Coffee Chats w/ Dr. D

Hello, Cadre. What's going on? It's Dr. D here and welcome to my coffee chat. So I just want to give a shout out to Target for my coffee mug today. It's probably backwards to you, but it says all you need is cough love and coffee. Yeah, and I totally agree. So I want to ask you, as you're joining and if you're watching the replay, if you can share with me and describe what is your favorite coffee mug. I have so many coffee mugs, y' all, and people love to gift me coffee mugs and coffee. I'm always welcome to it.

So just a reminder, if you didn't know, my birthday is this month. So if you want to send me a coffee mug, I welcome that. Just kidding. But my favorite coffee mug I think is just a really plain coffee mug, like a matte black coffee mug that I also got from Target. So Target has some good stuff, y' all. Hello, everybody joining. So I want to, if you missed it, I want you to drop in the the chat what is your favorite coffee mug and tell me a little bit why and describe that mug for me. So since I can't see you, I would love to hear what's your favorite mug?

So I want to get into. I want to twist a little topic about empathy. And empathy is something that we are, I guess, encouraged to have. And so I want to read to you the definition of empathy. And I didn't write this, y' all, but empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another. And if you know Brene Brown, most people do. She has a great video that talks about empathy. And the way she describes it is like joining in with the person of how they're experiencing joy, pain, whatever it is.

And I like how she describes it, and I think it's something that I try to share with clients and just people that don't really understand what empathy is. And with empathy, it feels good to join someone in their journey of their pain, even though it's hurting them. It might feel good for us to join in and support them in that way, but I want to challenge us to think how empathy can actually be toxic. All right, so follow me here. So I want you to think about when you use empathy in relationships that are hurting you.

And so you might have empathy for your abuser. And the abuser, I'm not just talking about physical abuse or mental abuse, but the person that is hurting you in whatever way. And you use empathy to try to Understand why they're hurting you. You use empathy to think about why they could do something that is so bad. Where are they coming from? Why are they hurting? And in this journey of trying to understand them, to understand why you're hurting, you make a choice to stay in that relationship or stay in that connection, because now you think you have a better understanding of why there's so much pain there.

And when it becomes tough, toxic is when you decide to have empathy over and over and over again and using empathy to excuse their behavior. Now, I've been there, all right, I'm. I'll be the first one to say I have been in toxic relationships that were, yes, sometimes physically toxic and emotionally and mentally toxic and abusive. And the reason why I stayed in them so long when I knew I should have gotten out, the reason I stayed so long is because I was coming from this place of empathy, of trying to understand the person and why they were so hurt.

I was always trying to understand what's wrong with them. Why would they do this to me? Why are they hurting me? There must be something going on with them, too. And in my space of using empathy, I use that to try to fix them or try to heal them or help them through their own pain. But in all of that, what I was doing was just ignoring what I needed. And the person that I was with could never give me what I needed in the relationship, although I was giving them everything they needed because I used empathy.

So, yes, empathy is a positive thing. I'd say we need more empathy in this world to try to understand each other. But empathy can be used in a toxic way. And it might hurt to even admit that. That that's what we're doing sometimes, that we are using our own. The best part of ourselves sometimes can be used against us. We're using it against us because we are just wanting to help everyone. And the fact is, not everybody wants to be helped. Not everybody wants to change. And there are some people who just refuse to change because the way that they hurt people helps them.

The way that they inflict pain on others makes them feel good, whether they're doing it intentionally or not. It's just something that works for them. But when we're on the receiving end, because we're using empathy, we just continue to be abused over and over and over again. And this can show up in friendships. It can show up in family dynamics. It can show up in romantic relationships. And so I want to challenge you to think, how is that showing up in your life? And let's Flip it. So if you're the person who's receiving empathy from others, what do you do with that?

And I don't know if I've been on that side. Maybe I have hurt people, and they're using empathy to understand why I'm hurting them, and maybe I'm just unaware that I'm hurting them. But if you're the person that tends to receive empathy, or you tend to receive forgiveness, or you tend to receive people in your life that are always there for you, with all the pain that you inflict on others, intentionally or not, you know, what can you do to maybe flip and reverse empathy and show empathy to the person that you're hurting or try to understand what can you do better?

So I know this is a. This is a topic that I want to dig a little deeper in because I think it hits on so many emotions that are attached to empathy. Abuse can bring up so many emotions. It can bring up, you know, bad memories. It can bring up times that maybe we forgot where we were hurting because we. Sometimes we can view our memories as something that was, oh, it wasn't that bad because we survived it. But when you actually reflect on all the things you experience in those toxic moments, you will see, dang, I stayed there too long.

So, yes, mental. Well, is that you, Luke? Is that a new name for you? So, yes, empty was a trap for you. Four years in one toxic relationship to then jump into another toxic relationship for another four years. Why is four your magic number? So grateful to have had space alone to heal for the last year and a half. Oh, Anna. Okay. Yes, Four years is a long time because I think about chronic stress and the toxicity that comes with that. So this chronic stress of dealing with toxic relationships. So there's longevity, there's consistency with the pain that we experience and the stress we experience.

So four years of that is a long time. And there are things to think about when we experience staying in a toxic place for a long time. How long does it take for us to undo that? Yeah, how long does it take for us to undo all the emotional abuse, to experience love and healing consistently? And we don't always get that from others. We don't always get consistent healing from others. And that's when we have to learn to give it to ourselves. Okay, so I want to thank you all. I will go back and watch the replay and skim through your.

Your messages there, because I was not able to catch them. I'm still learning how I can do that better. So please forgive me, but I do want to thank you for joining me today. And I will see you all next Tuesday, same time, same place, with a new coffee mug. All right, Y' all have a wonderful day. Bye.