When Empathy Wins
This weekend, empathy won.
We voted in a president whose leadership is grounded not in power, but in empathy. Catherine Connolly’s calm courage, her compassion, and her clarity of thought give us hope — hope that humanity, empathy, and integrity still have a place at the head of the table. And it couldn’t have come at a more fitting time.
In our latest episode of The Gaslit Brain series on The FEMCAST, my co-host Dr Jen Fraser — author of The Gaslit Brain — reminds us that empathy isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s neuroscience. It’s wiring. It’s the foundation for how we connect, lead, and create safety.
As Jen puts it so powerfully, “It’s wonderful to have an outspoken — aka fearless — psychologist who can see through the gaslighting tearing apart our world and our populaces today.”
Gaslighting isn’t just something that happens behind closed doors in intimate relationships. It’s a pattern — one that repeats itself in workplaces, politics, and entire systems. And the parallels are striking.
In domestic violence, the body becomes the ultimate target. But before that, there’s a long psychological campaign — manipulation, distortion, and denial — designed to make the victim doubt her own perception of reality. Through relentless gaslighting, she develops learned helplessness, a belief that escape is impossible.
“It’s wonderful to have an outspoken — aka fearless — psychologist who can see through the gaslighting tearing apart our world and our populaces today.”
In the workplace, the violence is rarely physical. It’s reputational. It’s psychological. It’s covert.
Gaslighting shows up as manipulation, reversals, and silent punishments. Those who show integrity, who speak up, are quietly dismantled — their confidence stripped, their health eroded, their livelihood destroyed — all while they’re told they are the problem. Politically, we see it on a global scale.
Gaslighting the public — confusing, dividing, distorting truth — is how power maintains itself. When it escalates unchecked, psychological violence becomes physical violence. Domestic violence is the microcosm. War is the macrocosm.
That’s why this week’s Gaslit Brain episode feels so timely. It’s about empathy as antidote — empathy as a measurable, teachable skill that can be rebuilt in the brain. It’s about replacing control with connection, fear with compassion, dominance with understanding.
That’s what Catherine Connolly’s election represents too, the re-emergence of a leadership model grounded in psychological safety, integrity, and human decency.
If Ireland can lead the way in empathy — in politics, in workplaces, in homes — we can model something powerful for the rest of the world, that empathy isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom.
It might just be the most radical form of resistance we have left.
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