Why Your Empathy is a Superpower (and a TARGET!) - High Functioning Women Series Part Two [375]
Flying Free
Natalie Hoffman
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is Part Two of my series on high-functioning Christian women in destructive marriages. In Part One, we explored how the very qualities that make these women extraordinary are the same ones that make them exceptionally vulnerable. Today we're going deeper into one of the most specific and targeted of those qualities: empathy.
If you've ever felt like your compassion is working against you, like the more you understand him, the more stuck you become, this episode will show you exactly what's happening underneath that cycle. And it will start to give you a way out.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
- Why does understanding his pain seem to pull you closer to danger instead of toward safety? The answer will reframe everything you thought you knew about your own compassion.
- There's a biological metaphor in this episode that explains precisely how your God-given empathy gets hijacked, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
- What does a "scapegoat" have to do with your marriage? Natalie unpacks a family systems concept that might explain why you always end up holding everyone else's chaos.
- There's a trap that was specifically designed to make every exit feel impossible. Natalie names it, and then shows you the crack in the wall.
- What's the difference between empathy and enabling, and why does that distinction change everything about how you move forward? The answer might surprise you.
Get Today’s Free Resource:
📒 Take a free Emotional Abuse Assessment by going to emotionalabusequiz.com
I will also send you my weekly Hope Letters for Christian women in emotionally and spiritually abusive marriages.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying FreeNow.com, and you're listening to the Flying Free |
| 0:07.8 | podcast, a support resource for women of faith looking for hope and healing from hidden |
| 0:14.2 | emotional and spiritual abuse. Welcome to episode 375 of the Flying Free Podcast. This is part two of a series I've been doing on |
| 0:25.8 | high-functioning Christian women in destructive marriages. In part one, we talked about who this |
| 0:32.0 | woman actually is. She's the woman who holds everything together, excels at nearly everything she touches, and yet |
| 0:39.9 | somehow she is more stuck, more confused, and more blamed than almost anyone around her. |
| 0:47.1 | Now, if you missed part one, I'd encourage you to go back and listen, but here's the quick version. |
| 0:52.1 | The very qualities that make her extraordinary in the world |
| 0:55.8 | are the same qualities that make her exceptionally vulnerable inside a destructive relationship. |
| 1:02.8 | Her strength is what keeps her from being believed by her church, by her counselor, |
| 1:09.2 | sometimes even by herself. So today we're going to talk about one of |
| 1:13.0 | the most specific of those qualities, which is empathy. Now, empathy is a good thing, maybe one of the |
| 1:19.2 | best things. But also, in the hands of an abuse of man and an enabling religious system, |
| 1:25.6 | empathy can be one of the most targeted things about you. |
| 1:29.3 | So today I want to do three things. I want to name your empathy for what it actually is. |
| 1:34.9 | I want to show you exactly how it's been used against you. And then I want to give it back to you, |
| 1:41.1 | the real version, not the hijacked one. But first, I want to address a book that |
| 1:47.7 | was written by a modern day Pharisee. The book is called the sin of empathy. Crazy, huh? This was |
| 1:56.4 | written by a religious authoritarian who weaponizes scripture to maintain male dominance. |
| 2:03.6 | He uses religious language to burden others while protecting his own power. He doesn't teach |
| 2:09.6 | the Bible. He recruits it to defend his authority. This is a religious manipulator who reframes |
| 2:17.2 | empathy as a sin in order to suppress |
... |
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