Empathy's Goal: Improve Well-being, Not Fix People

Empathy involves empathic concern, the desire to improve someone else's well-being. However, the goal of empathy is not to change or fix others. Feeling like empathy has failed because one cannot change someone else can be detrimental. It can lead individuals to believe they are bad empathizers or caregivers and can even make them quit their professions. The key insight is that the job of empathy is not to fix others because people are not within our control.