Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Turn Burden of Empathy in a Superpower
Empathy is a beautiful gift—the ability to deeply feel, understand, and connect with others. But when left unchecked, it will turn into something else entirely: an emotional burden, a trap, even a silent form of self-destruction.
In this episode, we’re breaking down the fine line between using empathy as a superpower versus letting it turn you into an emotional pack mule. If you constantly feel drained, overwhelmed, or responsible for everyone else’s emotions, this episode will shake you awake.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How empathy really works (and why most people misunderstand it)
- The #1 mistake empaths make that leads to burnout
- Why absorbing other people’s emotions doesn’t actually help them
- How to use empathy as a tool instead of letting it control you
- The difference between healthy empathy and becoming a doormat
- Why guilt is a liar—and how to stop falling for it
- How to set boundaries without feeling like a terrible person
If you’ve ever felt emotionally exhausted from carrying other people’s feelings, this episode will give you the perspective shift you need to start using your empathy for good—without losing yourself in the process.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this podcast has benefited you, imagine the value of a one-on-one meeting with me! Click below to schedule your FREE consultation. Discover solutions with no obligation.
https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/appointments
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Aftar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Today I want to talk about a very incredible concept, a superpower that women carry and that has to do with their ability to empathize, ability to deeply sense and understand other people's emotions. This is a level of an invisible workload that you're carrying, but it is a superpower when you use it right. Empathy comes very naturally to a lot of women, and it's like feeling other people's emotions as they're your own. This is a skill of a very high processing, intuitive mind, and it allows deep emotional connection, but it definitely requires boundaries to prevent emotional exhaustion, and that's what we're going to talk about today. So there's a big difference that I want you guys to be clear about and that will save a lot of emotional suffering in your life, and that is since empathy comes very naturally to a lot of women. They also think that taking the emotional burden of everyone else is love, and that level of love is an inescapable reality, and no one teaches you as a young girl, or as an adult woman for that matter, how to separate the two. And when nobody teaches you, then your empathy turns you into a doormat.
Speaker 1:An empath who's been conditioned to absorb, manage and take responsibility for other people's emotions at their own expense. Someone who struggles to set boundaries. They can't prioritize themselves and they equate self-sacrifice with being a good person. Empathy is an incredible gift, one of my highest values, something that the world desperately needs. That kind of emotional sensitivity is a gift. But you do have to retrieve yourself a little bit when an emotional intelligence inside of you is making you turn into an emotional pack mule for the people around you, pack mule being the carrier of all emotional burden. But I guess you understood that If you are the kind of person when you walk into a space you just know who needs support. You sense a shift in your friend's voice even before she admits she's upset. You feel the discomfort in a group setting before anyone else acknowledges it. This is an amazing quality. But if you're that person but you can't realize your full potential, you avoid social interactions because it's just too much to handle, because you haven't learned how to be an empath in a healthy way, you can recognize other people's emotions your children's, your colleagues, but you don't know how to stop taking responsibility for them. That's where I need you to draw the line and that's what you're going to learn in this podcast. That's the difference between empathy as it is supposed to be, a superpower, a sign of a high processing brain, or an empath who turns into a doormat. And the key here is how to use it without losing yourself, because no one benefits from your emotional exhaustion.
Speaker 1:When a mildly sad commercial sends you into an existential crisis. That's the real cost of empathy Not just feeling for other people, but keeping those feelings, storing them like they belong to you. And your mind becomes an emotional Airbnb, hosting everyone else's worries, fears, frustrations, while your own thoughts don't even get a place to sit. And then it's no wonder that you feel mentally crowded. When there's no space left for you, where does your own creativity go? What happens to your own desires? Where do they fit? Where does your peace get to exist?
Speaker 1:Your mind and your body is not designed to be a storage unit for everyone else's emotions. But when you're used to feeling everyone else's emotions so deeply, letting go will feel unnatural. Like you're being careless, like you're used to feeling everyone else's emotions so deeply, letting go will feel unnatural, like you're being careless, like you're not helping, like you don't love them. And in that spirit of helping, that's what keeps you locked in, because it feels like holding onto somebody else's emotions is a form of care, like you, keeping their pain close is a proof that you're a good friend, a good partner or a good human. Except it's not. Holding on to somebody else's emotions will not heal them. It just makes you hurt as well, and if both of you are drowning in the same feeling, who's actually getting to be saved?
Speaker 1:One of the most powerful things you can do as an empath is to not carry other people's emotions. It's to use them and redirecting that energy into something that creates ease, relief or joy for you, for them or for the world. Empathy is one of the biggest unpaid emotional labor you will ever do. There's no paycheck, there's no benefits, there's no paid time off, so let's understand the science behind this as well. All emotions have a half-life of 90 seconds. That's it In their rawest forms.
Speaker 1:Feelings move through your body like a passing wave the worst of the anger, the deepest sadness, frustration. They arise, they peak and, if left alone, fade naturally. But that's not how most people experience emotions Because, instead of letting them pass, making space for them or observing them, the mind goes on to continue to think about the situation in a way that reproduces those emotions over and over again. As an empath, if an emotion in you lingers for hours, days, weeks, it's not because the original feeling is still there. It's because your brain keeps resuscitating it. It keeps bringing it back to life. How? By replaying the situation, by analyzing every detail, by thinking of it over and over again, making it seem very important that you think hard about it, by imagining other people's pain over and over again, until you reproduce it and it feels like yours.
Speaker 1:And most empaths get stuck here. No matter how long you're holding on to somebody else's sadness, hurt or stress, you never actually feel their pain. You feel the pain that your mind creates when you think about their suffering. Your body reacts to the stories your empathic brain is telling. Since your empathy is a proof of a high-processing, highly intelligent mind, there's nothing to fix about this. Of a high processing, highly intelligent mind. There's nothing to fix about this. The only thing that needs adjusting is where you stop taking responsibility for their emotions and stop justifying having to stay in that state Just because you're so good at detecting somebody else's emotions does not mean you have to reproduce them with your mind over and over again.
Speaker 1:This, along with another concept, creates the entire difference when you fall into becoming a doormat, when empathy becomes a weakness, this is when empathy turns into self-sacrifice and it starts small. You sense somebody else's disappointment and before they even say a word, you feel it in your body a sinking stomach feeling, a quick rush of thoughts about what you did wrong. Did I say something offensive? Did my boundary hurt them? Did I make their life harder? And just like that, your brain hands you a guilt trip that you never signed up for.
Speaker 1:Just because you sense what somebody else is feeling does not mean that their emotions are your responsibility. You are mirroring their experience, reflecting them Mirrors don't own what they reflect. But when you don't see this distinction, you start taking responsibility for emotions that aren't yours. You convince yourself that if someone is upset, especially with you, it must be your fault. If only you had said yes, if only you had softened your boundaries a little bit, if only you had made them more comfortable. But that's not how emotions work.
Speaker 1:People don't feel bad because of you. They feel bad because of their thoughts about you. Their frustration, anger, sadness, disappointment even if it is directed at you, isn't because of you. It's not caused by you. It's because of the story they're telling themselves about your actions, about your behavior. And if you don't recognize this, you start bending over backwards to manage other people's feelings. You let go of your no so they don't get upset. You take an extra work shift so they don't feel stressed. You make yourself smaller so they don't feel uncomfortable, and this is the recipe that turns an empath into a doormat.
Speaker 1:The world does not need more doormats. It needs well-boundaried, empathic women. Women who care deeply but do not self-destruct in the process. Women who show up with compassion and self-respect. Being kind is not the same as being a doormat, but when kindness turns into chronic self-sacrifice, that's what it becomes. Struggling to say no, putting yourself last, feeling drained, underappreciated, avoiding conflict at all costs, and what that might look like is loaning money that never gets repaid and you're too uncomfortable to ask for it back. Chairing a committee because no one else stepped up. Covering for co-workers when they don't turn up, when it's their turn to help, doing favors over and over again, over-apologizing All of these are doormat behaviors. If any of this makes you feel called out or sensitive, that's okay. It's actually a good thing. Recognizing this pattern is the first step to changing it, because you were not meant to be a doormat and you were not meant to release your empathy completely. You are meant to stand tall with empathy and self-respect.
Speaker 1:One of the things that fixes this hardest of the hardest made people pleaser is reminding yourself just because you can feel somebody else's emotion does not mean you're responsible for it. I'll say it again Just because you feel someone else's emotion does not mean you are responsible for it. The quicker you can stop falling into this trap, the quicker you will heal. When you feel someone else's sadness, frustration, disappointment, you also equate that to you causing these emotions, and then you start to rearrange your life to make sure that they don't feel bad anymore. And the worst part is that people get used to it. They aren't even aware of how much energy you're pouring into this. They're living their lives just blissfully, unaware that you're mentally exhausted and emotionally drained. A very gentle reminder that I want you to start practicing and keep practicing until it is second nature is just because I feel other people's emotions does not mean I am responsible for them. This is a very basic foundation of even start to set boundaries, because if you don't set boundaries, the world and the people in it will set them for you and you will not like the terms of those boundaries, trust me. And also let me be clear about something else the most common advice that you hear on this is just be direct. Communicate your needs. Say no with confidence. Yeah, okay, if it was that easy, we wouldn't be having a need for this podcast.
Speaker 1:The real way to stop being a doormat is stop feeling responsible for other people's emotions. Let them be uncomfortable, let them be disappointed and let them figure it out. Allow them to own their own emotions and if you're in a position and if they will allow you, you can teach them that that's their emotion. But for that to happen, you have to first stop treating their emotions as if they belong to you. The second real way is to get comfortable with discomfort. When you set a boundary, expect pushback, expect people to be shocked that you suddenly have standards. That's okay. Let them be uncomfortable. The world will adjust. People who love you will adjust for you. The third real way is recognizing that guilt is a liar. Guilt does not mean you did something wrong. Guilt might mean that you did something different that you're not used to, but this is exactly what you need to do right now.
Speaker 1:The fourth real way to stop being a doormat is start small, but start immediately. Say no to something today. No explanation, no over apologizing, just no, and see how the world doesn't actually explode. Keep creating your emotional safety. Keep reminding yourself that his emotion or her emotion is not yours, even though you feel it so deeply and it feels so real in your body. You feel your emotions. Other people feel theirs. All of our emotions as individuals come from our own thoughts. Just because you can replicate somebody else's emotions painful or joyful in your own body, you're only doing it because of your own thoughts, because you have this God-given gift of putting yourself in their shoes and seeing their experience through their eyes. But all the while, no matter how quickly or efficiently or naturally you're able to do this, you're not feeling their emotions. You're feeling your own emotions, and that comes from thinking about what you think they're experiencing. This is the superpower. Now, your only job here is to remind yourself just because I can empathize with someone does not mean I cause their experience.
Speaker 1:Come back to this basic teaching as many times as you need. Your self-sacrifice is not a personality trait, it's a learned behavior. If you don't catch unchecked empathy, you start to live your life through other people's emotions which are never in your control, and that is a very disempowered way of existence. You start to filter every decision, every boundary, every moment through one toxic question how will this make them feel? You soften your words, you rearrange your schedule, you take on more than you can handle, and the irony of all of this is nobody ever explicitly asked you to do it, and they always fall back on that excuse that we didn't tell you, we didn't ask you, I didn't say that, and that's just what you've been conditioned to believe a good person does. Now people set boundaries for you if you don't give them explicit instructions, not because they're trying to take advantage of you, but because that's how human nature works. If you never say no, people will assume you're fine with saying yes. If you never push back, they'll assume you have no limits. And when you finally do start to set boundaries, they'll be shocked, not because you're doing anything wrong, but because they're just so used to you carrying the emotional weight for them.
Speaker 1:Your only job is to honor yourself as an empath, to honor it as a superpower that it is. With that I pray to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. O Allah, the most compassionate, the all-knowing, you've gifted me with a heart that feels deeply, a mind that senses what is unspoken, and a soul that seeks to ease the burden of others. I thank you and I'm grateful to you for the blessing of empathy, for the ability to connect, to understand and to bring comfort to those around me. But, ya Allah, protect me from losing myself in the emotion of others. Strengthen my heart so that I may care without carrying Guide my mind so that I may support without sacrificing my own well-being. Teach me to set boundaries that honor both my kindness and my dignity.
Speaker 1:Ya Rahman, help me recognize that I am responsible for my own feelings. Let me be a source of warmth without being consumed, a source of comfort without being depleted. Ya Allah, grant me the wisdom to know when to give and when to step back, and the courage to say no without guilt. O Allah, let my empathy be a light that guides, not a weight that exhausts. Let my kindness be a strength, not a weakness. Fill my heart with peace, my mind with clarity and my life with relationships that uplift me in your path. Ameen, ya Rabbul, ameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.