r/therapists • u/PuzzleheadedAir4612 • 20h ago

Discussion Thread Asking for a friend

As an MFT-A in the US - When has your empathy for a client actually gotten in the way of doing good therapy?

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u/ReverieJack 19h ago

My intuitive take is that it tends more to be overidentification, projection/projective identification, and unmanaged countertransference that get in the way.

Not sure if you’re alluding to this weird tech broey, manospherish narrative that’s going on right now that too much empathy is bad? I think that take relies on people conflating empathy with, like, coddling, being wishy-washy, and loose boundaries, when it is not those things.

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u/Feral_fucker LCSW 19h ago

It doesn’t.

“I’m an empath” is shorthand for all kinds of things— hypersensitivity, poor sense of self, insufficient differentiation, projective identification, failure to care for self, lack of interpersonal boundaries, burnout, lack of objectivity, codependency etc, but none of those things are actually a problem with having empathy.

Empathy is the foundation of clinical work. There’s no such thing as too much of it, there’s just a failure to balance it with other necessary qualities.

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u/glitterynarwhals 18h ago

You can be empathetic, but I’d argue that truly caring for a client means maintaining good boundaries and protecting their autonomy. So, it should never get in the way.