Why do we know better, and still not respond the way we want to?
Empathy, emotion, moral psychology, and what happens between understanding and action.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy at Queen's University, where my research explored empathy and its relationship to moral motivation, specifically what happens between understanding another person's experience and deciding what to do with that understanding. That question still interests me. But not only in an academic sense.
I've had relationships I didn't understand. I've misread people. I've made assumptions I was certain were right, until they weren't. I've stayed too long. There were times I understood someone's behaviour so well that I lost sight of what I needed. That is where this work became personal for me, not just academic.
Studying empathy made me more aware of how much can get in the way of understanding someone well. Our experiences shape what we notice. Our expectations shape what we assume. Our emotions shape what we hear. And sometimes, even when we understand another person quite well, we still have to figure out what that understanding means for us.
You can know that a conversation needs to happen and still avoid it. You can understand exactly why someone behaves the way they do and still decide the behaviour isn't okay for you. You can recognize a pattern and still find yourself repeating it. I've come to think that this space, between knowing and doing, is where most of the interesting work happens. Not because people need fixing. Because being human is rarely that straightforward.
Research and real life
I don't think understanding someone means agreeing with them. I don't think empathy means putting someone else's needs ahead of your own. And I don't think being good at relationships means always knowing the right thing to say.
Sometimes understanding another person's perspective brings you closer.
Sometimes it changes how you communicate.
Sometimes it helps you see that you need a boundary.
Empathy shouldn't require you to disappear.
For me, empathy is about seeing more clearly — other people, yes, but yourself too.
The work I do now
I bring this research-informed perspective into coaching, writing, and speaking about human connection, interpersonal relationships, and communication. The questions have stayed fairly consistent: how do we understand ourselves more honestly? How do we understand other people without assuming we already know what they mean? And what do we actually do with what we understand?
My role isn't to tell you what a situation means or what you should do. It's to help you look more closely at what's happening, what you're assuming, and what you need to do with what you find. Sometimes that changes a relationship. Sometimes it just changes how you understand yourself.
Where this shows up
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Dating
Romantic relationships, and how understanding someone shapes what you choose to do next.
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Friendship
The closeness, and the friction, of relationships you didn't choose by accident.
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Family
Patterns you understand well and still find yourself repeating.
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Boundaries
The conversations we keep avoiding, and how to finally have them.
I'm still curious about people.
I still get things wrong. I still have questions. I think that's useful.
You don't need to have everything figured out before you begin.
Maybe there's a relationship you keep thinking about, a conversation you don't know how to have, or a pattern you understand but can't seem to change. Those are worth looking at.
Bio & credentials
I'm the founder of Empathos and the author of Lost in Love: Found in Me. My doctoral dissertation, Empathy (Re)imagined: A Theory of Motivation for Moral Action, examined empathy's role in moral motivation, and I've also written a chapter in New Studies in Indian and Comparative Philosophy.
But the credentials are only part of it. The more useful part, at least to me, is what I've learned bringing these questions out of the classroom and into real life.