What Is Empathy And How To Remove The Blocks That Keep You Quiet

by Becky VanDenburgh, LCSW, LCAC What Is Empathy, Really?

Empathy is the ability to understand what someone else is feeling without taking that feeling on as your own. It's a skill, not a personality trait, which means it can be built, and it can also break down under the wrong conditions.

That second part matters more than people realize. Empathy isn't a fixed gift some people have and others don't. Researchers who study clinical empathy in medical students, using a well-validated tool called the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, have tracked something surprising: empathy scores actually tend to dip over the course of training before recovering later, and they consistently run higher in women than men. In other words, empathy moves. It responds to burnout, to environment, to how much a person is being asked to give without anything coming back (research summary, National Library of Medicine). If you feel like your empathy has gotten harder to access lately, that's not a character flaw. That's a nervous system telling you it's tapped out.

Why "Feeling Everything" Isn't the Same as Empathy

Here's the mix-up almost everyone makes: they think empathy means absorbing someone else's emotions until those emotions become their own. That's not empathy. That's emotional merging, and it's exhausting because it was never sustainable to begin with.

Researchers who study this in clinical settings have found that people who stay emotionally regulated while connecting with someone else's pain hold up far better over time than people who let that pain become indistinguishable from their own. One review of the neuroscience behind clinical empathy describes it like this: when you witness someone else hurting, your brain treats it as a kind of alert system, a signal that pulls your attention and motivates you to help (A social neuroscience perspective on clinical empathy). That alert is supposed to move you toward someone. It was never supposed to become a second copy of their pain living inside you permanently.

A simple way to build real empathy, starting today:

• Name it, don't absorb it. When someone's upset, quietly name the emotion you're witnessing ("she's scared," "he's embarrassed"). Naming it keeps the feeling theirs, while still letting you connect to it.

• Ask instead of assuming. "Do you want advice, or do you just want me to listen?" One question. It changes almost every hard conversation you'll ever have.

• Get curious about the story underneath. People rarely react to just the surface thing. Curiosity builds connection. Assumption builds resentment.
  

The Real Reason You Go Quiet (It's Not Weakness)

If you go silent in the exact moments that matter, when you disagree, when something hurts, when you need something, it's rarely because you don't know what to say. It's because some part of you learned, a long time ago, that speaking up cost more than it was worth.

Therapists have a name for this: the fawn response. It's the lesser-known fourth member of the fight, flight, and freeze family, first named by psychotherapist Pete Walker. Fawning means automatically appeasing, over-accommodating, or going quiet to avoid conflict, and it's not a choice you're making in the moment. Trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, has pointed out that these survival responses live in the brain's threat-detection system, not in your willpower. That's an important distinction, because it means you can't just "decide" to be more assertive your way out of it (The Fawn Response vs. People-Pleasing). Your body isn't broken. It's protecting you from a threat that, most of the time, isn't actually in the room anymore.

What's Actually Happening in Your Body When You Freeze

There's a physical reason your throat tightens and the words disappear right when you need them most, and it has a name: dorsal vagal shutdown. According to the Polyvagal Institute, the body has three basic gears it shifts through under stress: calm connection, fight-or-flight, and shutdown, which is your body's way of conserving energy when it senses a threat it can't fight or outrun. When that shutdown gear kicks in, it overrides your ability to stay socially engaged, which is exactly why the words won't come out even when you know exactly what you want to say (What Is Polyvagal Theory?, Polyvagal Institute).

This is genuinely useful to know, because it means the silence isn't a willpower problem. It's a nervous system problem, and nervous system problems respond to nervous system solutions, not to pep talks.

How to actually loosen that block:

1. Catch it in the body before it becomes a thought. Tight throat, held breath, a stomach drop. That's the shutdown starting. Notice it without judging it.

2. Say one true, small thing. You don't need a speech. "Actually, I don't love that" or "Can I be honest about something?" is enough to rebuild the muscle.

3. Separate the old fear from today's evidence. Ask yourself what actually happens, today, in this relationship, if you say the true thing. The fear is usually a leftover from an old chapter.

4. Let the awkward silence exist. Don't rush to soften your honesty with three apologies. Silence after truth isn't a crisis. It's just silence.
   

There's also encouraging news here: a well-studied body-based approach called Somatic Experiencing, developed by trauma researcher Peter Levine, works directly with this shutdown response instead of trying to talk your way past it. In one study of 150 people affected by a tsunami, a single 75-minute session brought major, lasting relief. About 80 percent had trauma symptoms at the start; eight months later, 90 percent had improved significantly or fully (Somatic Experiencing outcome study). One session. That's how responsive this system can be once it's approached the right way.

How to Set a Boundary Without Turning Into Someone You're Not

A lot of people avoid boundaries because they picture two options: staying silent, or becoming the "difficult" person who blows up the relationship. Neither is true. A boundary isn't a wall, and it isn't an attack. It's just information: more like a doorway. Here's what I need, and here's what I'll do if that need isn't met.

A boundary formula that works in almost any relationship:

"When [specific thing] happens, I feel [honest, brief emotion]. Going forward, I need [clear, doable ask]."

For example: "When plans change at the last minute without a heads-up, I feel disrespected. Going forward, I need at least a day's notice, or I won't be able to make it."

No lecture. No twelve reasons justifying your right to exist. Just clarity.

This isn't just a feel-good idea, either. In a randomized controlled trial, college students who went through structured assertiveness training came out significantly less stressed, less anxious, and less depressed than a comparison group who didn't get the training (assertiveness training trial, Journal of Education and Health Promotion). And this gap is common: in one survey of medical students, over half tested as non-assertive, and nearly two-thirds said they wanted training to fix it (predictors of assertive behavior study). If boundaries feel hard for you, you are in very good, very large company.

Three things that make a boundary actually stick:

• Say it once, calmly, before you're furious. A boundary delivered at your breaking point sounds like an explosion. The same boundary delivered early just sounds like information.

• It's for you, not a punishment for them. You're not trying to make someone feel bad. You're telling them how to keep the relationship working.

• Expect testing, not applause. People who benefited from your old silence will often push back on the new boundary. That's not proof you did it wrong. That's proof it's real.
  

Empathy, Voice, and Boundaries Are One Skill, Not Three

Here's the part nobody tells you: empathy, voice, and boundaries aren't separate muscles. They're one muscle, worked in layers. Empathy lets you understand what's happening in the room. Your voice lets you say what's true for you inside it. Boundaries protect what you just said, so it doesn't get quietly taken back the next day.

Skip any one of the three and the whole thing falls apart. Empathy with no voice or boundary makes you a doormat. Voice with no empathy makes you a bulldozer. Boundaries with no empathy or voice make you a wall. You're not trying to become less sensitive, less kind, or less you. You're trying to become a version of yourself who includes herself in the empathy she's always handed out so generously to everyone else.

Start small this week. Notice one moment where you'd normally go quiet. Say the one true, small thing instead. That's the whole practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is being highly empathetic the same as being a pushover?  No. Empathy means understanding someone else's feelings while still holding onto your own perspective and needs. Becoming a pushover happens when empathy is combined with no voice and no boundaries, not because of the empathy itself.

Can you actually learn to be more assertive, or is it just how some people are wired?  Research says it's learnable. Structured assertiveness training has been shown in controlled studies to meaningfully lower stress, anxiety, and depression, which suggests this is a skill you build, not a trait you're stuck without.

Why do I freeze and go silent instead of saying what I actually think?  That's usually your nervous system shifting into a protective shutdown state under Polyvagal Theory, an automatic response to perceived threat. It's not a conscious choice to stay quiet, and it's not a flaw.

How long does it take to get better at setting boundaries?  There's no single timeline. Some people notice a shift after one body-based session; others build the skill gradually over weeks of small practice. What matters more than speed is consistency.

If any of this feels familiar, I want you to know something: none of it means you're broken, and none of it means you're stuck this way forever. I've spent over 22 years sitting with people who thought they were just "too sensitive" or "too much" or "not able to speak up," and almost every time, what we actually found underneath was a nervous system that had learned to protect itself a long time ago. That can be gently unlearned.

If you're ready to stop disappearing in your own relationships and start building the empathy, voice, and boundaries that let you show up as yourself, I'd love to talk with you. I offer a free consultation, no pressure, just a real conversation about where you are and where you'd like to be.

 Book your complimentary consultation here.

With care, Becky VanDenburgh, LCSW, LCAC Founder, Think Well Live Well Counseling and Telepsychiatry Indianapolis, Indiana | In-person and telehealth throughout Indiana

About Becky

Becky VanDenburgh, LCSW, LCAC, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and certified EMDR therapist with over 22 years of experience. She is the founder of Think Well Live Well Counseling and Telepsychiatry, where she specializes in EMDR, somatic trauma healing, anxiety, depression, and complex developmental trauma, with a particular focus on developmental trauma, mother-daughter wounds, and emotional neglect.