I have been working as a professional therapist for several years now. I know that this means that I am still as green as the Jolly Giant bearing that particular hue, but I am still entitled to a few opinions, a couple queries, and sampling of thoughts. Aren’t I ?(Please say yes) Anyway, as a therapist, I feel more and more like my job is to be a clinical Pez Dispenser. Except rather than dispensing orange-pinkish, rectangular, unappetizing candies, I dispense empathy. Come into my office, have a seat on the couch (a regular sofa, not one of those Freudian fainting couches...that’s just how it is in the movies), tilt my head back on its hinges, and out of my throat pops the EmPEZthy™, take it, leave my office, and then rinse and repeat with the next person.
The cumulative effect that this has on me as a person is that by the time I leave the office and live my normal non-professional life, I feel like I’m all out of empathy. I have dispensed so much of the EmPEZthy™ during my working day that when it comes time to live and operate as a normal human being between the hours of 5pm and 8am (and on weekends), I have no real empathy to give any more.
I go to the grocery store and there next to me is a mom with her screaming toddler in tow and all I can think of is how much of an asshole the screaming toddler is and how can the mom just stand there and do nothing? doesn’t she realize how annoying her kid is being? and why does it have to be in this Walmart in this exact line at this exact time that the asshole toddler is having an eruption of volcanic proportions? and can’t I just pay for my milk and bread in peace and get out of here so I can go home where there are no screaming toddlers?
Now, I don’t think that this sort of experience is unique to me just because I am a therapist (at least I sure as hell hope is isn’t). David Foster Wallace writes quite eloquently in his commencement speech to Kenyon University about a situation similar to this (It’s called “This is Water.” Please go read it). Rather, life has a way of exhausting us all and it takes a lot of effort to exert empathy (in the form of compassion), so when we’re exhausted we’re not going to exert the effort necessary to empathize with the mother of the jerk toddler. Instead, we are too worried about our own suffering and wish there were someone who would empathize for us (as we scan our fellow humans next to us in line in the hopes of finding a sympathizing and knowing glance, a glance that says, “Wow, that is really annoying. Sucks to be us right now.”)
In addition to the Walmart-scenario above, there are some side effects of being all spent of empathy due to being a professional EmPEZthy™ dispenser that have been more worrisome to me. I find that I am less able and less willing to offer empathy to those who may really need it in a non-professional capacity. Distressed person on the street? Avoid (My brain: “Oh, what’s this extremely interesting thing that just came up in my phone right now?”). Guy in his car stalled out on the side of the rode? Nooooooope (My brain: “He’s probably an axe-murderer anyway”). Student crying on the bench on my walk from my office to my car after work? ::whistling sound:: (My brain: “Sorry, I’m off the clock now”).
This whole notion of being “on the clock” and “off the clock” is quite problematic when the variable that seems to be turned on and off is empathy. I need empathy to survive. I need it to maintain and nourish my relationships. I need it to foster and build new ones. I need it to be a normal, kind, non-sociopathic, compassionate bloke who operates in a civil and socially responsible way in society. But this is a troublesome byproduct when empathy becomes professionalized. When therapists become professional EmPEZthy™ dispensers. The professionalization of empathy co-opts this basic human element into the land of the 9 to 5, and when I leave the office and have to literally and figuratively “leave work at work” (as they say), sometimes what is also left behind is empathy.
I know that it’s not the same, but consider it this way: Say the vast majority of your job was sitting at a computer and working with spreadsheets. You stare at the spreadsheets, you put new stuff in the spreadsheets, you take stuff out of the spreadsheets, you analyze stuff in the spreadsheets, you make cool looking charts and graphs with the spreadsheets. You have a fucking black belt in spreadsheets! But, I am pretty sure that when the clock strikes 5pm and you haul ass out of your office, the last thing you are going to do when you get home is open up your computer and mess around with some more spreadsheets.
I know that by-and-large the pez dispenser is a pretty lackluster metaphor. What can I say, I’m not exactly Cormac McCarthy. I bring it up to highlight that the professionalization of empathy has consequences: on the individuals tasked with being the dispensers (therapists), on the individuals receiving the empathy (patients/clients), and on society/community in general (everyone else). And my hope is to try to write further about these points in upcoming posts (assuming I don’t get exasperated along the way and give up in a puddle of tears and failure).
