Your Mindset Quiz Results!

Overview

You feel deeply for your clients (and colleagues or staff, and hell, at home too!) and are constantly attuned to their needs. While empathy is a powerful tool in your work, it can make it difficult for you to set clear boundaries, especially when someone seems to need more from you. This may leave you feeling emotionally drained or conflicted about your own needs. It's time to develop boundaries that protect your emotional energy while still allowing you to show up compassionately for others. You can do this.

First

Importantly, continue exploring your results and strategies below with a level of empathy, self compassion and non-judgement - as much as you can muster. From that place, digest these reflections, take what’s suitable for you, and know that you’re not alone and we’re here to support you to THRIVE. We’ll help you explore and understand how you got here and why this mindset barrier has become so engrained.

We know this is you, at least for the most part. Of course there’s going to be exceptions to the rule and times when you’re not responding from underlying Endless Empathiser urges, mindsets and early childhood templates. We hear you. It’s not all black and white, nor are you fixed in stone. We all have areas to work on. Especially if we’re interested in maintaining our career fulfilment and longevity, nourishing and connected relationships in personal and professional settings, and seeing clients through to healthy, safe outcomes from our work with them.

Breaking through the Endless Empathiser mindset and mastering healthy boundaries can be difficult, especially for health and helping professionals who deeply care about their clients' well-being. This mindset often stems from the fear of letting others down or feeling guilty when prioritizing one's own needs. However, learning to balance compassion for others with self-compassion is crucial to avoid burnout and maintain a healthy, sustainable practice. Below are some tips and tools to help you overcome this boundary block and start to get more agency and control over your choices, and ultimately have a more rich and rewarding career.

Actionable Strategies to Unblock your Mindset Barrier and Create Healthier Boundaries!

Here are some initial actionable steps that you can implement right now to help reduce Endless Empathising in your personal and professional relationships:

⭐1. Create Emotional Distance

Tip: While it's important to connect with your clients and staff, it's equally important to emotionally distance yourself from their challenges. This may sound challenging, and is even at the risk of being interpreted as ‘uncaring’. So it won’t surprise you that resistance, hesitancy or self belief statements may arise within you at this suggestion. We ask that you sit with this idea and take your time to integrate it into practice, because it really is the key to shifting this mindset. This is about boundaries for your empathy in direct ways. There’s room for both the other person AND you.

Tool: Cognitive Reframing Practice – When you feel pulled into over-rationalising for the other person about why their need is so valid, so urgent, so important that you simply have to drop tools, disrupt your own plans, and focus on whatever it is they need, try to reframe the thought: Instead of thinking, “I feel guilty for not helping this person immediately,” try, “By practicing healthy emotional distance, I am ensuring that I can feel and harness san appropriate amount of empathy and compassion, while not losing myself into their world. There is still space left for me.” Or, “Their struggles are theirs to handle, not mine to absorb fully. It actually doesn’t help them by trying to take away their hard emotions, because they end up sitting within me and the other person learns nothing in how to process or manage them".”

⭐2. Develop a ‘Pause and Reflect’ Routine

Tip: Before responding to client, staff or even partner needs, take a moment to pause and assess whether you’re prioritising their needs over your own. Ask yourself, “Am I taking on too much of this emotional weight?” and decide if a boundary needs to be set. Tune into your capacity in that moment. Make a realistic and values-based decision from that position. This actively retrains and challenges automatic and conditioned responses.

Tool: If you are even a little bit good at imagining or pretending, or you used to enjoy make-believe games as a kid, indulge this skill again here: imagine you can slow down time, or you’re moving through quick sand, or you’ve got the remote control and can press pause or slow-motion. If you pause on the scene, what other options for responses might be available to you if you had a fraction more time and space.

⭐3. Practice Self-Care Rituals - Daily

Tip: It’s crucial that you regularly recharge. Engage in activities that refill your emotional cup—whether that's through mindfulness, nature walks, or journaling. Setting aside this time consistently ensures that you're not running on empty. This is sadly now over-used, but cannot be stressed enough.

Tool: Spend time learning about yourself and what both expels or discharges (tips out) emotions, stress and cortisol from your own mind and body. As well as learning what recharges (fills you up) . The key here is personalise it to you, and be consistent and regular. Take a curiosity towards yourself - get excited about discovering new things that make you feel supported and nourished.

⭐ 4. Learn to Say No Compassionately

Tip: Saying no doesn’t mean you’re abandoning your clients, your team or your partner. It just means that you start to bring yourself into the equation, where previously you oriented a little too strongly towards the other person. You can only be there for others and continue to be your fullest, shiniest, most empathetic unicorn self, if you properly rest your empathy muscle and take care of yourself.

Tool: Learn ways to say no while still maintaining empathy. For example: “I understand this is important to you, and I’m sorry I can’t offer more time at the moment. Let’s set up a session for next week.”

⭐ 5. Challenge the Old Self Beliefs

Tip: Notice what underlying self beliefs might exist when you think of yourself as an endless empathiser. Is this something that brings up pride? A sense of righteousness? Does it align with nobility or a religious cause? Is there a puritism undertone? Noticing what the deeper beliefs are that link to this mindset is key. If this mindset feels challenged too much, it might conjure up an even firmer, stubborn digging in of its heels and feel very entitled to double down even more. Importantly, start to challenge the idea that having dangerous levels of untethered, unboundaried empathy, can be harmful to you, and ultimately your client, staff or partner.

Tool: Reconnect with your ‘WHY’. Remind yourself why all of this effort to unlearn and retrain is important. Make a commitment to journal and externalise in your own way, about what the self beliefs are that are related to what it means for a person / practitioner to have high levels of empathy.

⭐ 6. Aim For The Low Hanging Fruit - at first

Tip: Give yourself the best chance of learning and shifting this mindset barrier by starting with practicing these strategies in low stakes interactions. Remember the way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Breaking down this change into smaller, more manageable practice points will provide greater chance of showing you that changing this mindset it possible.

Tool: Start small and where it’s realistic, with people you feel safer with. Or the opposite works well too - try the above strategies, especially creating emotional distance, with total strangers. Observe your client, team member or family member from a kindhearted distance, note their request of struggle, and allow yourself to access that empathy muscle you have strengthened so well. Now see if you can bring in the idea of their own resources (both internal and external) to them.

⭐ 7. Believe More In The Other

Tip: Sounds ironic to suggest this for this mindset, but think about it. An over-attuned empathy radar can accidentally take on too much on behalf of the other person. It accidentally and unintentionally can end up coming out in disempowering behavioural ways, like doing more for them and less for you and overstepping your own boundaries. Draw on strengths based approaches and list out all the reasons your client, team member or family member is very capable, strong and skilled in navigating their challenge or situation, even with a balanced and boundaried amount of empathy from you. You don’t actually need to give more than a genuine, caring, validating response sometimes.

Tool: Treat clients, staff and partner, with empowerment. Remember they have the resourcing to get through whatever their struggle or challenge is. Even if it’s not immediately or requires some time. Mentally practice channelling your empathy into belief and hope on their behalf - that they can do it! Painfully, likely and often, without our big over-involvement!

Final Thoughts

Overcoming the Endless Empathiser mindset requires a shift from feeling responsible for others’ emotions to recognising that healthy boundaries are essential for both your well-being and the long-term effectiveness of your work. By prioritizing self-care, reframing guilt, setting compassionate boundaries, and seeking support, you can create a sustainable and fulfilling practice that benefits both you, your clients, your team/workplace and even your home life. Remember, healthy boundaries are an act of care for yourself and others!

Where To From Here?

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Accuracy, Transparency and Limitations: Our quiz results, while based on evidence based therapeutic practice, do not substitute for personalised medical or treatment advice. They do not serve as clinical diagnoses or treatment, but as insightful tools for general guidance to assist you to take first steps in understanding some of your hidden barriers better.