The Cult of Self-Love: How Culture Is Keeping Women Weak | Allie Beth Stuckey

A lot of those same people who are telling women, put yourself first, your feelings, your desires, your dreams matter most, are also feeding them this idea that in order to be a good person, you have to feel how others feel. You have to be led by empathy.

I went through 10 studies on showing what truly makes people happy, and the evidence is this: if you focus on yourself and self-goals and self-fulfillment and self-happiness, you will be much more miserable in 3 months and throughout your life.

Wow.

I want to ask you about abortion. Some people people would argue that you don't have compassion for or empathy for the woman who is in that situation in life, and now they're essentially forced to do something they don't want to do. What would be your response to that?

Yeah.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dr. Josh Axe Show, where each and every week I dive deep into the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. Today we're gonna be focusing more on the mental and spiritual aspects of your health. I've got a special guest coming on, Allie Beth Stuckey. She's the bestselling author of Toxic Empathy. She's got an incredibly popular podcast, and today we're gonna talk about some pretty controversial topics around things like empathy and how your emotions can drive you in the right direction or the wrong direction based on if you know how to discover the truth. And here's a reality, if you are too empathetic, and I know this might seem controversial, but it can actually be hurting your family, your faith, and even your health. And we're gonna talk about some controversial topics today, even about the health effects of abortion. We're gonna talk a little bit about gender and the gender-affirming surgeries going on today, and also just talk about how you can become a more virtuous, truth-driven person and having a positive impact in the world. So, so excited to have Allie Beth Stuckey on today's show. Allie, hey, welcome.

Yeah, thanks so much, Dr. Axe, for having me.

Well, I'm excited about your new book. It's called Toxic Empathy. And I remember, so I was writing a book and I remember coming across a study by a BYU professor. And he wrote an article on why empathy can be bad. And you know this 'cause you've seen this very frequently. I am a big fan of the field of leadership and reading about leadership and following people like John Maxwell. And following him for years. And in the last 10 years, the word empathy has probably become the single biggest buzzword in the leadership space. If somebody's reading Harvard Review or any of those publications, you can't read a single leadership article without empathy being highlighted as the greatest character quality in the world. However, I don't agree with that. And this BYU professor really talks about— and I want to hear you talk about this today— what is the difference between empathy and compassion? And how can empathy be used as a form of evil against people? Because that's one of the things that's happening, you know, frequently today.

Yeah, if we just want to break down the definitions of those words, even getting into the etymology of them, compassion means with suffering. So when you think about the Passion of the Christ, that is the suffering of Christ that he experienced on the cross, and that com- in front of passion, with suffering. So you're suffering with someone, whereas empathy literally means to be in someone's feelings, not just to feel bad for them, not to say, "I'm going to carry your burdens with you," or, "I'm going to be kind to you," but it literally means to feel how someone feels. And this is the argument I make. I've seen other psychologists— I'm not a psychologist, but other scholars, I should say, in addition to the one that you just cited— make this argument as well, that empathy in itself is neither good nor bad. We hear it all the time, as you said, as a virtue, actually like the highest virtue that we should all be climbing toward, but really by itself, it's neither good nor bad. If I feel how you feel, that might lead me in a good or bad direction. So if I feel so strongly how my child feels, for example, let's do an apolitical example so as not to go right into the political controversy. So if my child comes to me and says, "Mommy, I am so scared. There is a monster in the corner of my room. Please come up there." And I feel so strongly how my child feels. Well, my feelings of how she feels could lead me to either affirm her fear of the monster saying, "Oh my goodness, yes, I am so scared of that monster too. You must be absolutely right. That thing that you see in the corner of your room is a monster. We should all be scared and freak out." Or my empathy, my feeling how she feels, could lead me to have compassion for her and say, "I understand that you're scared, and I'm sorry that you're scared, but let's go up to your room. I'm going to turn the lights on and show you that's not really a monster, that's a pile of clothes." So the difference there is that in the latter scenario, my empathy is in submission to something greater, and that is truth. In the former scenario, my empathy is leading me, my feelings are leading me, and my feelings are actually leading me to affirm her fears and to validate something that isn't true. And that's really what I call toxic empathy, is when your empathy leads you to affirm sin or to validate lies or to support policies that are ultimately destructive even for the very people that you think that you're helping That's when empathy becomes toxic. It's not that all empathy is toxic or all empathy is bad. It's that it can lead us to bad and specifically unbiblical places.

Well, you know, I think this is an important topic because— and we want to— I wanted to cover empathy with you because it is probably the single greatest, you know, quality or characteristic that people are using to manipulate people today. Again, there's so much manipulation going on via propaganda and guilting people into things, making them feel guilty for things they shouldn't feel guilty about. I do want to mention this as well, and this is an important note for everybody, is that, you know, along with the Bible, a lot of the Greek philosophers like Aristotle talked about this very long ago, that if you're going to be a person of true character, a person that's like Christ, it takes more than being strong in one character quality. It takes not only being— having empathy, but it takes having, you know, being wise and being generous and being loving and being just and all of these things together. And so sometimes people think, well, you know, empathy is this sort of ultimate thing. Well, you know, we've heard this before, like truth needs to be balanced with love, right? So you, you have to have these multiple qualities to truly be a person of character. And I think that's something that a lot of people are missing today via, you know, the, the, we, again, just something we're constantly seeing. Yes.

And there's a difference between empathy and love. Christians are called to love, and this is something that people get confused about, that if you are against any kind of empathy or empathy you, which is often what we hear even in the political realm, then you are not being a Christian because that's what Jesus came to do. He came to show us how to be empathetic, which of course is not— it's not Jesus's purpose. It's not the core of his mission. He did teach us how to love, and God is love. 1 John 4:8 says that. And if God is love, then he gets to define love, and he doesn't say love is feeling how someone else feels. He says love, among many other things, in 1 Corinthians 13, never rejoices in wrongdoing, never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. So that means for the Christian who is called to love and is called to have compassion, and even sometimes may be called to feel how someone else feels, to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice, our love for those people in order to truly be love according to the God who created it, has to be in submission to or tethered to the truth, or else it ceases to be loving. So if our love or our empathy is leading us again towards sin or lies or destruction, it's not actually loving, it's hateful. The most loving thing we can always do is agree with God, and that might look to the world to be unempathetic if we're not affirming how someone feels, but according to the God who is love, that's the most loving thing we can do.

Yeah, it's so powerful. And I think, you know, I— we see this a lot today. And I'd love to give you some— I'd love for you to give some examples in parenting, right? We see that, you know, I, I remember this growing up, there were— I had a friend and their parents would like allow them to, you know, drink at home and have parties at their house and a number of things. And I think where that person's at today, and I think they're, you know, they're in a really rough place in life. Because their parents just sort of let them do, you know, and these were very empathetic sort of parents. It was like, hey, whatever you want to do, whatever's going to make you feel good. But then you look at where the person ends up and they're in tragedy with no moral convictions, unsuccessful in life versus, you know, the parents. Like, I think about my parents and my parents, you know, were very— I grew up in a Christian household. My parents were very conscious of who I hung out with. By the way, I remember I got so frustrated with my parents because They'd like, well, you can't, you know, I'm not gonna have you spend time with them unless they're at our house. You can't go to their house, things like that. Yeah. I remember, and now looking back, I'm like, thank God. I mean, my parents were very conscious about who I spent time with, but that's an example. I'm sure, I mean, you've got kids. I'm sure you see this sort of thing all the time.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, with the boom of what's called gentle parenting, but sometimes is more than just being gentle, 'cause obviously gentleness is a fruit of the spirit. We Christians believe in being gentle and not being overbearing angry and all of that stuff. But really, in this kind of gentle parenting world, you see a lot of permissive parenting where your feelings and your child's feelings are put in the driver's seat, and every outburst, every temper tantrum, every bit of disobedience is kind of defined as just big feelings that need to be managed and not bad behavior that needs to be disciplined or needs— they need to be like sanctified out of. Because they start with this faulty premise that all people are basically good, and that's really kind of what these empathy Youngers do too, that like all people deep down are basically good, and if you understand their feelings enough, we can all come to a place of understanding and peace and unity. And that's just not true. There is a moral standard. There is the existence of objective truth. There is a way that we can get our kids closer to that. But affirming all of their feelings and describing all of their behaviors is simply a part of, you know, having big emotions and trying to accommodate all those big emotions. Not only will it end up disastrous sooner rather than later, probably, but as you said, like, down the line, that person doesn't have any boundaries for themselves. They don't have the self-control because they were never shown discipline by their parents, no parameters. There are so many different things, but also it's a cruel burden to place on your children. Actually, discipline, parameters, definitions, boundaries, clarity are all gracious gifts that we give to our kids because Kids don't know how to manage their emotions. It is just as big of a deal to my 3-year-old when she can't wear her princess dress, you know, out somewhere, like, you know, to Easter Sunday, as it would be if, you know, something actually disastrous or tragic happened to her. And so us helping them manage those emotions by giving them good parameters— also, they're just trying to make sense of the world. Like, my 5-year-old is so inquisitive, so curious, asks so many good questions. And I think of so many different things today that offer people confusion. She wants to know the difference between boys and girls. She wants to know, like, mommies, daddies, aunts, uncles. She wants to— she's even asking theological questions about, you know, what happens after we die and all of that. And it is a gift to give my child clarity. Um, and I, I just think in this, like, feelings-based world, in this subjective world that we live in. A lot of parents miss out on giving that gift to your kids, and it leads, I think, to bad places.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. You know, one of the things— and again, I just want to mention one of the reasons why I was so excited to have you on, Allie, is that I, I, I really have noticed in— I've taken care of a lot of patients, probably close to 10,000 over the years. And when I think about the patients that have oftentimes the most difficult time healing A lot of my patients with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, a lot of chronic infections, depression and anxiety, their emotions tend to rule them. I mean, it really is. If I think about like some— a lot, I put all my patients on a personalized diet and for some of them, I put them on the diet and boom, you know, reverse type 2 diabetes or whatever condition is there. Hey, now your fertility's improved and we see these results. But on my, my cases where we change the diet, there's a 20% improvement or 30 or 50, but then they kind of hit a roadblock. The thing I see in almost all of them is there's something emotional going on, excessive worry, excessive fear, you know, childhood trauma and a lot of, again, a lot of emotions that are out of their control. And then the other thing I would say about these people is some of these people oftentimes are led sometimes more by their feelings, being feelings-driven. I think that's something culture has really kind of, even more so with women, I see this. Women get kind of pushed into, and I think we both know this and you'd agree with this, is that women generally are a little bit more feelings-driven. Men are a little bit more less feelings-driven. And that's good. God created us like that. But if, you know, when I think about women today, like, and just people in general prioritizing feelings over the truth, like that's something we see politically happening a lot today and in the world of just follow your feelings, right?

Yeah.

You know, what, what do you, you know, why, why is that? I have two questions with that. Why is it wrong, and who are the people trying to manipulate women into believing that that's the way to determine, you know, what's right today?

Yeah, great questions. So in, in my first book, it was called You're Not Enough and That's Okay: Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love, where I kind of examine what I call the cult of self-affirmation. Which a lot of women, including Christian women, imbibe on a daily basis through social media, through books, through podcasts, even through some Bible studies. And it starts with this lie to women that the biggest problem that you have is low self-esteem, and your low self-esteem is caused by all these people and all these factors. And it goes back to this basic idea, kind of what we were talking about in the, like, uh, faulty premise of permissive parenting, that deep down inside you have this beautiful, perfect goddess. And all of these people, whether it's your parents, whether it's your boyfriend, whether it's capitalism, whether it's like advertising standards, unfair, you know, beauty standards— all of these things have hindered your beautiful inner goddess. And you have to go on this journey of self-discovery and self-fulfillment, throw off all of these toxic things until you find her. And when you find her, you understand her, you love her perfectly, and then all of these things will fall into place. And the feelings and the self and your desires and your wants are really the guide, like the Sherpa that you follow to find this perfect inner self that you will, you know, release, unleash into the world, and finally be full and perfect and happy. And this is what I call like the, um, the god of self. It's exchanging the God of scripture for the god of self, and it puts again your emotions, your desires in the driver's seat. And for women who are naturally more emotional, we are. That's just true. Like, as you said, God made us that way. That can be a really good thing. But I do think we are more susceptible to this kind of manipulation and this kind of feelings-based rhetoric that tells us that we should put ourselves first, we should worship ourselves, that everything must be sacrificed on the altar of our own wants. So that's kind of like a whole other conversation, but that is like a huge industry, the self-love ecosystem that women have been fed for a really long time. And as a side note, like, our biggest problem as women is not that we have low self-esteem, it's that we are sinners in need of a savior. It's the biggest problem that every single human for all of time has ever had. That's the problem that we women have. Sometimes I think we're robbed of our agency by people who tell us that our problems are everyone else's It's his fault. Anyway, this ties into the empathy conversation because a lot of those same people who are telling women, put yourself first, your feelings, your desires, your dreams matter most, are also feeding them this idea that in order to be a good person, you have to feel, you have to feel how others feel. You have to put empathy first. You have to be led by empathy. And really those things go hand in hand because here's the thing about empathy, why it's different than love or compassion. It does not require you to do anything. It can be entirely performative and totally superficial. All you have to do— if all you have to do to be a good person is to feel how someone feels, then you just have to type out the right thing, you have to say the right thing, you have to vote the quote-unquote right way, and you can claim to be empathetic, and therefore you can claim to be virtuous. Empathy is really the outsourcing of goodness. Like, it is the outsourcing of compassion and charity to other people, and it is mostly virtue signaling. It is mostly performance-based. But if you want to really love someone, it's going to take a lot more than emotion. That's why when Jesus says love other people as you love yourself, he's not talking about liking, he's not talking about affection, he's not talking about your emotions, because we don't always like ourselves. But we do always meet our own needs and quench our own thirst and satiate our own hunger. He's saying take that kind of natural instinctive love, channel it towards other people. That actually takes effort and sacrifice. And so yeah, all of this, the self-love emotion, all of your feelings are valid empathy ecosystem that is so about your feelings, it's really unhealthy. It leads women to be more progressive and less biblical.

You know, and I'm— I know you, you probably see the same thing that I do. If we would go to Amazon bestseller list and look at 75% of the self-help, first off, the category is called self-help. It's very anti— you know, it's— the Bible doesn't say that really anywhere. So for this, the whole thing is really leading people in the wrong direction. You know, I, I did a, an episode yesterday, a solo episode, where I went through essentially 10 studies on showing what truly makes people happy. And the evidence is this: if you focus on yourself and self-goals and self-fulfillment and self-happiness— and actually even the specific wordage was building your own self-esteem and self-confidence— you will be much more miserable in 3 months and throughout your life. Wow. Versus if you focus on serving others and making their dreams come true, you're much happier every time. You know, it's these biblical principles that science, you know, shows today as well. But it's, you know, that's, that's the reality. And so I think for a lot of people, but that's, again, that's not the message of the self-help community. For the most part, it's very much, you know, as you said, you know, love yourself, find yourself. And in another I remember looking at this research on— and I will bring in a little bit of just something, I guess, that's somewhat political here— is that I remember reading a study on the happiness levels because I was studying happiness. And I looked at a lot of studies on a lot of things, but one of the studies was on who is the happiest group of people politically. Is it— and it was conservative men, conservative women, liberal men, liberal women. And the most happy were conservative women, and the least happy were liberal women. Yeah. Why is that, do you think?

Um, well, I do think it is because— it's probably not because of our conservatism per se, it's that our conservatism flows from a few things that tend to correlate to happiness, and that is our marital status. We are much more likely to be married. You are much more likely to be progressive if you are single. The fact that we have children— we're much more— you're much more likely to be conservative if you're married and have kids than if you are childless and single. And then I also think it's obviously because we believe in God, because we have religious affiliation, because we're Christian, because we go to church. All of these things, if you look at separate studies, correlate to long-term satisfaction, particularly in women. Um, and so I think really, that's what it is. Because you tend to be more conservative the more you go to church, actually, the more you pray, uh, if you get married, if you have kids, and all of those things affect your happiness. I think that's why you're absolutely right, the women who vote Democrat tend to— I'm just talking statistically, we're not saying every single one— but statistically tend to be on antidepressants and go to therapy once a week. Um, and now many of them would say, well, that's just healthy, but I would say that whole over-therapy— therapizing— however, whatever word you want to make up, um, psychologizing of the world is a huge problem and is actually underneath a lot of what we're talking about today. That the overemphasis on therapy and feelings is part of how we've gotten to this mess, especially for women.

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Oh yeah. This— you are enough. You're enough for yourself. You are self-sufficient. You are your own form or your own source of empowerment and wisdom and all of this stuff. And what I like to tell people is that you can't be the problem and the solution. Like, the self can't both be the problem and the solution. So if inside yourself you are finding these very real deficits of happiness and satisfaction, you have very real feelings of anxiety and depression and insufficiency, inadequacy, all of this stuff that You're not gonna find the solution to those things in the same place that you are finding the problems. So it would make sense that we have to go outside of ourselves to find the solution to our own inadequacies. And God gives us that answer, and it is in himself. That it is only in our Creator can we figure out who we are, whose we are, why we're here, why we matter, what our purpose is. And it really is so freeing because if my love for myself or my happiness is dependent upon me, in my strength, in my sufficiency, that I am going to exhaust myself. That's a very heavy burden to carry because how I feel about myself changes, changes depending upon how much sleep I got last night, how I feel this morning, what I ate for breakfast, what people are saying about me online, whatever it is. But if my confidence and courage comes from Jesus Christ, who Hebrews 13:8 says is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that I am free, that I don't have to be my source of satisfaction because he is that. And I'm finite, I'm fallible, but he's infinite and he's perfect. So why would I not want to go to the well that never runs dry? And so it's really kind of like this contradictory worldview that women are being fed, that you're perfect the way that you are. But if you really want to be perfect, if you really want to be enough, buy my book, follow my program, listen to my podcast. And so they're simultaneously— a lot of these people are preying upon women's weaknesses and vulnerabilities while also telling them that they are enough and perfect. And so it's just this very strange world that is doing all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid the reality of God and sin and our need for a Savior.

Yeah, it's so good. You know, my, my, uh, one of my favorite pastors of all time is Tim Keller. And he gave just a great lecture. This is a few years ago I watched on identity, and it aligns very much with what you're saying is if you are the source of everything in your own life, there's— that's a lot of pressure. It's sort of— it's crushing. It's like, you know, it's, it's— and this is what we see even with people. You know, I remember when I first got into practice, the conditions I saw that were growing the fastest were childhood diabetes, childhood obesity, you know, hormonal issues in women. A lot of these things were— autoimmune disease was climbing like crazy. But I think in the last 5 to 10 years, it's been mental health disorders. I mean, especially if you look at children, the younger population, I mean, it's mental health is really— the problems there have continued to grow. And I think a lot of it has to do with these identity issues of people having a modern identity and believing you have to be the source, you have to be everything, you have to be everything for yourself, and you got to do it by yourself. And it's— there's just— there's a lot of pressure there. And I think it's crippling for a lot of people versus, hey, no, you've got a God that loves you and you have a God that's for you. And, and I also think it's somewhat motivating to know, no, I can be more. It's like if you're already perfect, it's, it's kind of demotivating in a way.

And so, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim Keller wrote a book called— it's a tiny little book called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. And it's really good because when I talk about that this, like, toxicity of the self-love culture, for example, people will say, well, are you saying that I should hate myself, that I should be self-loathing? And of course that's not what I'm saying. I would say that self-loathing is just the other side of the self-obsession coin. It is still so much self-focus. So I don't believe in talking badly about ourselves, thinking bad thoughts about ourselves constantly. The self-negativity can also be very inhibiting. I don't believe in that. I believe that Christians are called to a sort of self-forgetfulness, which is like self-denial. That he describes it as like, just as a very commonplace example, when you walk in the room, you're not constantly thinking about, how am I going to appear to these people? What do they think about me? What am I going to— like, how am I going to impress them? What am I going to prove to them? How can I make myself sound interesting? You don't wake up every day saying, how are people going serve me? How does that person make me feel? You are not easy to offend. You are not easy to inconvenience because you realize that you are not the center of your universe. That is the self-forgetfulness that I think brings a whole lot of satisfaction, because like you were saying, we're released from the pressure of being our own gods. God can do that. We aren't responsible for any of that, and we can be free through the love of Christ to serve other people well. And that's a very liberating and satisfying experience.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize it is so freeing that you only— we only have to have one master, and it's not ourselves, it's not the government, it's not a social whatever group, it's, it's God. And so you know what to do in every situation, and sacrifice yourself for the good of the other, will the good of the other. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's simple in that in that way. Well, I want to ask you about— you talk about a lot of controversial topics, which again, I think if somebody is reading the Bible and a Bible-believing Christian, they're actually— a lot of the controversy can start to melt away. Again, there still is some, but I think some of it becomes more clear if you read the Bible for, for, you know, as it was written to those people in the original time. And we take that and utilize that today. And so with that, one of those topics I want to, I want to ask you about is abortion. This is something that is very— again, it's a very, very fiery topic. And one of the things I want to say is I have watched many of your videos over the years. I've met you in person. And I also want to just— just a few other people I want to mention who have our similar stance on abortion. You know, I think about Lisa Bevere. I know she's a mutual friend, very good friend of mine here in Nashville. I was just with her last week and her beliefs about abortion. I think about Lila Rose. The thing I can say about all three of you women, you guys are incredibly compassionate. You really love women. You really want what's best for them. You'll sacrifice yourself for them. You'll sacrifice your own reputation. You'll speak out about things you really believe to help them. And all of you are pro-life 100% in a very, very strong way. And I think that some people would argue that that's not compassionate. You don't have compassion for or empathy for the woman who is in that situation in life who maybe didn't want to get pregnant and is pregnant and, you know, and now they're essentially forced to do something they don't want to do. What would be your response to that?

Yeah, I encourage anyone who feels that way to go to a pro-life pregnancy center, volunteer at your local pregnancy center, and you will see that the volunteers there, that the staff at the pregnancy centers are loving women into keeping their children. They're not manipulating them. They're not bullying them. They're not coercing them in any way. They're not lying to them. They're telling them the truth. They're doing something that Planned Parenthood won't do, which is show them their baby on the sonogram, let them hear their beating heart, tell them exactly, factually, medically, scientifically what happens in an abortion, what is happening in their baby's body at this point in gestation, and they allow them to make an informed choice. Knowing also that abortion is not the only option. Now that they know what an abortion is, abortion is not the only option. We can help you, um, with the adoption process. We can help you parent your child. We have free parenting classes. We have free resources. If you're in an abusive situation, we'll help you get out of that abusive situation. You need to enroll in Medicaid, we'll do that. You need help with the immigration process, we'll help you figure that out. I mean, These pregnancy centers are on the front lines loving these women into keeping their babies. That is what we are all about, because we believe that women deserve better than abortion. And I— this is one of my chapters of my book, Toxic Empathy. What the media will do is that they will tell you a really sad story about a woman who is pregnant, who was forced, quote unquote, to keep her baby even though she didn't want to, or even though this baby got a really sad diagnosis at 20 weeks gestation. And they will tell the story solely from the perspective of the mother so that by the end of the article you feel, wow, these pro-life laws are so mean to women. I can't believe they forced this woman to give birth. They forced this poor woman to go through delivery and keep a child that she didn't want to keep or died shortly after birth. But they never tell the story on the other side of the equation. They don't tell the alternative. For example, NPR told a story about a woman named Samantha in Texas who was forced because of Texas's pro-life law to give birth to a baby that had a fetal anomaly and who did die shortly after birth. NPR wanted us to believe, wow, Texas's law is so bad. But what they didn't tell is what that law actually protected this little baby named Halo from. If it had been legal for that baby to be aborted because she had special needs at 20 weeks gestation, she would have been injected with a poison that is the same chemical combination used in lethal injection on death row inmates, um, which, yes, it is the same exact chemical combination that is injected into a woman's abdomen, into the womb, and into the beating heart of that baby to force cardiac arrest. And then that baby is removed from the womb, typically using forceps, after they have already died— usually after they have already died. That's what happens at that point in pregnancy. And so what NPR doesn't want you to think about is the baby. NPR doesn't want you to think about the true victim of every abortion, which is the baby. What they are implying is that it would have been better for baby Halo to be torn apart and discarded like toxic waste at 20 weeks gestation instead of what happened because of the pro-life law. She was carried, she was delivered, she was held, she was named, she was kissed, she was loved, she was buried. That is dignity that pro-life laws are protecting. But toxic empathy only wants you to look at one victim. They don't want you— it doesn't want you to look at the other victim. I say that toxic empathy blinds you to both reality and morality. And that's why it's so important for Christians to not be led by empathy, because then we are swayed by all different kinds of stories. Because in every moral issue, on every political issue, there are always people on both sides of the moral equation. And so if you are not led by what is true what is, of course, for the Christian, biblically true, morally true, but also what is factually true, what is scientifically true. If you are not led by truth, then you are going to make a mess of your own worldview. But if you are leading others by primarily empathy, you are going to make a mess of your family, you're going to make a mess of your church, make a mess of your organization. Everyone's got a story that will pull on your heartstrings. The question is, what is good, right, and true?

That's so true. You know, I, I think that again, as you're saying, the truth will let you— it will set you free. That's something I think everyone needs to embrace. You I was encouraged about via through COVID was how many people like Russell Brand, such a great example of this. There are many others that, you know what, because they were truth seekers, they eventually found the truth. And that was Jesus, you know. And so I think that there are lots of other things too. I mean, it was Jesus, but also it was like, look at what the government is doing to you, you know, via a lot of their, you know, a lot of their deceit and propaganda. So So that's encouraging. One other thing I want to say about abortion that I actually rarely hear this talked about, but I have somebody that I know, a few people I know, and they had abortions. And I look at them in their life and they had that. And I actually— they regret it. Like they have this pain. And I'm a— I am a— as a lot of people probably are, or at least a lot of men are, you know, fan. I'm a fan of superhero movies, and I want to kind of give you this picture of something that happens constantly in these superhero movies. You have, whether it's Superman or someone like Spider-Man, they get to the point where they have this anger built up because they've been wronged by whoever the villain is. And there's this point where they're about to, like in the last Spider-Man movie, he's about to kill this, this person that's his enemy. But all of his friends keep him from doing that. And part of the reason they do that is they know that if you go and kill someone, it taints your soul in a way. I mean, it's— you're doing something, a form of evil that is going to negatively impact you in a way that's almost incomprehensible. And I think that when I think about a woman who's in that position and goes through an abortion, I think that a lot of times, even if they wouldn't express it and even if they would say that they don't feel that way, I think a lot of them live with that pain of regret in that same way, you know, for the rest of their lives.

Of course. I mean, what happens with the human body, with women, when we become pregnant, the cell sharing and exchange that goes on even in those early days of pregnancy. I mean, God created that bond for a reason that really starts at the moment of conception, whether we're cognizant of it or not. And that is supposed to be powerful. I mean, even if you just look like throughout history and even biblically, like we read over and over again, fatherlessness is bad. Fatherlessness is something that Christians should care about, that we should advocate on for the cause of the fatherless, that God is a father to the fatherless. And so obviously we see that that is a category of vulnerability. We do not typically see this category of motherlessness. And that is because God created this physical bond to be so strong that abandoning your child should be so hard and so gut-wrenching that it almost never happens. But abortion, especially now in these, like, early days of pregnancy, has made it so easy for you to abandon your child that I think women, especially in the beginning, think, well, that was no big deal. That wasn't really my child. That might have been my future child, but it was just a potential. Little, you know, clump of cells. And then it seems to me like down the line, they think they're over it, they thought it was no big deal, and something reminds them. I've heard this before, whether it's a crying baby or whether all of a sudden the pain and the smells and the thoughts of that day of getting an abortion come rushing back, or realizing maybe they'll never have a child. And God can redeem all of that. He can use all of that for his glory and the good of other people. Yes and amen. But you're absolutely right. We should not discount that there is a really true negative demonic impact of abortion, not just on the physical lives of babies, but on the spiritual and mental and emotional lives of women. Yeah.

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I, you know, one of the other topics I wanted to hit on because I think it's the greatest form of medical malpractice of definitely of my lifetime. Maybe it's really high up there. Gender-changing surgery for minors. Yeah. I mean, I mean, if somebody actually thinks about it rationally or from a biblical worldview, it is the most— and if anyone that would ever look at the pictures or surgeries or know actually what happens, because I actually, I don't think most people do. It is, it is horrific. And to allow a child and delete it or for a parent to lead a child to doing that. That, um, it's one of the greatest forms of evil I can, I can, I can think of. And, and let me— and, and this is one of those examples where I think your book is so important around this toxic empathy, is that it is— I mean, the thing that is driving that today is toxic empathy. I mean, it's—

yeah, yeah, yes, absolutely. I mean, I think for most of the average people just watching it, it is what they would call empathy, what I would call toxic empathy. There are so many different branches of this. For some people, they are motivated by political power. For some people, they are motivated by money. I mean, these gender surgeries can pay these doctors thousands and thousands of dollars. The pharmaceutical companies are creating these lifelong patients because you put a kid on puberty blockers, you put them on cross-sex hormones, you render them probably permanently infertile. They have to rely on Big Fertility. And reproductive technology to ever have children. If they want to have children, they have to go back to the doctor, get re— corrective surgeries over and over again throughout their lives. They are a slave to the medical industrial complex, and that makes a lot of people a lot of money, gives them a lot of power. And there's also just a perverse aspect of this. There are people, unfortunately, who have truly like, uh, sexual and perverted motivations in all of this. This. So no matter what it is, it is demonic. But for the average person, the reason why it keeps going, the reason why it is fueled, is because of the toxic empathy of specifically women who say, well, in order to love this child, to love this person, to help this person, we have to just affirm what they want, which is crazy. We never unconditionally affirm what our kids want. My 5-year-old would eat cupcakes cakes all day, every day. That's all she would do. She would, she would eat sugar nonstop if we let her. But because I love her and because I care about her body, because I see her as a gift that God has given me to steward, I'm not going to allow her to do that. And she might cry and she might be mad at me and all sorts of things, but that unpleasantness— what does the Bible say? The Bible says all discipline is unpleasant at the time. It always tastes bitter at the time, but then it ends up reaping fruits of righteousness, goodness, and all of these things. And so, um, yes, it is that shallow, superficial, toxic, untethered empathy that unfortunately is fueling one of the greatest human rights atrocities that has ever existed, and that is the mutilation of the bodies of gender-deceived children. And you have to be willing to be politically incorrect and not liked and to stand up and say No, not just it's wrong because I personally think so. It's also wrong because it's impossible. It's impossible to change your gender, period.

Yeah, exactly. You know, Jordan Peterson said something and I wholeheartedly agree. Every doctor that's been ever a part of any of these surgeries should lose their license for life.

Totally.

And be locked up at least.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I was going to say.

Yeah, it's, you know, I actually had somebody try and trap me at a seminar I taught a few years ago. And they had asked me something like, you know, hey, Dr. Axe, you know, what are the, you know, the herbs and the foods and some of the things you can do to support my gender transition? And I said, I basically just said, well, I would never do that because I'd be breaking the Hippocratic oath of first do no harm. That's harming you. I'm trying to, you know, like God made you something and to change it is actually going to take years off your life. It's going to wreck your hormonal health. And that's another thing that's not talked about. You know how bad it is physically to try and force a man to have higher estrogen or a woman to have higher— like what it does to their lifespan and disease in their body. That's a whole nother thing. Well, one of the last questions I have for you is, you know, you're such an amazing educator. You've really dedicated a big part of your life to helping bring these biblical principles that people, you know, I— one of the things I love about what you do is that you hit on these topics that people really need to know. And one of the things I see happening in the church today is a lot of pastors are like, I don't want to talk about abortion. I don't want to talk about sexuality. I don't want to talk about anything relevant. And that's why I think, you know, again, your show has become so popular. And a lot of what you speak about is people, especially I think a younger generation, is hungry for this. And I was blessed enough to learn these things in school. Like I went to a Christian school through 8th grade and then You know, I was always at Wednesday nights and just, you know, learning all of these principles. But today, like most kids, you know, Sunday school hardly ever happens anymore. And even the school systems today, you know, we pulled God out of the school system. So people hear this less and less. I mean, how important do you believe it is that influencers like you and many others are teaching these principles? What are your views about churches also not confronting these really vital issues.

Yes, I, I wish more pastors would speak up. I actually think that fewer people would probably be tuning into my podcast, and I would count that as a win. If everyone, if everyone in my audience said, you know what, my pastor has got this covered and he is talking about what the Bible has to say about these things, and I'm good, I would praise God for that. And that's not to say that pastors need to go up and talk about the every Sunday. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that a pastor's job is to preach through scripture, and if you preach through scripture, you will get to these controversial topics. Actually, if you just preach through the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, you will get to these topics, because in Genesis 1:27, we read that God created us in his image, male and female. All right, right there we've got the value of life, so that takes abortion off the table. We've got the definition of gender, male and female. It's a binary. There's no such thing as gender identity. It's defined by your biology. And also we get the definition of marriage. And then right after that, he says, "Be fruitful and multiply." We get the definition of family and the dictate for married couples. And so all of these culture war issues that pastors, some pastors say they want to avoid, I'm like, you're not avoiding culture and politics. You're avoiding the Bible. And you're avoiding where the Bible confronts our culture and politics. It is not the pastor's job to be on, you know, all the time to be be political. I'm not saying that, but where the Bible intersects with politics, you better be willing and ready to stand up because you are simply giving the whole counsel of God to people. And praise God when that applies to things that are going on today, because just like earlier when I said it is a gift for parents to give their kids clarity, it is a gift for pastors to give their congregants clarity.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. Well, Allie, I want to have you on again sometime. We didn't get to immigration and sexuality and some of the other things, but I do want to encourage everybody, hey, check out Allie's new book. It's called Toxic Empathy. And this is such a powerful book for anyone who wants to find the truth and be able to speak the truth to others. This is in bookstores nationwide. It's on amazon.com. So I want to encourage you, check out Allie's book and check out her podcast. Allie, I want to say thanks so much for all the good you're doing in the world and speaking the truth.

Thank you.

And thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really grateful for you.

Well, likewise. Thank you for all you do as well. Thanks for having me.

Well, hey, I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show, where each and every week we dive deep into the principles on how to take your health and your life to the next level physically, spiritually, and mentally. And hey, would love to hear your comments. Listen, I know this is a controversial topic, but here's what I want to say. I know both myself and Allie want people to live the best life possible. They want— we want you to experience love. We want you to experience joy. We want you to experience a breakthrough in your health. And I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from today's episode. Hey, if you have a positive comment, great. Negative one, hey, that's fine too. Also want to encourage you to share this, get the word out there about the truth about toxic empathy. Also, thank you to all you subscribers out there for, uh, for being part of the show, for being part of the family here. I'm so grateful for you. I can't wait to see you on the next episode.