A friend of ours told someone she'd been going to Empathy Circles. The reply came back with a little smile:
"Oh, you need empathy, huh?"
You can hear what's packed into that. As if something in her were lacking. Not fully online, not quite together. As if empathy were what you need when you need fixing, a sign that you belong in therapy, and if your life were in order, you wouldn't have any use for it.
After forty years of sitting with people, I want to say it plainly. That idea is not true. Wanting empathy is not a flaw in your character. It's one of the healthiest things in you.
The isolated view and the connected view
"You need empathy, huh?" comes from a particular picture of a human being: a separate individual who is supposed to be complete on their own. In that picture, needing other people is a defect. A properly put-together person runs on their own power.
I don't see people that way, and I don't think that's how we're made.
I believe human beings are not so much social beings, plural, as one social being, something like a superorganism. We're made to be connected to each other, as fully as possible. And empathy is the word we use for that connection when it's alive. Not a connection on paper, but a living, flowing one. Empathy is the connective tissue between people.
Science is catching up with this. The neuroscientist James Coan put people in a brain scanner and gave them small shocks. When they held the hand of someone they loved, the parts of the brain that register threat and pain calmed down. When the loved one was threatened instead, the brain responded almost as if the threat were its own. Coan's conclusion is that our brains expect to be with other people. Being alone is the exception, and it costs us.
Seen that way, wanting empathy isn't a sign that something in you is broken. It's a sign that something in you is working. It's the part of the larger body reaching for the rest of itself.
Connection without giving yourself up
I want to be clear about one thing, because it's easy to misunderstand. When I say we are one social being, I don't mean we should all become the same. Most of us learned that connection has a price: if you want to belong, you step back from what makes you different. You fit in. You sacrifice a little of yourself, and then it works.
Empathy works the other way around. In a circle, we connect by listening to what is unique in each person — their story, their feeling, their way of seeing. Nobody is asked to become like anybody else. And something surprising happens: the more fully you are heard in your particularity, the more yourself you become, and the deeper the connection goes. Oneness is not sameness. Being received doesn't dissolve you. It brings you into focus.
You don't apologize for needing air
I've spent most of my life working with breath. Nobody has ever come to me ashamed that they need to breathe. Nobody says, "If I had my life in order, I wouldn't need oxygen."
The need to be heard and understood is built into us just as deeply. A baby doesn't only need milk. It needs a face, the mom that brings the milk. That doesn't go away when we grow up. It just goes underground.
Where the shame comes from
If the need is so natural, why does wanting it feel embarrassing?
Because most of us learned, early and thoroughly, to keep it to ourselves. Don't make a fuss. Pull yourself together. Nobody wants to hear it. A lot of us grew up in families, schools and workplaces where showing what you felt was risky, and handling everything alone was praised as strength.
I don't think that toughness made us strong. I think it made us lonely, and a lot of us are carrying more than we admit because of it. The old way of pushing feelings down didn't prevent pain. It stored it.
So the shame you might feel about wanting empathy isn't your own conclusion. It's something you were taught. And what was learned can be looked at again.
What a circle actually gives you
Here's what I watch empathy do, week after week.
It deepens friendship. People who were acquaintances become people who know each other.
It gives the mind room to decompress. Something you've been carrying gets said out loud, someone reflects back what they heard, and you can feel it in the body: the shoulders come down, the breath gets deeper, often there's a long exhale. Something that was held starts to move. Not because anyone fixed anything. Because it was received.
And it gives people somewhere to turn. That matters more than ever. In 2023 the U.S. Surgeon General reported that about half of American adults experience loneliness, with health risks comparable to smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day. Time spent in person with friends fell from about an hour a day to about twenty minutes.
Ingrid and I host circles on Zoom every Wednesday, and I see what that means, especially for people who live mostly by themselves. They have a place where real things get talked about. The people may not be local. But because the connection is built on empathy, it's deep enough that ninety minutes a week can fill a real need. People stop feeling alone, and start feeling part of a group. And something in them that was waiting begins to grow stronger.
Nobody in the circle is the strong one listening to the weak one. Everybody speaks, everybody listens. Everybody in the room wants the same thing. That's not a room full of needy people. That's a room full of people being honest about being human.
Empathy starts with listening to yourself
There's one more thing the "you need empathy, huh?" view misses. Empathy isn't only something that passes between people. It's also something you do with yourself.
Self-empathy is the ability to listen to what's going on in you, to reflect on it, and to let answers arise out of that listening. That's not weakness. It's awareness: knowing what's actually happening inside instead of running over it.
An Empathy Circle trains exactly this. When it's your turn to speak, you can talk about anything that's important to you, anything that's on your heart. Often, as you hear yourself say it, and hear it reflected back, you understand it for the first time. The circle becomes a place to listen to yourself in company.
Researchers have seen the same thing. Guy Itzchakov and Avraham Kluger studied "Listening Circles" at work, where people pass a talking stick and are listened to without interruption. When people felt truly heard, their social anxiety dropped. They reflected more deeply, became more aware of themselves, and could hold their own contradictions without judging themselves for them. Being heard by others is what lets you hear yourself.
It takes courage
Our Empathy Circle handbook puts it simply: being willing to experience empathy takes a certain amount of bravery, and once you experience it, you realize there was nothing to fear.
Handling everything alone is often the easier road. It feels safe because nothing is at stake. Letting yourself be received means letting someone see you. That's the harder thing, and it's the stronger thing.
Psychologists even have a name for how differently we see it from the inside. Anna Bruk and her colleagues at the University of Mannheim found, across seven studies, that when we show what we feel, we judge ourselves as weak. When others watch us do the same thing, they see courage. They call it the "beautiful mess effect." The voice that says you shouldn't need this is mostly inside our own heads.
So, do you need empathy?
Yes. So do I. So does the person who asked the question with a little smile.
Next time you catch yourself thinking I shouldn't need this, try a different sentence: I need this, and that's healthy. Then find one person, or one circle, where you can let it be met. You don't have to explain yourself. You don't have to deserve it. You only have to be willing to be heard, by others and by yourself.
You are not alone with what you carry. Wanting someone to know that is not a weakness. It's where connection begins.
Sources
- Bruk, A., Scholl, S. G., & Bless, H. (2018). Beautiful mess effect: Self–other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(2), 192–205.
- Itzchakov, G., & Kluger, A. N. Can holding a stick improve listening at work? The effect of Listening Circles on employees' emotions and cognitions.
- Coan, J. A., & Sbarra, D. A. Social Baseline Theory: The social regulation of risk and effort. See also Coan, Schaefer & Davidson (2006), Lending a hand, Psychological Science.
- Office of the U.S. Surgeon General (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.
Daniel Hirtz has facilitated breathwork, rhythm and Empathy Circles for over forty years. He and Ingrid Hirtz host Amplify Empathy Circles on Zoom every Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. PT.