A common fear is that being empathetic makes you vulnerable to manipulation. Joe argues the opposite: genuine empathy — being willing to feel whatever arises — actually prevents you from being taken advantage of. If you can welcome every emotion, there’s nothing someone can use as leverage against you.
People get manipulated because they don’t want to feel something. A scam selling a “magic pill” works because the buyer desperately wants to feel thin or doesn’t want to feel their current discomfort. Both extremes — the non-empathetic person who refuses to feel, and the enmeshed person who loses themselves in others — are vulnerable. The non-empathetic people “are the most likely to be manipulated by politicians or authorities or advertising.”
The person with true empathy says: “I can feel you, I can be with you, and whatever you throw at me I can feel. I can be with.” When you’re welcoming of everything, what makes you need to act contrary to your truth? This is fundamentally different from faking empathy through techniques (mirroring body language, repeating words, using someone’s name) — which “comes off as false, fake, and gross” when it lacks genuine feeling.
Related Concepts
- Empathy is being with someone’s experience, not lost in it
- Full openness is the real protection
- Boundaries are for you, not them