The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Episode 81 The Hidden Costs of Performative Empathy: Embracing Honesty for Real Connection

• Fiona Kane

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In this episode I challenge the sincerity behind performative empathy, urging listeners to look beyond polished personas and focus on genuine actions. Join me as I dissect the difference between words and deeds, inspired by the wise words of Thomas Sowell.

I explore the significance of surrounding ourselves with friends who are honest and have integrity rather than superficially supportive, fostering an environment where authentic relationships can thrive and personal growth is inevitable.

I also discuss toxic compassion and how it is ultimately very damaging to individuals and societies. Touching on the delicate balance between compassion, boundaries, and truth.  I explain importance of personal responsibility and learning how to identify and manage our emotions (emotional regulation).

Understanding these concepts is really important for our physical and mental health. 

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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The Beat of Nature

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Fiona Kane:

Hello everyone, I'm your host, fiona Kane, and today I'm actually going to be talking to you about something called performative empathy.

Fiona Kane:

I think it is something that's really important for people to understand. That is happening a lot in the world now Is there a lot of people acting like they're nice and pretending to be nice and saying the so-called right things doesn't mean they are nice or they mean well. So I want to sort of talk a little bit about what that looks like and a little bit about why this is important, because I think that once upon a time we lived in well, I lived in a world. I thought I lived in a world where it mattered what someone. It was the content of someone's character right, martin Luther King, the content of someone's character, and what we did is we judged people by the content of their character, and we noticed what people did. Their actions mattered More and more. Now it would seem to me that people's actions aren't being paid. No one's paying any attention to the actions, but they're only interested in if they're saying the right thing or if they're posting the right thing on their social media or the right hashtags or whatever it is, and I think that is a real problem that we're not actually looking at what people are doing. We're just assuming that, because they're saying the right thing, that they're well-intentioned, and so I want to just talk a little bit about that. So I wanted to start with a quote from Thomas Sowell I don't know how to say his name, s-o-w-e-l-l. It's worth reading his stuff. He's great. So he's a great American writer and thinker. And he says that when you help okay, I'll start again when you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. Now, that is really, really important. So it's when you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. I feel that a lot of people are doing the latter. They're telling people what they want to hear, and sometimes that might be the person's meaning to be nice or whatever. It might be well-intentioned, but essentially I prefer someone who's going to tell the truth. So telling the truth is important.

Fiona Kane:

If we don't tell the truth, then the outcomes of everything change, because there's you know, there's little white lies. There might be the kind of the old joke of when a woman says to her husband does my bum look big in this? But as they say in the US, we don't say that in Australia, but whatever. And the husband will say, no, of course you look great, or whatever, because he doesn't want to get in trouble, right? So obviously's, obviously, there's a certain extent in the world where we have what are called, or what have previously been called, white lies, and they have their place. So we might have moments where it's worth just not completely telling the truth, or just little white lies just for those kinds of purposes.

Fiona Kane:

But in general in life, I think it is important that we tell the truth and I think it's important that you surround yourself with truth tellers, because what we do in life is we pull ourselves up to meet the expectations of the people around us, and if the people around us are liars and not authentic, then that doesn't help us pull ourselves up and do better in our lives. It has the opposite effect. Also, when people lie to you or accept your delusions and don't kind of challenge you, we don't learn. You need that person that says to you when you say you're applying to go on the Voice, you need that person that says you can't sing right Now. I don't mean that you know, brene Brown would call them the candle blower outers, right? And I don't mean going around and raining on everybody's parade or going around being awful or rude or horrible to people. And I don't mean just saying that to people just because you're spiteful. I mean, if you're like me and you really can't sing, I would really appreciate that someone says to me you can't sing or you're not ready yet. So you might be able to say it in a nice way. You might say Fiona, you probably could do with having some lessons first. Have a bit more experience before you go on the Voice, right? So I'm not talking about just people who are candle blower outers that just want to just rain on everybody's parade, not that at all. I'm just talking about the person who will tell you the truth about stuff. The person who will tell you that you've got a booger hanging out of your nose. The person who you know, oh, you've tucked your skirt into your pantyhose. You're walking around with your bum hanging out.

Fiona Kane:

That person, right, the person who tells you the truth, especially when it really matters, but also the person who tells you the truth In life. Sometimes we get upset or we get offended or we get hurt or something happens and we're all defensive and it's not my fault or whatever. And sometimes it's not our fault and sometimes things happen to us, but sometimes actually it is our fault and we need to pull our socks up or pull our finger out or get over ourselves. And again, a good friend will be the person who helps you do that right. So a good friend will know when to support you and when to let you have your tears and when to let you be the victim and all the things you need to do. And a good friend will also know when they have to say to you you know what. I think that person had a point. When they have to say to you you know what I think that person had a point when they told you, whatever it is that you're upset about, right.

Fiona Kane:

So it is important that we have people who will tell us the truth or at least challenge us to think about things and to think about our outcomes. You know, if you have several failed relationships, one after the other after the other, and your friend just says to you you're perfect, it's got nothing to do with you, everyone else is terrible, then that might not be great advice. Now you might have come across lots of terrible people when you're dating. But also maybe there's something about you. Maybe you're attracting terrible people for a reason, I don't know, but whatever it is, it's just understanding. Maybe you haven't got good conversational skills, whatever it is, but it's useful for someone to tell you. Maybe you need to wash under your arms more and you smell, I don't know, but it's useful for people to tell you truth, right?

Fiona Kane:

So we don't get better at things in life or grow if no one ever challenges us, if no one ever tells us the truth. So I don't want to be around people who tell me what I want to hear. It's nice sometimes and, yes, you know, that's great, but that's just not helpful. And you know, and that's exactly if you look at some examples of some really famous people that haven't done well. Elvis Presley all right, he had a lot of people around him. He had a posse of people around him, yes or no, sir, you know, these super famous and super mega rich people end up surrounded by people who just want to get whatever they can get out of that person and they will tell them whatever they need to tell them to ensure that they get whatever they want out of that person, whether they want fame or money or whatever they want, right? Yeah, in that situation, those people are surrounded by a posse of people who none of them tell the truth. It also happens with dictators, right, that they'll be surrounded by people who don't tell them the truth, and in some cases that might be because you won't survive if you do, you know. So I understand why, but you can see how that's not particularly healthy, right? So if we're surrounded by people who don't tell us the truth, then we don't get that reality check, and sometimes we do need a reality check, right?

Fiona Kane:

So another example, talking about toxic compassion and I have mentioned this before on the podcast, I think, but Chris Williamson, he has a great podcast called Modern Wisdom and something that he said once once, and he was defining toxic compassion. He said it's the prioritization of short-term emotional comfort over everything else. So it's like I will feel better if I just say, yes, you're fine, yes, no problem, yes, that's okay. Or yes, you know you're the victim or whatever it is, or just going along with people about something just for short-term comfort. And it's short-term comfort for you and them because we're just so happy and it's just all great and isn't this wonderful right? But we're not thinking about the long-term consequences. And people will say and this is a conversation I've had many a time with many people the question about what? About compassion? And I'm not against compassion, not in any way.

Fiona Kane:

Compassion matters and there's times to have compassion. However, it is not compassionate to you know. For example, it's not compassionate to feed your dog chocolate because you'll kill the dog, right. So you might think, oh, but the dog wants it and it's cute and I give it the chocolate and we have this chocolate moment. Isn't that nice? And well, it might be nice, but then it won't be nice. So if you fed your child Tim Tams for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for their life, all right, it might feel good at the time because everybody's happy and we're all smiling and we enjoy the chocolate. However, your child's going to be unwell and their moods are going to be all over the place and they're going to feel, you know, it's not going to work out well for you. So it's all very well.

Fiona Kane:

It's a short-term comfort, right? So I'll do the thing that gives me short-term comfort. A lot of people do this. It's common in parenting not having a go at anyone. I'm not a parent, it's the hardest job. But a lot of parents parent out of guilt and so they kind of just do the Santa Claus thing with their child because they feel guilty about whatever it is that their child missed out on or that they couldn't do or that they can't give the child. And they parent out of guilt and so everything's like oh, let's just be Santa Claus and let's just take you to the fair and we'll buy you the thing, and we'll buy you another thing and we'll buy you another thing, right, parenting out of guilt? That might sound like a great thing. Short term it makes you feel good, but long term you end up with a spoiled brat who doesn't appreciate anything and it doesn't actually give you a bond in your relationship. Not the kind of bond, not a healthy kind of a bond, right? So compassion can be good, but toxic compassion not good.

Fiona Kane:

And then we look at the performative empathy. In the world there's so many examples of people who say the nice thing, they seem nice, they look nice, but they're not nice, and we've seen countless examples of that. You could use the example of well, for legal reasons. I won't say anything in particular, but you know, ellen, there's lots of claims about Ellen and she doesn't have a show anymore because a lot of people said that she was a bully and I don't know that she was or that she wasn't. All I know is there's lots of claims about it but she doesn't have a show anymore. Right, and she was kind of the fun. It's all fun and we're dancing and we're all. Everything's great here and it seems like everything wasn't great there right.

Fiona Kane:

Then we look at people like bill cosby all dancing, all fun, great family man, you know, and everyone looked up to him and thought he was great, wasn't so great, was he? Uh, in australia we had a show called hey dad the same thing. It was a fun show about the single dad, you know, great man, and turned out he was doing awful things to the children and he spent some time in prison for that. Now, in more recent times there's been. There was a YouTube mom I think her name was Ruby Frankie and she was being. She was really abusive towards her children. I don't know if she's in prison now or in court or whatever, but it was really nasty what was going on there. There was another show called 19 Kids and Counting of the Duggar family and they again big family, we're wonderful, we're great. And apparently the brother was doing nasty things to the sister and the parents was getting him to hide that or pretend it didn't happen or the girl wasn't allowed to talk about it, whatever it was right.

Fiona Kane:

So you can see lots of people being nice and acting like they're nice and we're all nice and we're all wonderful. Just because people are saying they're nice, just because people are acting like they're nice, just because people are saying the right key words, doesn't mean they're nice. And it is a real big thing in today's culture because there's sort of this modern kind of like woke culture which is all about the right words and we all have to use the right words and if we use those right words, this performative empathy, we are good people. And you know I'm not saying it's anything wrong with using nice language or being kind or any of that, so I'm not saying that at all. However, the nice words don't make you the good person.

Fiona Kane:

Your actions show what sort of person you are, and a lot of these people who are doing the performative empathy when you look at their deeds it does not match with their words. So my invitation to you is to look at the deeds of people, not just their words, because there's a lot of people now using a lot of words but the deeds are not matching it. Please notice this, because people just don't seem to notice this. As long as people say the right keywords and the right buzzwords, no one looks at what they're doing, and it's kind of like you know what is it like? The Jedi mind trick, as, like you know, don't believe your lying eyes. I'm a nice, wonderful person because I say I am. Are you? I don't know how about you show that you are.

Fiona Kane:

So I think this is really really important to understand. There's a difference between acting like you're compassionate and being compassionate. It is just not the same thing, and a lot of this also it comes out of feelings. We've got this world now where it's all about our feelings too. It's all about how I feel. Everything has to change because of how I feel. Now, feelings are important and feelings are information right. So when you have a feeling whether it's a physical feeling as in, you stand on something sharp and you feel that there's information right to lift your foot off. We also have emotions, feelings, right, and they are also information, right, they're just information, though they're not always something to action. They're information.

Fiona Kane:

I might feel really angry about something for a moment and then I move on. And if I had carried on and screamed and yelled at somebody over it not appropriate, but in the moment I might have felt really angry. That's an emotion, but it's on me, it's not on the other person necessarily. We have to understand, we need to learn how to identify our emotions and we need to learn what to do about them. So it's like, okay, I'm having this emotion, what is it? What is it about? So what information is it giving me? Okay, so now I'm responding to this emotion. Is it appropriate for me to take some time out? Is it appropriate for me to speak up? Is it appropriate for me to not say anything? What's the appropriate next step?

Fiona Kane:

But we have to deal with the emotion as an adult, and what adults do is they feel the emotion, they identify what it is and then they look for they identify okay, I know what I'm feeling, what am I feeling this in response to? And then a healthy adult will recognize what they can do about it themselves and what action they might need to take, but what we're encouraging people to do these days is I'm having an emotion. You must fix it. It's your fault, it's all about you, not about me. And until you change everything you're doing, or change the whole way that your organization works, or change the whole language, or change whatever, I'm not going to be happy and I'm going to keep having this emotion. And it's your fault that I'm having the emotion. It's a very different thing, right?

Fiona Kane:

So we need to take responsibility for ourselves and our own emotions, and if people say things to you that you find upsetting or that you find to trigger you, that kind of thing, you know, sometimes. I'm not saying it's never a case that people need to change or people need to respond differently, or conversations need to happen so that people aren't outright going around actively harming each other. However, if you just don't like some things that you hear, or you don't like some things that some people say, that's not, that's your problem, it's on you, right? If someone says something that makes you feel bad, well, what is it about you that allows you to make it make? Let it make you feel bad. Like what is it that they've said that, uh, that? Why are they living, you know, rent free in your mind? Why are they living rent-free in your mind? Why are you giving them so much space? Why does what they say matter so much? And what we're doing these days is we're encouraging a lot of people to.

Fiona Kane:

Everything is about their emotion. Every choice is about their emotion, and everyone has to bend and stretch to help with this person, with their emotion, rather than actually teaching people how to identify and manage their emotions, and when it is appropriate to make a change or ask for a change, or expect someone on the other side to do something differently which in some cases is appropriate or when it's actually time for you to learn how to cope with it and how to deal with just hearing something you don't want to hear, because the world is full of lots of things you don't want to hear. You're not going to change the whole world to fit you, so we actually need to learn how to cope in the world, and this is something that I feel like there's not enough of happening at the moment, and a lot of things is about. I feel like this is all about my feelings and you have to do something to fix my feelings. No, you have to do something to fix your feelings. It's not the world's responsibility to fix your feelings for you. It's your responsibility, and sometimes things need to change on the outside, but sometimes, quite often, it's an internal thing that you need to do. And this is also like.

Fiona Kane:

So we have this kind of misguided compassion Even today. Now the whole world is anti-shame and, while I'm not for the whole, like there was a lot of shame back in the day that was just terrible and very damaging and going around shaming people all the time and a lot of things that we shamed people around. It was very harmful and not very healthy. However, now, like everything else, we've gone so far the other way and it's all about we can't have shame, no shame, shame, any shame is bad. That's misguided compassion to think any shame is bad because ideally, you know, a healthy function of shame is actually just to tell you when you're failing to meet your own standards, right. So it's like okay, I could have done that better or I could have been more present and I could have been a better friend, or I could have been a better employee or a better employer or a better partner or whatever. It is right. So there is a certain amount of shame. That's okay. It's a healthy function of shame to know that you're not meeting your own standards and it is good to have enough shame to know that there's certain things that aren't appropriate to do in society. It's okay to have that level.

Fiona Kane:

So I think that again we went from lots of shame to now it's like no shame is okay and some shame is appropriate. It is enough shame to allow people in society to know how to act in society. That works best for everybody, kind of within laws and within the morals of that society to a certain degree right. And also, like I said, it's a healthy function for you to know where you're letting yourself down. So living in total shame and totally shaming people all the time and all that kind of thing, no, that wasn't healthy. But no shame at all, that's not healthy either. So we kind of we go to you know, I don't know each generation. We kind of go swing back and forward with extremes and sometimes we need to kind of see that some of the old things have something good in them but maybe we can take part of it and not throw the whole thing away. And some things you throw away and some things. You just find the part that works well and you keep that part.

Fiona Kane:

So the other thing, too is, in regards to say things like anxiety, is that we see, anxiety is always all bad, but the healthy function of anxiety is to stimulate your preparation behaviors, to stimulate you to prepare. So if I, if I'm a bit like, if I have anxiety, if I have enough anxiety that tells me I have to get out of bed and go to work and turn up or go to school or show up, a little bit of anxiety that gets me to prepare and go and do life is a good thing. Or the little bit of anxiety I have before I go and perform or before I go and do something. The anxiety pushes through all the different hormones and helps you perform right. So a performer is about to go on stage and they'll have that kind of adrenaline rush and that adrenaline actually helps them perform. And there's been studies on this where we know that when you reframe your anxiety as your body preparing you to do the thing I think it's Harvard studies where they did this it actually helps you perform. You know that it's a good thing. So anxiety has a place and can have a good role. But again, what we're doing and some people have terrible, debilitating anxiety I'm not saying that's not true, it's absolutely true, I'm not saying that at all but what we're doing is a lot of what we're doing now is that we're pathologizing the human experience and making everything a bad thing. Anxiety has a role, shame has a role, truth has a role. Being really honest with people has a role. We have to understand this to have healthy, functional people in a healthy, functioning society. We have to understand this.

Fiona Kane:

And I'll sort of end too on sort of when we're talking about emotions. There's a couple of things here. I wanted to a couple of little quotes I wanted to sort of say here just to kind of end this. And one is that you know Jordan Peterson. He says that you know, if you can't tell what somebody's motivation is, look at the consequence of the action. So if you're not sure what someone's motivation is, look at the consequences. You'll get an idea of what their motivation is. Right, because they might say one thing, but it's like what's the consequences of the actions? And that will give you an idea of their motivation.

Fiona Kane:

The other thing that I think this is like a quote, a good quote, that I will leave you with in regards to when we're talking about emotions and sentimentality and all that kind of stuff. It's a quote from Oscar Wilde and it says the desire to have the emotion is without the cost of it. Sentimentality is the desire to have the emotion without the cost of it, right? So we want to be sentimental about things and we want to be nice and we want to be compassionate and all of that. However, you have to consider consequences and sometimes, if we're compassionate to the wrong people, at the wrong time or in the wrong situation, it's not compassionate at all. It can be quite toxic and it can have long-term negative effects.

Fiona Kane:

So, compassion for compassion's sake, no compassion where it's appropriate, but not in every situation. We're seeing it at the moment in places where compassion for people who are murderers and rapists, right, and at the cost of the victims. This is happening around the world. It's happening in the US, and I think it's, and in the UK and it's not good, right? So compassion in the appropriate place and sentimentality, which is this whole like thing about emotion and being connected to the emotions. It is really the desire to have the emotion without the cost of it, right? So we want to have the emotion, but we're not thinking about the cost of it, and it's really, really important to think about that. Our actions have consequences and so when we're thinking about compassion, who do we have compassion for? Where is it appropriate to show that compassion? When it is appropriate to pull back a bit and actually give someone a different kind of guidance, a different kind of support, and might be from a place of compassion.

Fiona Kane:

But over-sentimentality, over-emotion and this sort of toxic compassion is not helpful and we have to sort of. I think in our society we've got to back off from that a bit. We've got to back off from the performative empathy and the toxic compassion and understand where the time and place for kindness and compassion, time and place for boundaries, time and place for truth. And I think that we will do better as a society and our mental health will do better when we understand these things and get back to a place of a little bit of balance, because what we do is we swing one way, we swing the other way, and maybe either end isn't really healthy, maybe we need to be somewhere in the middle, you know.

Fiona Kane:

So anyway, I hope that you found that useful and I would ask you to please share this episode, or this podcast in general, with your friends, family or anyone who you think would enjoy it. Please like and subscribe. This podcast is on most of the usual places all of the usual places, but it's also on YouTube and Rumble if you want to watch it or if you want to comment, and you can do so there. So, yeah, please just support the podcast. I would really appreciate it and hope you have a great week and I will talk to you all. Do so there. So, yeah, please just support the podcast. I would really appreciate it and hope you have a great week and I will talk to you all again next week. Thanks, bye.

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