A Note on Empathy by Jeff Guenther, LPC

It makes sense if you don't feel a deep well of empathy for someone who made a career out of refusing to show it for others. 

I want to normalize that because sometimes when a public figure dies especially in a tragic way, people rush to say, you have to be compassionate right now. Don't speak ill of the dead but if that person spent their life dismissing other people's pain, mocking it, minimizing it, even actively contributing to it, it makes sense that your empathy tank might run dry. 

That doesn't mean you're celebrating. It doesn't mean you're cold hearted. It just means your compassion has limits and those limits are often shaped by how much compassion someone showed in their lifetime. 

There’s actually something psychologically healthy about noticing that boundary. You're not obligated to manufacture sorrow for someone who never extended any to you, your community, or people you care about. 

You can hold both I don't wish this on anyone and I don't feel sad about it either. That's not cruelty. That's honesty and it feels really weird and uncomfortable to hold both of those in your body at the same time. 

This isn't about telling you not to be compassionate. It's about giving you permission to notice whatever you honestly feel or don't feel and trust that it's valid. 

- Jeff Guenther, LPC

Goodreads Review - "The Devil at His Elbow"

The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty by Valerie Bauerlein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I highly recommend this book even if you've already seen documentaries about the Murdaugh family. This is the best book out there on this story. There's so much information on this family and the tragedies surrounding them. The writing was so good and it flowed very well.


There were a few quotes that stuck out to me:

"Alex had his secrets.  So did his forefathers.  Alex’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather could make secrets disappear, and they had taught Alex to embrace the family ethos: To live above the law, you must become the law."

"For more than a century, the Murdaughs had practiced the art of putting a polished sheen over the mess of reality.

"Waters pressed Alex on the magnitude of his success and influence. There was an absurdity to Alex's disputing something so plainly true, as if he were so accustomed to swimming in the water of privilege, he forgot it was water at all."

"A dominant impression, shared by many, was that Moselle felt like a place where the barrier between the living and the dead was very thin."

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my bookshelf....(updated)