Why empathy needs safety
Synopsis: Empathy is perspective taking: imagining what another person feels and needs. But that capacity depends on our state. When we feel threatened, the brain prioritises survival and curiosity about other minds disappears. The same happens when we look down on a partner in contempt or collapse into shame; we see a projection, not a person. Real empathy requires standing level, neither better nor less than. That’s why therapy focuses on safety and regulation first, bringing our thinking back online so we can see others clearly.
Empathy is, at its heart, perspective taking. It is the ability to step outside our own experience for a moment and imagine what it is like to be the other person: what they might be feeling, what they might need, why they might be acting as they are.
That capacity isn’t always available to us. It depends on the state we are in.
Empathy happens when we are connected and regulated. Being regulated doesn’t mean being calm or happy. We can feel angry, frustrated or hurt and still be regulated. What matters is that our thinking brain stays online, so we can hold our own feelings and still be curious about someone else’s.
When we tip into reaction, into survival mode, fight or flight, that curiosity goes. Psychiatrist and attachment researcher Jeremy Holmes puts it simply:
“You can’t think unless you feel safe. Arousal drives out mentalising. I usually say, if you are just about to be eaten by a lion, you don’t sit there and say, ‘Now, what is going on in the mind of that lion? What’s going on in my own mind?’ You just get the hell out!”
“Mentalising” is the capacity to think about minds, our own and other people’s. When we feel under threat, the brain puts survival first, and imagining another person’s inner world is not a priority.
The same thing happens when we move out of balance with the people we love. If we are looking down on a partner, in judgement or contempt, we can’t truly imagine their mind. We see only what our contempt shows us. If we are collapsing into shame, feeling small or not good enough, we can’t see them clearly either. We see them through the lens of our own shame. From above or below, the other person becomes a projection rather than a person.
Real empathy needs us to stand level with each other: neither better than nor less than. From there, we can disagree, feel strongly and still stay curious about what is happening for the other person.
This is why so much of the work in therapy is about safety and regulation first. Not to make difficult feelings go away, but to bring our thinking back online, so we can see the person in front of us as they really are.
When you notice yourself unable to understand someone, it can help to pause and ask: am I feeling safe right now? Am I above them, or below them? Or am I standing beside them?
References
Jeremy Holmes, The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own: Attachment, Neurobiology and the New Science of Psychotherapy (Confer Books, 2020).
Jeremy Holmes, in Attachments: Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis: The Selected Works of Jeremy Holmes (Routledge, 2014).
