The Empathy Gap Within Us

How inherited beliefs surface in the moments that matter most

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to meet a woman who bought my book, The Empathy Gap.

When she purchased the book, she told me, “One day I’m going to come down on your side of town so you can sign it.”

She lives in North Florida. I live in South Florida.

And this weekend, she kept that promise. She came down, we met, and I signed her copy.

She is a queer woman and as we sat together talking, our conversation turned to how much is changing in this country around gay rights and the laws that shape the lives of LGBTQ people.

I told her about my own upbringing.

When I first came to America, I was raised in part by a cousin who was gay. At the time, nobody in my family knew. She was very much in the closet; because of the family dynamic we came from. We were raised in a deeply Christian household where homosexuality was taught to be sinful something wrong, something that could send a person to eternal hell.

That belief system wasn’t subtle. It was the air we breathed.

And yet, living with someone I loved who carried that secret began to complicate what I had been taught.

Over time, I learned to have deeper empathy for people who were different from me. But if I’m honest, that empathy did not come simply from wanting to be a better person. It came from doing the difficult work of deconstructing the faith that raised me the version of Christianity that taught me my responsibility was to save other people’s souls from a burning hell.

Only after I began dismantling that belief system did I start to see people more fully.

But even then, indoctrination does not disappear overnight.

Even when we believe we have evolved when we think we are progressive, accepting, anti-racist, or inclusive life has a way of presenting us with moments that brush up against the very beliefs that shaped us.

And when that happens, how we respond becomes critical.

Because it is easy to support someone else’s child.

You can be a passionate advocate for gay rights until your own child tells you they are gay.

You can be a fierce supporter of trans rights until your child tells you they are trans.

If you were raised inside a belief system that taught you these identities were sinful or wrong, that indoctrination is still somewhere in your nervous system even if you intellectually rejected it years ago.

And when the truth arrives in your own home, it does not land the same way it does when it belongs to someone else.

That moment becomes a collision between what you believe and what you were taught to believe.

The same thing happens with race.

Many people proudly say they are anti-racist.

But the reality becomes more complicated when the racist is not a stranger on the internet but someone you love….your parent, your child, your partner, or your closest friend.

Recently, I had a conversation with a white woman who was talking about a friend she believes is “coming around.” She said she stays close to this friend because she thinks she can influence her thinking.

And I told her something that made her uncomfortable.

I said: You have to accept that you are friends with someone who is racist.

If you cannot accept that reality, then you have to decide whether the friendship can continue. But telling yourself that you are staying in the relationship purely as a strategy to change them can become a form of denial.

Because again, what we profess publicly and what we confront privately are often very different experiences.

It is easy to say, “I don’t tolerate racism.”

It becomes more complicated when the racism lives inside someone you love.

The same is true of every belief system that shaped us.

These are the moments where empathy for ourselves becomes critical.

Not empathy for the people we advocate for—we often already know how to do that. We know how to extend compassion to the gay friend, the Black colleague, the trans child, the marginalized community.

But when the collision between our values and our conditioning happens inside us, our instinct is often shame.

We believe that if our reaction isn’t perfect…..if confusion, fear, discomfort, or conflict shows up, we have somehow failed morally.

So, we hide it.

Or worse, we abandon ourselves.

But this is exactly the moment where self-empathy is required.

Because the response you believe you should have may not be the response you actually have.

And that doesn’t mean you are a bad person.

It means you are a human being undoing years sometimes decades of conditioning.

Self-empathy is what allows us to sit with that conflict long enough to transform it.

Without it, shame takes over. And shame does not create growth. Shame shuts the door on honesty, curiosity, and change.

When we refuse to turn empathy inward, we deny ourselves the very process that makes empathy possible in the first place.

The deepest work of empathy is not learning how to care about others.

It is learning how to face ourselves with compassion when the beliefs we inherited collide with the people we love.

Because that collision will happen.

Not once.

But many times over the course of a life.

And when it does, the question will not be whether you are perfect.

The question will be whether you can remain present with yourself long enough to grow beyond what you were taught.

With care,
Tammy