Empathy Disrupted?

Empathy has been described as the cornerstone of genuine human relationships and understood as an intentional and skilful act of connection. Practice with young people impacted by violence has often sought to leverage, or enhance, empathy in restorative ways. Professional training for practitioners who support this cohort has emphasised empathy as foundational to establishing safety, building rapport, and implementing relational practice. This chapter presents a critical reflection on the 'shoebox activity' from the Name.Narrate.Navigate program, an empathy-focused experiential exercise delivered with young people who have used and experienced violence, often in contexts of cumulative harm. The authors compare responses from young people with professionals being trained to deliver the activity. Through this analysis, they interrogate traditional assumptions about empathy in practice, and practice education, arguing for a more nuanced understanding of empathy as a dynamic, socially constructed, gendered and embodied phenomenon essential for trauma-informed, cumulative harm aware work.