Reactivity, empathy, perpetrator and victims

Reactivity, empathy, perpetrator and victims. This is another amazing twitter spiel by a wonderful therapist and twitter friend. I’ve shared another one of these from Martha Crawford before: The psychotherapeutic community needs to tolerate diversity, dissonance, divergence. It’s worth checking out too if you didn’t see it when I posted it.

Thinking about how reactivity masks itself as empathy – Empathy calls us to think deeper, tolerate ambiguity & complexity and mourn… — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

(like many people, Martha has left X.com, formerly twitter…you can find her on Bluesky ‪@whatashrinkthinks.com‬

Reactivity & premature action is a failure to withstand empathy- an inability to tolerate dissonance & complexity, a refusal to go deeper — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

This does not mean that action and reaction do not have a place. It is essential to act for those in the throes of emergent events & crisis— Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

Those who not in direct crisis, but are invested need to engage in considered action -which means thinking & feeling it all the way through — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

This does not always take a lot of time: but it is a matter of timing— Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

Sometimes the difference between reactivity and empathic considered action is just a matter of seconds. — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

The greatest challenge is to mourn for both the victims & perpetrators: As violence/abuse harm the perpetrator profoundly…— Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

…whether they know it or not. — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

I learned this early in my career – working with ex-offenders with histories of violence. They were also damaged by what they had done.— Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

If you can tolerate this terrible ambivalence: the real line between victims and perpetrators is thinner than any of us want to acknowledge: — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

if you can tolerate the tragedy of what it does to all of humanity when we harm each other… then you’ve moved past reactivity.— Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

Empathy calls us to considered action understanding that both victims andperpetrators need to be protected from the impact of abuse/violence. — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

People in on the direct receiving end of violence cannot be expected to withstand this dissonance – for a long long time afterwards, if ever— Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

When we have been traumatically vicitimized, we are necessarily flooded by our own experience and injury. — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

Some, astounding souls are able to metabolized this quickly, some eventually, and some – never.— Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

But the danger of slipping into perpetrating emotional or physical violence after surviving it is enormous & only empathy guards against it. — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

Last thought: sometimes a reactive act & an empathic act can look identical but generate disparate outcomes b/c of the spirit behind the act— Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

We can smell it, feel it in our bones when an action is born from empathy – after an inhalation – and when it is a breath-held reaction. — Martha Crawford LCSW (@shrinkthinks) July 18, 2014

See also: The psychotherapeutic community needs to tolerate diversity, dissonance, divergence

Related to reactivity in relationships:

• Narcissist…the evil other
• Empaths, empathy, healing and relationships
• Narcissism (the plague of our times?)
• Victim / perpetrator — some ideas that challenge popular thinking
• Twitter thoughts on perpetrator and victim

AND: Empathy, compassion and vulnerability: collection

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