The Empathy Trap: Why I Stopped Trying to ‘Walk a Mile’ in My Customers’ Shoes

Empathy isn’t imitation—it’s understanding.

I worked in high-stakes fields like real estate, finance, software, and digital marketing for more than sixteen years, both in my home country, Pakistan, and in global markets like the UK and the Middle East, where I lived and worked. Putting myself in the other person’s shoes has always been my definition of empathy.

In the B2B and B2C jobs that helped me build my career, I really thought that the best way to understand what a client needed was to put myself in their shoes. It was the usual advice for getting people to talk to you.

I got a job as a travel manager at a travel agency, and a required training session changed the way I had always thought about things. My whole view of how to connect with people changed in a single night.

The Flaw in the ‘Walk a Mile’ Mantra

“Put yourself in their shoes” is a saying that is easy to remember. But the new wisdom I learnt said that to really understand how someone else feels, we should never put ourselves in their shoes.

At first, this didn’t make sense. How could I help the client without really getting into what was going on with them? I quickly figured out that the answer is in the beautiful, messy, and undeniable fact that everyone is different.

In my long career in customer service, I forgot a basic rule I learnt from my previous research on the subject for a short time:

“Empathy means being more aware of how others are different and being more kind to them.”

This quote, which I wrote a while ago, helped me get the new philosophy.

In fact, no two people are exactly the same, not even identical twins. We all have different levels of knowledge, wisdom, emotional responses, preferences, opinions, and even the way we live our lives is shaped by our family, society, ethnicity, race, and religious beliefs.

As a travel manager, I can’t pretend to be a skeptical customer who is having a problem. I can’t really copy the way they mix history, worry, and resources. When I try to see things from their point of view, my own biases, feelings, and skills get in the way of understanding.

The old definition is not only hard to understand, but it also doesn’t work.

Empathy as Outsider Analysis and Problem-Solving

My new way of looking at empathy is that it’s not just feeling the same thing, but also understanding and being helpful.

Real empathy means being able to see things from your own point of view and from the outside while still understanding what someone else is going through.

This outside view is a strong tool because it is less affected by the other person’s strong feelings, which could be too much for them to handle. Even if a client is very upset, scared, or unsure, being outside of their emotional bubble helps me see the situation clearly and focus on it.

This new model needs two important things in both work and personal life:

• Listen and Acknowledge: Don’t judge or tell others what to do; just listen. This stops the failure of saying, “If I were in this situation, I would just do X or Y,” which doesn’t take into account the person’s specific situation.

• Plan and Help: Find the best solutions and resources you can. The goal changes from figuring out what’s wrong with the client to fixing it.

The Evolution of Connection

The shift in perspective is not merely a professional necessity; it constitutes a personal epiphany grounded in historical contemplation.

This deeper understanding is beautifully supported by philosophical thought. Aristotle, a great philosopher, thought that empathy was a great virtue that meant caring about how other people felt. Karl Marx also thought of people as social beings with empathy. This means that relationships between people are more than just rational or functional; they are also personal or sensual. Both ideas support the idea that the goal of connection is not to make everyone the same, but to get people involved in social activities and help each other in a thoughtful way.

This type of empathy that doesn’t require being deeply involved in something is quite similar to the concept of Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence offers a structure for acknowledging the varied reactions of others without requiring internalisation. It reminds us that sympathy and empathy are not the same thing, and that real support comes from understanding without getting in the way.

In the end, this is what my journey has taught me:

Empathy isn’t about switching places; it’s about making space. To be more kind, helpful, and effective in helping others deal with their own problems, I need to use the clarity of my own unique point of view and resources. I see things differently now. I used to think that the best way to help a friend or client was to act like them. I now know that the best way to help them is to give them the help they need from the outside to do their best.