Has your empathy taken a hit lately?
Have you recently scrolled through your social media feed and felt little to no compassion for other people’s troubles?
Maybe you find that issues you once felt passionately about now don’t affect you at all.
Perhaps you even feel contempt or satisfaction at someone else’s misery rather than feeling sorry for them.
What is behind this apparent loss of empathy?
There are several reasons why your empathy may have taken a hit recently. Below are some of the most common contributing factors:
1. You’re overwhelmed by too much stimuli.
According to the National Autistic Society, this type of “overwhelm” affects neurodivergent people on a constant basis, but it can affect neurotypical folks as well. It happens when there’s simply too much going on, everywhere, all at once, and we short circuit.
For example, if too many people are talking around you at once, you may no longer be able to focus on what they’re saying anymore—you just hear sound, but none of it makes sense.
Similarly, parents of very young children may get touched out. They may feel that contact from any living being is excruciating and intolerable as a result.
They might look down at their child, who’s crying inconsolably and reaching up for hugs, and feel absolutely nothing. Quite simply, they unconsciously check out to save what’s left of their own sanity.
2. You’re drained by other people’s demands on your energy.
Do you have a housemate or partner who demands your attention as soon as you walk through the door? Or a parent who’s so fond of the sound of their own voice that they deign to lecture you for hours on topics you don’t care about?
You might not give a damn about anything they’re sharing with you, but you’re still expected to act as though you’re engaged in the discussion and offer up nods and “mmhmm” noises at the right moments.
If you don’t, they’ll become defensive because you’re not paying attention to them, and the situation will snowball into an argument or worse.
It’s possible that all you want to do is have a cup of tea in silence and solitude, but their wants and needs seem to take priority over your peace of mind.
3. Depression.
For those who are dealing with depression, the act of getting out of bed to use the washroom might take every ounce of strength they have that day.
According to the American Psychological Association, people experiencing depression may have difficulty taking care of their own needs, let alone those of others. Furthermore, they’re unable to enjoy things that used to make them happy.
If you’ve been suffering from depression, it’s no surprise that your empathy levels are low. We cannot draw from empty wells, and if yours has been obliterated by bleakness, then you literally have nothing left to give right now.
4. Medications are interfering with your thoughts and emotions.
Certain medications can cause emotional numbness or changes in emotions, which can affect one’s empathy response. According to the National Institutes of Health this also includes substances that are taken for the purpose of self-medication, such as cannabis.
Take note of any substances you may be taking on a regular basis, and do some research as to their side effects. You may discover that what initially appears to be empathy loss may simply be a secondary effect.
5. General fatigue.
Depression isn’t the only issue that can make you feel drained and exhausted. Life’s daily demands can leave us with very little energy to spare, and that energy can lessen further if you’re dealing with insomnia or getting up 20 times a night to care for young children.
Just about all of us have experienced days in which we were so tired that we didn’t care about what anyone else was saying, doing, or even thinking—all we wanted was to crawl into bed and get some much-needed sleep.
If you haven’t been getting enough rest, then this kind of depletion may be a new baseline standard for you.
6. Empathy fatigue.
This is a common issue that plagues healthcare and personal support workers. They’re exposed to so much suffering on a constant basis that they disassociate and “numb out” in order to get through any given day.
If you’re a doctor, nurse, or counsellor and you find that you’re having difficulty empathizing with other people’s pain, then this is a likely culprit.
It’s possible that you don’t see your patients as people anymore but rather walking diagnoses that need to be taken care of. This may also spill over into your personal life.
For example, if you’ve spent 10 hours taking care of emergency room accidents and come home to a child who has a cut knee, you might dismiss their distress as unnecessary drama and ignore them.
They’re one more straw on your back, and you’re dangerously close to collapsing as it is: you simply have nothing left to give anyone.
7. You have too many of your own issues to deal with.
It’s hard to care about what others are going through—as well as “big happenings” around the world—when you’re dealing with your own problems.
If you’ve been having relationship troubles or dealing with difficult health concerns, then those are going to be at the forefront of your heart and mind. There may not be any space left to deal with (or even care about) anyone else right now.
This gets even more intense when you’ve been struggling with something major, and someone comes to you crying about an issue that’s beyond trivial to you.
It might feel like the end of the world to them, but you find yourself wishing you only had their pithy little issues to contend with. As a result, you’re unable to drum up a single ounce of empathy for their plight.
Alternatively, you may be processing the aftermath of trauma. Emotional numbness and subconscious avoidance are common in PTSD and can either be temporary—such as if the trauma happened recently—or long term.
If you’re in this type of situation, you may not simply be having difficulty feeling empathy, you might have trouble feeling anything at all.
Alternatively, the opposite may be happening:
8. Hormonal fluctuations.
Puberty, pregnancy, menopause, and aging can do a number on us as far as how we feel about other people. We might feel patient and hopeful one minute, then curse all of humanity with our next breaths.
These hormonal rollercoasters can cause us to numb out and disassociate at times, which can be quite distressing to people who are accustomed to usually feeling deeply and passionately about most things.
9. Brain injury or illness.
When one has had a brain injury, such as a stroke or physical trauma, it can rewire their thinking and feeling patterns for a while. In fact, some changes may linger indefinitely.
A person who had previously been very extraverted and loving may now be detached and prefer solitude. Or in contrast, someone who used to be stoic might dissolve into tears at the slightest provocation.
If you’ve experienced a brain trauma, you might simply be incapable of feeling certain things right now, and that’s okay.
Chances are things will get back to “normal” eventually. Give yourself time to heal, and don’t judge yourself too harshly for something that’s entirely out of your control.
It’s important to note that conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s can also have an emotionally numbing effect. If you haven’t had a brain injury, and you can’t determine any other causal factors for your loss of empathy, consider whether either of these conditions runs in your family.
10. Others have treated you so badly, you can’t care about their problems.
Depending on what you’ve had to deal with in the past, you may have found yourself on the receiving end of some rather intense mistreatment from others. They may have tormented or bullied you for years, or an event may have occurred that made them say or do truly awful things to you.
As such, if and when karma comes ‘round, and they’re suddenly dealing with intense issues, you may not feel anything at all for them. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, you might even feel a pang of satisfaction knowing that the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak.
It’s difficult to feel empathy for people who have dug their own holes, especially when you’ve repeatedly warned them about doing so.
11. Empath “shutdown.”
Highly sensitive and empathic people often have to deal with something known as “empath shutdown.”
We only have so much energy and emotion to dole out on a daily basis. As a result, when our attention and empathy are being demanded from all directions, our wells can quite literally run dry.
A simple scroll through social media will bring up images and descriptions of all kinds of misery going on around the world. Nearly every single day is slated for some type of “awareness,” and people are expected to care about every issue out there.
In fact, if we don’t help to spread awareness and do everything we can about all of these issues, we’re labeled as uncaring jerks and might even be ostracized.
There seems to be a demand for constant emotional output and performative action from everyone, all the time, and that’s exhausting for anyone to try to keep up with. Day-to-day life is draining enough without having to remember to post and share the right images on your 30 different social platforms.
12. You’re dealing with empathic illness.
This is a condition that most empaths deal with at some point in their lives. If you’re an empath, then you’ve likely felt pain or suffering along with those around you.
Should you be in circumstances where many people around you are ill, then you may end up experiencing their symptoms as well.
This empathic illness is often wrongly chalked up to hypochondria or Munchausen syndrome by medical professionals, but it’s a very real issue that many deal with on a regular basis.
This type of illness may cause you to detach and numb out as a means of self-protection. That said, you may also be losing empathy because that’s what others around you are doing.
Since you feel what other people around you are feeling, it’s only natural that you’ll end up feeling detachment and loss of empathy if that’s what they’re experiencing.
