3 Dangers of Being Too Nice and How It Can Hurt You!

Can empathy be dangerous?

Yes, it can be dangerous. Empathy can sometimes hurt you bad.

But before we dive into that dark space, let’s take a quick glance at how we use it in our daily speech. If you were to explain empathy in a simple expression, it could well be this:

“I know exactly how you feel.” Of course, ‘exactly’ would be an overstatement. Another, though quite a jaded one, could be this: “I know where your shoe pinches.”

Empathy Can Make You Angry

Empathy can make you angry, very angry indeed, if you perceive that a person is threatening your loved ones.

Caring for a person you love can and does make you angry when you understand there is a threat to them.

Because you foresee the pain and distress that other person might be causing your loved one. Since it is a threat to your family’s survival, shoring up your aggressive resources is a natural reaction.

Empathy Can Make You Sad and Broke

When people feel empathy at seeing other people in distress, and feel guilty that they are somehow responsible for that person’s troubles, they are said to have developed an empathy-based guilt.

The empathy-based guilt can show up as survivor guilt, in which the person believes that their happiness and success has come at the cost of others’ unhappiness and failures.

Since they falsely believe that they are the cause of distress, they also start to believe (again falsely) that they can relieve the distress.

This can lead to giving away of one’s possessions, and being broke and bankrupt down to the last penny in the hope that it will cure other’s misfortunes.

This condition is called pathological altruism.

Empathy can be dangerous and fatal

It has been traditionally understood that psychopaths are incapable of empathy, remorse or guilt. But it not all true.

Psychopaths often have exceptional ability to predict and read your thoughts.

They can cognitively empathize with you. In 2013, neuroscientist Christian Keysers examined the fMRI brain scans of 18 psychopaths and found that when asked to empathize, they showed normal levels of empathy.

Psychopaths are known to instill into their victims the notion that they themselves are to blame for their misfortune.

This manipulativeness is almost an exclusive hallmark of psychopaths.

Now, if you look deep, this quality of theirs is almost impossible if they had no capability to empathize.