Idiot Compassion (aka Yeslighting) Is Sabotaging Your Relationships
Idiot compassion provides comfort in a way that keeps someone stuck instead of addressing the reality of the situation.
We all have a general sense of what compassion is, but sometimes what first appears to be compassionate kindness is actually avoidance of reality, of ourselves, and of the people we care about.
Idiot Compassion has its roots in Buddhism and has more recently been shared in the context of psychotherapy by figures like Lori Gottlieb. Gottlieb shares that, “In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking, and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty.”
I didn’t have a name for it at the time, but I’ve definitely been guilty of it. Here’s what it looked like in one of my own friendships, and what I’ve since learned from it.
I’m Guilty of Idiot Compassion
I had a friend—we’ll call Elizabeth—who vented about her toxic boss… again and again and again. Her boss sounded like a terrible person. They talked over people, took credit for Elizabeth’s work, and lashed out when they lost their temper.
Every week, Elizabeth had a new story about how her boss made her life miserable, and every week, I would do my best to listen, validate her feelings, and say, “Yeah, that sucks,” secretly hoping we could move on to other topics of conversation.
I told myself I was being supportive, and Elizabeth felt comforted and seen when she vented with me. Over time, though, I began to realize I was doing more harm than good. I was being a bad friend.
Our vent-and-validate sessions were actually keeping her stuck.
Every time she told me about her shitty job, my encouragement took the sting out of the status quo, making it a little more bearable. These moments of human connection, of feeling seen and understood, actually reinforced her pattern of venting with me. And my responses allowed her to buy into the narrative that the problem lay entirely with her boss, that Elizabeth was an unfortunate victim to someone who just generally sucked.
Our conversations discouraged Elizabeth from making changes. There’s that quote about insanity and doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of getting different results. In situations like Elizabeth’s, it’s insane to think things will get better if nothing changes.
The Dynamics of Idiot Compassion
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche referred to this relational dynamic as idiot compassion because it results from being uninformed or unaware.
We are unaware of ourselves
We are unaware of the person we’re in conversation with
And we are uninformed about the situation
We can review my conversations with Elizabeth with these criteria in mind.
1 - I Was Unaware of Myself
I couldn’t see how my lack of emotional intelligence was influencing our conversations.
I was tired of hearing the same story on repeat, and I didn’t want these vent sessions to become a significant part of our friendship. Elizabeth dumped her frustration, anger, and helplessness into the vessel of our relationship, and my response was to try to get it over with quickly: agree with what she says, don’t ask questions, and change the subject.
My response was not about connecting with her. It was about managing her complex emotional discomfort, reducing it to an oversimplified story about her and her situation. Elizabeth wasn’t the problem; her boss was. It sucked. End of story.
I was subtly controlling and morphing what Elizabeth was going through into something more bearable for me.
This is similar to telling someone, “Oh, don’t cry!” in a situation that absolutely warrants a good cry—we can’t stand to see them cry. Or saying, “Everything happens for a reason,” to offer comfort using a framework that’s not grounded in reality. We can’t deal with the uncertainty of life, so we push a narrative that makes us feel better, even if it’s not objectively true.
I couldn’t handle being with my own complex, roiling emotions, and I created distractions or found ways to diminish Elizabeth’s experience when she shared similar emotions.
While it wasn’t my responsibility to fix anything for Elizabeth, I was actively derailing her from engaging with her emotions, and that wasn’t fair.
My eagerness to find something else to talk about as quickly as possible prevented her from exploring potential solutions to her dilemma, both emotionally and logistically. I didn’t invite her to explore how she could take matters into her own hands. I wasn’t helping her grow.
2 - I Was Unaware of My Friend
I wasn’t interested in learning more about Elizabeth or helping her. I could have done a variety of things to show up as the kind of friend and person I wanted to be:
Asked “What could you do to try to fix the situation?” and really listened, challenging her not to wallow in self-defeat if she responded with something like “There’s nothing to be done…”
Carefully explained that I didn’t want these conversations to be the focal point of our friendship. I wanted to have fun with her, and I didn’t really care to hear about her boss or how much they sucked.
I could have held space for Elizabeth’s feelings of frustration and helplessness. I might have even shared that it was difficult for me, but I wanted to try, if that’s the support she needed from me.
Asked her what she thought was going on with her boss and how that might influence the way they interacted with her at work.
Any of these responses would have helped break our pattern. Though difficult, they would have been honest responses that pushed us both to engage with our dynamic more honestly.
I was so invested in just getting through these vent sessions so we could start having fun that I didn’t bother to probe with Elizabeth. This was a significant part of her life, and my prerogative was to squash it down, even if it meant that I was subtly closing myself off.
Sure, the same old vent session might have gotten old, but there were tangents to explore about the way Elizabeth thought and felt, whether she had similar patterns in other relationships, etc. I could have gotten curious, and I chose to remain unaware instead.
3 - I Was Uninformed About the Situation
Beyond our interpersonal dynamic, I also lacked perspective on the situation itself.
Elizabeth’s stories were the only information I had about her dynamic with her boss. I had no way of knowing whether her stories were accurate or even factually true. For all I knew, Elizabeth was the problem employee.
Did it make sense to believe anything Elizabeth said about her boss? I could validate how she was feeling, but it wasn’t my place to validate the narrative she carried about the situation. It might have even been helpful to challenge her narrative—“What do you think one of your coworkers would say? Would they agree with you?”
From the perspective of healthy interpersonal boundaries between friends, their problematic relationship was none of my business. Elizabeth had a troublesome dynamic with someone I’d never met. It was not my responsibility to insert myself and try to fix their relationship. I could certainly act as a sounding board and source of support for Elizabeth, but not for her boss, whom I didn’t know, or for their relationship, which I wasn’t a part of.
There’s a term for the dynamic Elizabeth and I were caught in due to idiot compassion: yeslighting. Like with gaslighting, yeslighting undermines someone’s vision of reality. The difference is that instead of doing it to them, we’re doing it with them.
And, like gaslighting, yeslighting can have severe psychological consequences, compromising someone’s ability to trust their judgment, to see events objectively, and to create a cycle of dependence on the yeslighter.
“Real compassion is uncompromising in its allegiance to basic sanity.” – Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
You’re Not Expected to Be Good at This
Many of us were never taught how to show up with compassion for the people we care about. And even if we were taught, it’s not an easy character trait to embody. It takes a blend of emotional intelligence, active listening skills, healthy interpersonal boundaries, and the bandwidth to hold space for someone else’s challenges in addition to our own.
That’s a lot to ask of anybody.
So don’t feel like this is the kind of thing you need to do perfectly. Instead, look at it as something to get curious about and practice in the moment. If you recognize that you sometimes fall into idiot compassion, you can begin here:
Instead of yeslighting someone when they share about their challenges, ask them what support would look like in that situation. Maybe they simply want to be heard, or maybe they want someone to help solve the problem.
Check in with yourself. Is this the kind of support you’re able and willing to provide? If yes, then do that. If not, what else could you offer them? Whatever it ends up looking like, do it with an open heart. It’s likely going to be difficult, and that’s ok.
Notice when you don’t have the bandwidth to hold space for someone else. Sometimes, we’re at capacity, and compassion for someone else’s problems is asking for too much. That’s ok—just be sure not to nuke your relationship when you share that with them. This is where healthy boundaries and healthy boundary communication skills come in handy.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. Whether you’re looking to show up as a better friend or coworker, you’re not alone in figuring this stuff out.
If you’ve noticed yourself defaulting to idiot compassion and want to explore how you could shift those patterns to provide genuine support in your friendships, work relationships, or leadership style, I’d love to hear from you.
