A case of acute empathy

Design thinking asks journalists to practice empathy, but there’s a price to pay.

I have always had depression, or as my psychiatrist explains, a case of too much empathy. It’s not a matter of “being sensitive” to everyone and everything — a lot of stuff wouldn’t elicit a single fuck from me. But when I volunteer to walk in another person’s shoes, I go the full mile.

Empathy can be a good thing for journalists in that it resets the goal for our pursuits. We stop looking at journalism as a profession and start to remember that it’s a calling — that’s right, a calling — to serve the public. We open our eyes, our ears and our minds to the experiences of others. We earn trust. In return, we get a stronger community, one empowered with a sense of agency.

But too much empathy can be bad. Absorbing other people’s emotions can strain even the healthiest mind. In my case, soaking up the stress of my community’s undocumented immigrants aggravated an already delicate mental state.

It started on a Thursday night not long ago. About 100 neighbors and I squeezed into a local immigrant advocacy center to learn of their rights should they encounter ICE, officers of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The legal advice given to them was bleak but necessary:

• Don’t speak except to ask for a lawyer. Have your lawyer’s phone number on you at all times. Don’t sign anything.
• Keep important documents — passports, consular IDs, anything that could save your ass — in a safe place.
• Assign childcare to someone with US citizenship. That way, you know the kids will be okay even if you’re detained or deported.

For 90 minutes, every eye was locked on the immigration lawyer and his translator speaking at the head of the room. No one glanced at the wall clock or down at a cellphone. No one slouched in their plastic folding chair. They just stared desperately as the lawyer explained in English, then darted their eyes toward his translator, in search of comprehension.

Their eyes. Their eyes. Sad eyes under frowning brows. Panicked and bewildered eyes. Tired eyes. The eyes speak a near-universal language that requires no translation.

I walked home racked with hopelessness and grief. Everyone in that room was dying, and the lawyer’s only advice was to draft a will and to call a priest. And if a lawyer couldn’t help these people, then what the fuck was I supposed to do? As a journalist, how was I supposed to empower them with a sense of agency when there was no agency to be had?

Moreover, these people were my neighbors. We walked the same streets, probably shopped in the same supermarket and bought empanadas from the same bakery. Their kids went to school and played at the park with mine. There but for the grace of somebody’s god went my little native New Yorker, while ICE ripped away any future from her friends.

I was lost, inconsolable and full of dread. I couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t eat. I fell behind in my school work, which only eroded my self worth. I wept openly through one class and came close to screaming at an instructor who declined to buy a fundraising candy bar for my kid’s school. (“But those kids will be deported tomorrow!” my brain yelled at no one.)

I saw no future. I wanted to die.

But I’ve been here before. I will always be here, me and my depression. I recognize the symptoms, and when I’m lucid enough, I remind myself that it’s just the disease talking.

On my psychiatrist’s advice, I am taking a brief respite from my work with undocumented immigrants, at least until I can find some coping mechanism besides self abuse. Besides, what good would I be to them in this state? And I’m seeking additional counseling, what my psychiatrist calls a “debriefing” for people whose work requires empathy.

My professors at school are now aware of my mental health and have been most supportive. And the kindness and love that my colleagues have given me fills me with hope, if not for myself, then at least for the communities that they serve.

I have decided to continue with my graduate studies in social journalism, though not out of any sense of obligation or pride. The fact is this: I need something to believe in right now, something good. That thing is journalism. I still believe in it. I will always believe in it.