I am on holidays in the wonderful Moree, in NSW, Australia. Moree is famous for its therapeutic Artesian Hot Springs, its rich agricultural land (wheat, cotton, pecans), vibrant Art Deco heritage buildings, significant Aboriginal culture, and its role in the history of Australia’s Civil Rights Movement, notably the Freedom Ride protest at its public pool.

In this space, my mind went into what is empathetic performance vs precise empathy.

Empathetic performance is displayed care that is driven by fear of judgment rather than genuine feeling.

In my youth, I performed empathy because I did not want to be seen as cold, bad, or immoral. This showed with me knowing the right words to say while feeling nothing in particular, helping others because others were watching and judging me in my community, staying longer than I wanted to at a celebration because I did not want to come across as uncaring, seriously over-explaining my good intentions, sacrificing my comfort, time, or boundaries to maintain a moral image but ultimately feeling resentful, drained, or faulsely exposed afterward.

I performed empathy not because it was arising inside of me but because I felt socially pressured to do so.

Is this wrong though?

How many times, do we encourage our children to say “thank you” when given a present?

How many times, even as adults, do we say “thank you” for a present that is clearly not something that we want, need or desire?

 Afterall, at no point in time, was I being cruel, or lacked empathy, nor was I being selfish.

I stopped performing empathy in my 40s which coincided with healing my nervous system and thus my gaining the skills to retrain my nervous system.

My nervous system had adapted intelligently to an environment where moral safety depended on appearance, not truth.

The covert message I received in my youth “How I am perceived matters more than what I intend.”.

The learning did not come from one event. It was a social pattern I picked up that communicated my tone and not my meaning was important, that behaving neutral was interpreted as being emotionally cold, being corrected emotionally rather than being emotionally understood was the norm, and appearing good prevented escalation,

My nervous system optimized for social survival.

What happened in my 40s that was the beginning of me being able to heal my nervous system?

My father died.

I performed a lot for him. I was the good girl, the dutiful daughter and the child he was extremely proud of because I had achieved my father, as a migrant in Australia, what he had not been able to achieve – a successful career, a lovely home, a good family and financial security.

So, when he died, something inside of me cracked open, like a volcano that erupted from the centre of its core.

I no longer wanted to identify as the good girl, the dutiful daughter or the child who sought my fathers pride and fundamentally approval.

And it hit me like a brick in the head – I NO LONGER FELT THE NEED TO SEEK MY FATHER’S APPROVAL and by definition, I no longer had to shift ANYONE’S approval.

This whole and big world opened up to me and I started shaking off beliefs that I no longer believed, narratives that were not mine to carry, dreams that I never cared for, relationships that had long ago not served me but drained me, clothes that I had outgrown….I sifted and springcleaned my life.

I felt empowered.

I also bled onto others and that was my only and biggest regret.

Strangely, it was the ability to truly feel and own regrets that opened up a lifetime of grief and being able to look at my life with acute truth and without judgement that gave birth to me healing my nervous system.

Within the space of regrets is the birth of humility. The voice that that knows what is mine to carry, what is not, and to act without needing to appear important, good, or superior.

And I stopped proving my goodness, stopped defending my image, embraced my limits without shame, accepted my strengths, admitted my limitations without collapsing, discerned the boundary what was not mine to fix and I was able to admit when I was wrong without losing my dignity.

And I found this amazing calm, unhurried energy and quiet confidence and I was able to behave with ethical clarity and in that space I learned the power of “I will care where care is actually needed.”

I found home in precise empathy and I started to live in truth.

I cannot be everything to everyone.

I have finite capacity.

And the most powerful truth – not all suffering belongs to me.

Interestingly, my heart has become bigger, not smaller. I feel emotionally safe now — safe enough to feel, and safe enough to say no.

I applaud my younger self, because behaving in socially appropriate ways, even when I did not yet feel them, was not deception — it was adaptation. It was intelligence. It was a nervous system doing exactly what it needed to do in order to survive an environment where belonging depended on appearance, not truth.

That version of me was not wrong. She was learning.

But I no longer need to live there.

Today, empathy no longer needs to be performed. It arises – or it doesn’t – and I trust that distinction. I care where care is actually needed, not where it is demanded, expected, or socially rewarded. I can stay present without self-erasure, compassionate without collapse, ethical without exhaustion.

This is what precise empathy has given me:

• clarity without cruelty,
• humility without shame,
• and a deep, embodied permission to be truthful.

I have learned that I cannot be everything to everyone.

That my capacity is finite.

And that not all suffering belongs to me.

And in accepting this, I have finally found something I never had before – a sense of home inside myself.

~ Evgenia Pimżin