place, right? That's causing a very real reaction in the body. So when you don't feel your emotions, it doesn't mean that they just go away. It means that instead of processing the emotion, right? So instead of like feeling the sadness, crying, self-soothing, you know, talking through it with friends, like just finding different ways to like process sadness. Um, when we suppress it and we're just like, uh, you know, I don't have time to be sad today. I don't have time to process this, or I don't feel like processing it right now. I don't know. I don't need to be sad. Somebody said I'm not supposed to be sad, so I'm not sad. Um, so basically, instead of processing it, the body holds on to it like energetically, it holds onto it as stress. Emotions evoke a safety response in the body. So, like, you know, in that safety response, we our bodies release cortisol and adrenaline stress hormones. And so when we are being flooded with stress hormones, but we don't have the tools to release the situation to process the emotion and to basically like interrupt that stress cycle, when that happens chronically, when you are chronically suppressing emotions, you're just storing it all in the body. And if you're familiar with the book by Bessel Vanderkoel, The Body Keeps the Score, that's like a whole body of research that shows us that when you hold on to stress long-term, when you don't process it, when it gets stuck in the body, it creates long-term damage in the body. Um, you know, this could be like chronic pain, chronic fatigue, IBS, hypertension. Um it creates it creates nervous system dysregulation, that flexibility that I talked about a second ago, the ability to go back between like rest and digest and the activated state, you deplete your flexibility. You get stuck in an activated state of the nervous system. And so when you're here, there's, you know, regions of your brain actually change. So like the part of your brain that's responsible for feeling empathy and compassion dulls, like it becomes basically like you get like numbing from that, from that change. But then your body is also just like constantly scanning for threat when you're in the active state. And so you have reduced capacity. And this is, I think, what's really important. So we've already talked about how you you have numbness, you have less of an ability to feel empathy and compassion. Um, so people who are looking directly, you know, they're very aware of the injustices that are happening, but they're like, meh, doesn't it doesn't bother me because it's not like impacting me directly. That could be tied to this like process of dysregulation and shifts in the brain. But um, you also have reduced capacity. So when your nervous system is spending so much of its capacity searching for threats, you have less capacity for feeling emotions, for connecting deeply with each other, for having those like deeper conversations, not just surface level, complex problem solving. Um you become more reactive, really. Like a lot of the times um you, you know, the the response is reactivity. We become more like quick to polarize, like the divisions that sit between us because we can't sit in nuance or ambiguity, or like it's just really hard to understand how somebody else's perspective is still valid, even though it's not like our, you know, ours. Like we can't stretch our minds because we don't have the capacity. We can't stretch our minds to make space for their lived experience being, you know, just as valid as our own. Um, and so there's like a lot of these reactive behaviors that we start to see then. Um some of them are things like gaslighting, blame shifting, minimize, minimizing and dismissing somebody else's experience. Some of these might sound familiar to you guys. Um basically all of all of these tactics are ways to avoid accountability and restore inner balance, find like get right back into that comfort zone because discomfort is threatening. Like we're so the nervous system has become like trained at this point to really see any kind of discomfort as a threat. And so it jumps right in to protect us and it does whatever it can to keep us comfortable. We do not step out of our comfort zones, right? Because comfort is safety. And so um, you know, those tools like blame shifting, gaslighting, minimizing, dismissing, like they're all tools that basically like shift responsibility to the other person and like ease the inner dissonance that's like happening inside the individual so that they can basically like just settle back into their comfort zone more quickly. So um, and those things, like all of these things can be rebuilt, like empathy can be rebuilt, and um, we can rebuild nervous system capacity, we can rebuild our willingness to sit in discomfort. And I know um all of those will be like future episodes. I'm not gonna get into all of those here, but that's basically like the spiral of like what what happens when we live in dysregulation. And like the conditioning for this starts really early, the conditioning to disconnect us emotionally. I mean, there are like thousands of examples. I'll start with just a few. Um, but you know, some of these might sound familiar, you know, if you think back to when you were raised, you know, what were the things that you were told, or how were you treated? And you know, it's I think it's also important to remember that this is a product of centuries of conditioning and generations before us were raised the same way that we were raised, and they didn't have the same tools, you know, access to the same tools that we have, um, you know, widespread access to therapy, online communities that can validate that an experience or something that's happening is wrong, um, you know, groups that can come together, online communities that can easily come together to raise voices around creating change, um, even just like emotional processing tools that we find online. I mean, in a in a minute, actually, I want to give you some information from a book that was um a common parenting book uh in the 1900s, last century so long ago. But um and but, you know, really like these books were like the Bible, you know, it's like you like guidance came out and that's what you followed because there just wasn't as much information available without like the internet and like connectedness. Um but like okay, so as a child, if you were ever told to, you know, stop crying, you're fine, instead of feeling the emotion, uh, you know, the and encouraging feeling the emotion, or even just like recognizing that like a child's experience is their experience and it's not up to the adult to tell them how you're feeling, um, to say stop crying, you're fine, is is basically like telling the child, I tell you what you're feeling and what it's okay to feel. Um, how many of you were ever punished for talking back or questioning authority? This idea that like it's it's disrespectful to question an authority figure. Instead of encouraging like a child to follow their inner guidance, um, you know, recognizing what feels off, or even just like pursuing something with curiosity, like being an independent thinker to try to understand why something is as it is. It's just like immediately, you know, we shut it down, you get punished for talking back or questioning authority. Um, boys learn that emotional expression is not safe. Unless it's anger, sometimes anger is okay if it's used on a limited basis, but basically all emotional expression and vulnerability are like not masculine. Girls, on the other side, are learned that any type of emotional expression is irrational or hysterical, that they have to maintain composure in order to keep the peace. And this is like an epigenetic trauma imprint for I think a lot of women because we're coming off the heels of generations of women who were silenced through institutionalization, isolation, medical experimentation, um, and and the trauma that they faced. Science shows it lives on in our in our bodies. Um, you know, how about like this idea that we had to forgive immediately without ever like focusing on closing like the energy loops that might come with emotional processing? It's like there needs to be forgiveness immediately and and um, you know, as we're seeing even just like cross culturally right now, often before the impact of the harm is like even addressed, religious conditions. And you know, speaking through the lens specifically of Christianity, because that's where I'm most familiar, but like it uses fear. So there's this whole idea of like living your life in a way that helps you avoid eternal damnation and God as a surveillance system. And it just leads us to like constant moral self-monitoring and vigilance. Um, so like those are just a few of the examples and the ways that like we're conditioned starting really early to like disconnect from our own emotions. To you know, we learn that our emotions aren't our truth, somebody else is responsible for telling us what it's okay to feel. Um so there's like there were these series of parenting books that came out in the 1900s, early 1900s. And my my mom actually the other day gave me the Dr. Spock book as an example of just like what they were raised with. And really, truly, like these were like the Bible. It's like what you followed. I mean, to some extent, depending on when you guys, if you had kids, when you had kids, um I think they that tradition still lived on for me at the beginning. Like my kids are seven, the oldest and youngest are almost eight years apart. And so, you know, with my oldest, we still had like what to expect when you're expecting, and I won't dive into that one right now, but still not perfect. But this whole idea of like these like child rearing Bibles um dominating generations, it's been going on for I mean, really, I guess it lasted at least a century. So in the early 1900s, there were two um two main psychologists, and the one that I want to talk about now, these guys came before Spock. Um basically, like the book that my mom gave me for Dr. Spock. We like opened it, and there's some outrageous stuff in that book, mostly like perpetuating male dominance, male hierarchies. But um I I was, you know, entertained, but also shocked and horrified to find that what came before Dr. Spock was even crazier. Like, like Dr. Spock is seen as actually like fairly emotionally aware. So, okay, John B. Watson is a psychologist that I want to focus on right now. He's a behaviorist from the early 1900s. Well, he's he was did a lot of his work in like early 1900s. His book, Psychological Care of Infant and Child, came out in 1928 and you know was like a Bible for for parents, especially mothers at that time. And his work really centered on emotional disconnection. He was very, very, very wary of encouraging any kind of emotional connection between parent and child. And so, um, okay, so here I want to give you a quote. Uh so basically his work is rooted in the belief that children don't need affection. And and he says at one point that children should be treated as if they were young adults. Dress them, bathe them with care and circumspection. Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight, shake hands with them in the morning. Like that is literally how our you know, great-grandparents, grandparents, like, and then like the residual of that is is what was passed down to our parents and to us. And so even though we're not taught to like shake hands with our babies in the morning, that's there's still like a layer of emotional disconnection that's like resonant generation to generation. And you know, when I was like raising my own kids, I knew that like, you know, there's like the skin to skin was emphasized right after birth. And we knew that there was a lot more with like attachment theory that we needed to be focusing on, but it was still confusing. Like, do you let your baby cry it out? Like today we understand that like a lot more about attachment, but I think that it's just really hard to teach generations of women who have already learned and and been conditioned on like emotional suppression that they need to reconnect and soothe babies. And when do you let them cry it out? And when are you supposed to give them attention for crying? And you know, there's just I think there's still confusion, honestly. Um, but also, you know, some of that lies in the fact that we don't center a mother's intuition in like child rearing. It's still like very much like follow, follow the medical advice, follow the, you know, like follow what your doctors say. And mother's intuition is still like not really a valid way of knowing. Maybe now I think there's been a lot of shift in the last like decade and a half or so, but um, you know, all of that to say that it's it's not like you just flip a switch and all of this goes away. Like it um it lives on in what we pass down to each other. So, okay, I want to shift now to empathy. Um, we've just talked about how emotional disconnection basically like the systems thrive on emotional disconnection, how we got here where we're so emotional and discon emotionally disconnected. Um, and so, you know, enter this era of like total polarization where people don't have the capacity to feel emotions, where people don't have the um you know, the capacity to put ourselves in each other's shoes. Um, it's so so I think that there are a lot more like scientists and researchers and psychologists who are coming down to this idea that like empathy is the root cause. Um, empathy itself, like the the term itself was only just coined in like English in 1909 by a psychologist. Um, there's do dozens of definitions now of empathy. And like empathy, to me, I use just a really simple and straightforward definition, which is just our our ability to really like walk in somebody else's shoes to understand, like to feel with somebody what they're going through. Um, so you know, it's it's really like the ability to relate to somebody on that emotional level. And so I think that these dozens of definitions that have emerged almost like speaks to our widespread emotional illiteracy. And like, you know, you have scientists who are like totally emotionally disconnected, who are leaning into, you know, materialism and logic-based thinking solely and trying to like create definitions that fit their expectation. And I think I think that we can be a lot more like simple about it. Um, one of the early definitions by Reader's Digest in 1955 said that empathy was the ability to appreciate other people's feelings without yourself becoming emotionally affected or it impacting your judgment. And I thought this was really interesting because yeah, I think that there's like this there there is a need to be like to have regulated empathy, but uh impact like feeling somebody else's experience might impact your judgment because when you feel injustice, when you see that somebody else is witnessing injustice and you take time to really feel what that might feel like, it should impact your judgment. But in you know, the 1950s, that's like not what they wanted at all. Um okay, so today this whole like war on empathy, there's this whole idea that it's like this new age term that's actually really damaging and is causing people to make these like irrational, emotionally rooted choices and that it's basically like guiding us astray. And um, even though it was just coined in in 1909, you know, there's evidence that it lived long, long, long before that. They, I guess they just didn't need a name for it. Like it just lived as part of the fabric of what it was to be human. Um there's this like Buddhist concept, I think it's called Karuna. It's like compassion for suffering. Um indigenous cultures had this like relational worldview, which emphasizes interconnectedness and empathy lives there. There's um this like sub-Saharan African Ubuntu, like saying that translates to I am because we are. Like all of these are terms that just like express how empathy lives in the interconnection between us. And today science confirms that we, you know, empathy lives in nervous system co-regulation. So how our bodies literally sync to each other's, we help each other regulate. Um, there are mirror neurons in our brain that activate when we observe others' experiences as if they were our own. And then attachment theory basically, it's like this body of research that shows that like being emotionally attuned can shape our relationships and stress patterns for life. So, like empathy is something that has lived within our bodies probably since the beginning of time. We just didn't have a need for a name for it until it was like conditioned out of us. It was just a way of being before. Um, and like the chakra system, for example, how it's like, I think it offers a look at regulated empathy and how it just like lives in us naturally. Like when the chakra systems are imbalanced, the heart chakra is responsible for managing like the compassion part and the feelings part, the solar plexus chakra is where you know agency and boundaries live. And so when you're when the chakra system is managed, you're you're living in a place that like you're able to feel that deep feeling with somebody else, that that empathy, but you're able to still hold your boundaries and maintain your own um autonomy, you know, without becoming too impacted by it in a way that like you're no longer working from a place of like your values, your inner radar. Um you're not like you know, you have a strong enough like grounding in yourself, root chakra balance there that um that says that you know, you're able to approach empathy in a in a grounded way, right? Um, so okay. I wanna I want to talk about a famous Charlie Kirk quote. Before I do that, I'm gonna quick touch on the difference between like empathy, compassion, and sympathy. So um, where empathy is feeling with somebody else, understanding their experience by feeling with them, walking in their shoes. Compassion could today be described as like feeling for someone, but with like a plan of action. So you're not actually like experiencing it with them, you're still sort of feeling for them. But generally with compassion, there's like a drive for action. Sympathy is feeling for, but without any intended action. So sympathy, you know, in this case, it actually reinforces these hierarchies that we've talked about that the systems rely on, right? Men over women, parents over children, whiteness over everyone else. It's like, I feel bad for you, but I'm not gonna do anything about it. So, okay, after Charlie Kirk died, um, there's a quote that spread widely, and the quote was, I can't stand the word empathy. I think empathy is a made-up new age term, and it does a lot of damage. So that's the quote that circulated. And, you know, there's a lot of reasons. I'm not gonna get into like the politics of it, but that's that's just one of the quotes. And then there were people that jumped to his defense basically saying, but you didn't show the whole quote. Here's the rest of it. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. So the whole quote is I can't stand the word empathy. I think empathy is a made-up new age term and it does a lot of damage. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. Um, and but basically, like, as these people are just like jumping in to his defense based on this idea that like it's he's not bad. He was saying he likes sympathy, not empathy. But really, that's just a reinforcement of like perpetuating emotional disconnection so that the system can continue to thrive, perpetuating these, you know, so social hierarchies, racial hierarchies so that the system can continue to thrive. Um in my research for this like book, I started researching books on empathy, and I have one or two. I was trying to find a different perspective, and I was shocked to find that there are so many books that come up like really high in the search results. Um, you know, books called things like Toxic Empathy, um, against empathy. And some of the things like when you pull up those books, one of them describes empathy as a tool of manipulation by left-wing activists to bully people into believing that they must adopt progressive positions to be loving. Um, it's basically like they're just like bypassing the emotions so that they can push an agenda seeking to control people. Um, when you avoid the emotions, when you stay emotionally disconnected, you can push that agenda. Um, so you know, in this case, left-wing activists. I think, you know, from my experience, there's, I don't know, like it's nuanced, right? There's so much that goes into it. But a lot of what I see when it comes to social issues is people who feel empathy saying, no, like we should, we should adopt policies that treat all people as human because we all deserve like basic human rights and equality. And, you know, I think that's what it's really speaking to, but without the emotional discon, without the emotional connection, it's I guess harder to see that. Um, there's another book that actually calls empathy an irrational emotion. Um you know, emotions are a state of being, they have to be felt in order to process them. It's not irrational, but that's, you know, the conditioning that we've focused on for so long. Um the the write-up says something like, we're at our best when we're smart enough to not rely on like on emotion or empathy. And uh he calls on people to draw on a more distanced compassion. So literally, like, you know, not allowing yourself to really like feel the harm of this disconnection, feel the harm of injustice and make change accordingly. It's like if you keep your distance, if you stay disconnected, we can keep pushing this agenda that seeks power and control. So anyway, yeah, I had no, no clue that this war on empathy was so prevalent. Um yeah, I don't know. I I think definitely more to come on this. And I guess like one other thing that I just want to close with is like the benefits, I guess, of empathy to me, like it's it goes without saying, but I know that they're, you know, I guess the questions came up for me through my research, like, well, do they have a point? Like, what if we just don't feel our emotions? Like, what would happen? And in diving into the research, um, that says, like, okay, so say when you have a healthy relationship with your emotions, it means that you have strong emotional awareness. So like you can identify the emotions you're feeling, you have a process to work through them. When you're able to like regulate between various emotional states, so like you feel those like peaks of anger, but you're able to, you know, bring yourself back into um like more balance. You're able to process the anger through you and not just live in it. Um, you have a low level of chronic avoidance or suppression of emotions. Like, if that's what it means to have a healthy relationship with emotions, then research has like countless studies linking emotional intelligence to like positive work outcomes, job performance, transformational leadership, job satisfaction. Um overall, people have greater relationship satisfaction and longevity, emotional intelligence and you know, um better like emotional processing is correlated to lower anxiety, greater overall life satisfaction, reduced burnout, also improved immune function, better sleep quality. Like there's so many positive outcomes to feeling your emotions. Like, you know, the systemic stuff aside that we just talked about, like this disconnection from emotions is taking so much from us. It's taking our health, balance, sanity, connection to what feels meaningful in life, our connection to each other, um, any feelings of peace, because we're living in this like hell where we're all just like totally polarized and disconnected. And if we would tune back into empathy, if we could build our capacity to feel emotions, I think we start to weaken all that keeps us divided. We heal our burnout, we connect more deeply with each other, we build stronger communities. Um, empathy slows dehumanization, like this and this like us versus them. Reflexive thinking makes exploitation of like people of the earth like harder to sustain. Um, it's it's a lot harder for us to live in this like space of just like indifference and not caring. So, anyway, um, I'm sure I'll have more later on on healing the divide, but I thought that it was just like so important to just start the conversation, just be talking about emotional disconnection and and the role of empathy in all of this. So, um, all right, I will be back next time with another interview for you. Um, as always, I'd love to hear from you if you learned anything new, had any like insights come to you through this. Um, I would just love to hear from you. Reach out and thanks for being here. Bye, guys.