In our current political climate, I think that many of us have been asking ourselves how we can continue to love and have compassion for our fellow humans, while also managing our feelings of anger, betrayal, and irritation towards neighbors, family members, and even friends who have espoused beliefs that have shocked and saddened us. During the past few weeks, those feelings have reached a peak for some of us, as we have watched the most extreme version of one political group raid the Capitol Building in order to attempt to stop electoral votes from being certified.
So many questions and feelings have emerged. We wonder who our neighbors really are and how we should move forward in our relationships. Some who have identified with the same political group as the protestors that stormed the Capitol, have been quick to reassure us that they weren’t the ones who did the damage and that they don’t condone the violence. Many of them are also posting on social media with pleas for unity, but to some of us, the words seem hollow. We feel that the urge towards unity is too little, too late, and we realize that we might not be able to mend relationships with people who have supported the president throughout his entire term. What are we to do? How are we to move forward?
I most certainly do not know the answer to how our nation can mend wounds, heal, and move forward together. But I do have a perspective to share that might at least impact how some of us can personally choose to move forward in our lives and how we can make decisions about navigating relationships with neighbors, family members, and friends. At first, the connection to our present situation might seem vague, at best, but bear with me, and I hope I can let you in on something that I’ve learned over the years.
For just under a decade, I worked as a mental health counselor. Although my plans had originally been to practice therapy for adults, I somehow stumbled into the world of children and families. Working with children requires a very different set of skills than does working with adults. Whereas working with adults requires mostly listening and reflecting back what is heard, working with children requires a fine balance of listening and also teaching and guiding. It also requires hearing what the parents are hoping their children will gain from therapy and balancing that with what the children are actually wanting from therapy (and what they are truly ready to work through). And it was mostly for those reasons that I found working with children to be most delightful, but also quite difficult at times.
The non-profit agency that employed me often received client referrals from the court system, from schools, or directly from desperate parents who felt they’d nearly lost control of their children. So, most of the cases that I saw were not visiting me for a leisurely hour of talk therapy. They were usually required or encouraged to attend counseling by either the school, the courts, or their parents, and so there was often quite a bit of resistance to work through before I could really get to know them.
But here is the thing that surprised me then and continues to guide me today: I liked them all. Every single one. When I really got to know each person, beneath that surface layer that is all we often get to see of those around us, I really, truly liked them and, with very few exceptions, grew to empathize with and respect their perspectives very deeply. I cannot express how many times I have looked back on this truth and remembered how I could not find one single person who was without value or who did not deserve my empathy and compassion. Every human soul is worthy of love and respect.
Some might suspect that it was easier for me to feel that way because kids are easier to like, or at the very least, easier to show compassion for. But I also got to know many of the children's parents much more deeply than surface level. And although there were a few who I feel had no business being parents, I liked every one of them, too. I use the term “like” to mean that, once I heard their stories and gained an understanding of their perspectives and point of views, I was able to genuinely enjoy their company and feel a sense of connection with each of them.
There was one area of exception, and I believe that even that area holds a worthwhile, and similar, lesson. There were a handful of step-parents, mother’s boyfriends, or other peripheral parental figures who I did not like and even had disdain for. Obviously, I worked past my feelings enough to have a professional relationship with them, when needed. But my feelings of compassion for the children I worked with made it too difficult to also hold compassion for the abusive parent-figures in their lives. Why I point out that these were step-parents or peripheral figures and not the primary adult bringing the child to counseling, though, is because I usually did not get to know these people very well. I did not hear their stories until after my perception of them had already been developed through the lens of my clients or my clients’ parents. I knew them as what they were described to me as, not as what they perceived themselves to be.
Why is this an important distinction? I think that it mattered because every person sees themselves as the hero (or at least the main character) of their own story. Everyone sees their own actions as justified, and everyone can spin their own story to make it relatable. So, when I listen to a person telling me their story, I relate to the humanness that is shared between myself and that person, and I feel empathy. When I her about the person’s behaviors from someone else, though, my feelings are completely different and are based on how those behaviors affect the person telling the story. So, I might feel angry or disgusted and also protective of my client. Therefore, when I met the characters from those stories, I understood them from the point of view of how their behaviors affected the storyteller (my client), not based on their perspectives of themselves.
Am I defending abusive or manipulative behaviors based on a person’s ability to justify them? Not at all. I knew that some of my likeable clients and their likeable parents were wrong in their behaviors and needed to take responsibilities for those behaviors. Did that affect my feelings of empathy or compassion towards them? No. Can a step-parent be abusive, deserve to go to prison and never see their victims again, but still be worthy of compassion? Absolutely. Can their own therapist see them as likeable and even relatable, in spite of the terrible acts they have committed? Also, yes.
So how has this impacted the way that I live my life outside of the realm of counseling? And where is the potential lesson for our current situation as a nation?
Before becoming a counselor, I often wondered if the experiences of all people were similar in certain ways. I suspected that they were, but it was hard to explain how some people could make responsible choices, while others made terrible ones, how some people espoused equality for all, while others clung to racist belief systems. How could some parents deny their child’s chosen identity, while others embraced their child no matter what? Were some people just truly bad? And were the internal experiences of some people categorically different from those of others?
After my years as a counselor, I could finally say with certainty that I believed that all humans were similar in that we all have a story to tell, a story that we are each the hero or heroine of, a story that we own and are ultimately responsible for. So, when I meet a person, no matter how awful their beliefs or associations or choices seem to be, I can find a connection with them, knowing that they are human in the same way that I am. I do not have to agree with them, but I can find comfort knowing that we both share something deeper than any of that: our humanity.
In spite of that knowledge, during the past few years of heightened political tension, it has become harder for me to cling to this understanding of the people around me. As I watch so many people embrace the hateful rhetoric that seems clearly wrong on every level, I have reached a point of feeling that I can no longer connect with some of these people. I have had to disconnect with some friends and family on social media because I cannot stand to think that they outspokenly support someone who spews divisive and hateful rhetoric. And I have difficulty understanding how they can support policies that oppress others. I have found that, sometimes, these differences negate any friendly connection I had once felt with them.
On a larger scale, it has become easy for me to want to dismiss entire groups of people who spew illogical, maddening, and sometimes downright hateful ideas. I cannot find any logical way to relate to their view points, and so it seems easier to dismiss them altogether. And right there, that is where what I learned as a counselor becomes most profound. I know that many of these same people that I want to dismiss may very well be the grown-up versions of my former clients, if not literally, than at least symbolically. Or they may be some of my former clients’ parents, who I became quite fond of, in spite of whatever their political viewpoints might have been. (Clients rarely discussed politics during counseling sessions; it seems that the political views that they sometimes seemed to hold so very deeply were not actually a significant part of their personhood and didn’t usually need to be talked over in sessions). I heard their stories, and I knew they were human, deserving of love and empathy. When I stop to remember that every one of the individuals in these extremist groups might be someone’s client, someone’s sister, someone’s brother, someone’s father or grandfather, I can remember that they are just as human as I am.
But here’s the very important, and often complex distinction to everything I’ve discussed above. Although every person is deserving of compassionate empathy, that does not make them right in their actions or beliefs, and that does not mean that you have to continue to entertain their presence in your daily life.
As a person’s counselor, I was not directly impacted by their behaviors or beliefs. My role was to hear their story and to help them to grow and develop into a healthier and happier version of themselves. I also tried to encourage that growth in a direction that would make them a more responsible person within the community, but their actions and beliefs did not directly impact me. I was free to appreciate their quirks and empathize with their shadows, without the behaviors that grew out of those troublesome aspects of humanity having any direct impact on my daily life. So while I could continue to feel a compassionate connection with someone’s narcissistic parent or someone else’s racist brother, that did NOT mean that the “someone” being affected by these people should have to continue to make a space for them in a similarly compassionate way. While I, as a counselor, could embrace my client in spite of choices that they had made and which sometimes resulted in their alienation from friends or family, that did not mean that the friends or family who alienated them did anything wrong.
We sometimes have to break away from unhealthy relationships, even while we realize that the people we are breaking away from are still human and worthy of compassion. Their behaviors or beliefs may have negatively impacted us to the point where we can no longer allow them into our story. At that point, we need to let them go, at least for the time being, and we need not feel any guilt about doing so.
I think that this understanding can be even more difficult to apply to a whole group of people. It is so easy to dismiss everyone within as certain group as “evil, crazy, or stupid,” and to forget that they are indeed just as human as each one of us. We can (and should) condemn their behaviors, call them out on hateful speech, and hold them to accountability, when their actions demand it. But we need to do that while also keeping in mind that they are human beings, with stories just like ours. They have made bad decisions for reasons that we may not be aware of; it is not an excuse for their behavior, but it can certainly help us to humanize them in our minds. The dehumanization of any person, or of any group of people, will only lead to more hate and more terror.
Am I calling for instant unity, forgetting the past and forgiving every misdeed? Absolutely not. The only way forward is through remembering what went wrong in the past so that we can change and move forward as a better society. But we must always move forward with the awareness that we share a common humanity with all people: the ones we hold dear, the ones who are estranged from us, and even the ones who have committed outrageous acts in the name of dangerous ideas. May we move forward boldly in peace and with our bravest attempts at love and empathy for all.