Tough Love Is Killing Empathy
Tough Love Is Killing Empathy
Photo by Marian Kroell
Tough love has really become en vogue in the last few years spawned on by the coaching movement. Tough love is considered love that’s “good for you.” Unfortunately, the popularity of tough love is justifying bullies. Many believe people are playing victims and when they do, they should not show them empathy or love, but call them out on their weakness to toughen them up.
I remember one time in a coaching session my coach said to me, “You are being a victim.”
To which I replied, “I am being authentic. I don’t appreciate you labeling me.”
When we label someone, we pigeon in who they are and don’t see the full person. They just become one word.
Do you identify with being referred to as only one word to describe you? Or are you fuller and more complex than a single word?
My coach then said, “You are being a baby.”
I said, “Do not call me a baby; do not label me. I do not label my clients and I appreciate you to show me the same courtesy.”
“Why?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you want to know?! I would want to know! I would want my coach to tell me if I was being a victim or a baby.”
Because once you start labeling me, you are not seeing me, you are not listening to me, you are not holding space, you are pulling me into a category and you are making me wrong. You’re not honoring my feelings and my pain. We all go through difficult times, hills and valleys, but we hire a coach to help us to see from a higher perspective how to navigate out of the forest into the light. To release a self-limiting mindset. Not for them to judge us. Not to show us everything that is wrong in our lives. But to help us to have a discovery, self-insights, and to focus our attention on where we want to go, not on our pain.
In my healing sessions, I hold space for my clients to express how they feel, to share their whole story. I do not tell them they can’t share the hard stuff. I do not tell them they can’t share their current obstacles. I allow them to express themselves fully, however they see fit. Shadow work is when we look at the parts of ourselves that we don’t like, that we hide, that we are embarrassed by and bring it to the light/awareness. I had hoped that she would allow me to express myself fully, unapologetically, like I allow my clients to do and transmute the pain to the light. So many of my friends have said to me, “You need to do the work you do on your clients on yourself.”
The truth is, this coach was not the only coach who believes in tough love or calling out her clients for being a victim and viewing a no tolerance policy to victimhood. This is now the new trend in coaching.
On Facebook the other day, someone posted glorifying a famous male business coach and said, “Look at what he has accomplished!” Everyone oooooooo and ahhhhhhhed admiring his greatness, but I replied, “We need to look at how he treats women.” A man commented on my comment and asked me to inform him about this famous business coach (he didn’t know his story) and help him to understand how he treated women poorly. This man said that he really believed in respecting women and he wanted to have this perspective to learn from. I thanked him for asking and I let him know that this coach didn’t have empathy towards women, in fact, he is openly against the Me Too Movement saying that women who are for it are just “looking for a way to feel significant.” He does not support women who have been sexually assaulted or abused. On the contrary, he has had several staff members and fans call him out as being sexually inappropriate to them and sexually harassing them. In one of his events that was videotaped (and even shared on the news in the U.S.), a woman, a fan, stood up and challenged him on his view of the Me Too Movement. She was strong about her views about why she believed it was an important movement for women. He asked her to come to the front of the stage and then he did “a coaching exercise” where he pushed her and was basically saying, implying, “Don’t challenge my beliefs again in front of my followers; if you do, I will push you.” I believe he was also saying, “Don’t try to resist this movement of men pushing back against the Me Too Movement, because men are stronger than women, men will not be dictated by women, and no matter how hard you try, change is not going to happen, no matter how hard you try to be significant, so you should just give up.” He intimidated her, humiliated her, and disempowered her in front of the whole audience. He made his point. Her effort to fight this was futile. He had no empathy for women. He was used to the old paradigm of men always having the power. He suggested that women who speak out about their experiences in the Me Too Movement are liars, that their purpose is only to undermine men in power, that if something actually happened it was the woman’s fault and that by speaking up later she wanted attention. He inferred that women are not significant, women are not worthy, and are manipulative. His actions spoke volumes of his hatred for women.
I shared this on Facebook and got some likes from men understanding more about this coach/motivational speaker (how some men treat women) and showing their empathy and respect for women. But the biggest surprise was that two women commented expressing how angry they were at me for answering this other man’s question and highlighting the truth about this coach. One woman sang this coach’s praises and applauded him for not allowing any tolerance of victimhood. She said that the woman who I described was playing the victim and she was glad he called her out on it. She said that she, too, was not a fan of the Me Too Movement and didn’t see how it empowered women. She blamed the woman who was pushed by this coach saying that she should have known by following him what she was getting herself into and if he triggered her, it was her own fault.
I was shocked.
I replied back that this woman was not playing a victim, that she was in fact, in her power, giving her opinion that the Me Too Movement was important for women to share their voices, instead of living in shame and silence. I also said, “There’s no way that she could’ve known that this man was going to physically push her by following him and there was no excuse for him to push her in a coaching exercise, especially, if she was for the Me Too movement, which could mean that she experienced trauma such as being sexually assaulted by a man. Furthermore, no coach should ever push or threaten someone they are coaching. This is never acceptable.” And then another woman chimed in saying that he was A level and that she fully supported this male coach instead of this woman.
I was shocked.
They didn’t care that he didn’t have empathy for women. They only cared that he had helped them to become successful in their businesses.
So many people put celebrities on a pedestal. They can’t see the flaw of their idols, even if the mistreatment has been reported on the news. Many only believe it if that person has been convicted and has gone to jail, after he has affected countless women. And even then, many are still in denial.
This was not the response that I expected. The men in that Facebook Group showed empathy from my comment and the women in the Group had so much judgment for this woman and for me and sang the praises for this famous coach/motivational speaker.
I attached the video where this man pushed this woman at his event in front of thousands of people and the woman who had been challenging me replied, “With all due respect, I will not watch this video. We can agree to disagree.”
She wouldn’t even view the video. She was in denial about the truth of this famous coach. So many women choose success at the expense of helping other women. It’s so sad for me to see how tough love, conditional love, is viewed. Only if you do and act exactly how I want you to do, will I love and accept you.
Comment below. Do you believe tough love is killing empathy?
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