The difference between caring and taking ownership of something that isn’t actually your fault.

When people expect you to acknowledge their pain that you did not create by using guilt and shame to try to hook into you, it’s actually healthy and natural to say no and set a firm boundary. Especially for those caretaker archetypes.

A concrete example is perhaps someone who sees you are thriving and because they are living in survival, they feel triggered by you sharing your life and how well things are going. So they shame you as a way to get you to acknowledge their pain.

Most healthy people will respond by distancing themselves from the person who is trying to use shame to make you feel bad for the fact that you are doing well when they are not. In their mind, this distancing reinforces the narrative that you don’t care.

With more skill however you can both stay in your truth without shrinking AND show up for the other persons pain. Without needing to push away from them. Be gentle with this reframe. It definitely takes a lot of practice.

I don’t do social justice work because I see a lot of distortion in the actual application of many of the frameworks. This is why I do harm reduction on the level of the emotional body/energy field itself. To examine the exact same scenarios, pin pointing how energy is exchanged.