Riddhi Dogra Instagram – Repost @the.holistic.psychologist There are countless people on my last post saying it’s “dangerous” to have empathy for men. Or “I’ve had empathy and I’m sick of it because I became a doormat.” This is not surprising to me because we don’t actually know what empathy is. Empathy is an ability to step outside of yourself. Does empathy mean you allow toxic or dysfunctional people into your life? NO. It does not. That’s actually a lack of empathy for yourself. There’s nothing emphatic about it. And that need to be recognized. When I create a video with a dysfunctional mother, endless people come into the comments saying “what about fathers?!” When I speak to the near crisis level of men who don’t understand their emotions + therefore can’t have healthy relationships endless people chime in with “what about women!! They can’t either.” A post on the mother wound will turn into demands for me to make one on the father wound & vice versa. My genuine question is: how does this serve us? How does blame, deflection, word nitpicking help any of us do better? Or unlearn the conditioning that puts us into these situations? What helps us is awareness. What helps is pausing before we emotionally react. What helps is sitting with our emotions + being curious about the patterns in our lives. What helps is actually facing the wounded hurt parts of ourselves without blaming anyone else. This is how we heal. This is how we create an emotionally healthy society— something I believe we ALL are united in wanting. That’s a beautiful thing. I’m all for the statement that men need to take responsibility. I’m (also) all for the statement that every gender needs to take responsibility. But deeper than that, it’s clear just how mean we are too ourselves. Just how angry we are with ourselves. And just how hurt we are. We’re ruthlessly judgmental of other people because we ruthlessly are judging ourselves. May we start to have empathy for OURSELVES. May we forgive ourselves. May we all tell our inner child it’s safe to acknowledge the pain from our past. May we all take a deep breath + remember who we actually are. May we heal from the inherited shame we all carry#selfhealers