Why do people think that explanations are excuses? If you explain what causes people to act a certain way, why do people think you are “making excuses” for them?

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Took me awhile to wrap my head around this too. For many people, empathy involves trying to see why people do things and come to an understanding of their inner behavior. Any thinking of this sort is having empathy for them.

This is a lot of work for some people. Just having the understanding of why people are acting that way means that every time they do something else they don’t understand, they have to do more work to fit that action into their evolving mental understanding of their mindset. Unsympathetic people don’t want to do this work, so they’ll look at your explanation as an invitation to be empathic, and empathy leads to sympathy and wanting to self-sacrifice to help them.

“Making excuses” implies that you’re self-sacrificing in order to help someone who is just going to hurt you in response. Just spending a bunch of mental energy in order to come to a greater understanding is self-sacrificing.