Learning to Care Without Feeling It

Quick Summary

• Curiosity can be practiced, even on days when it doesn’t show up on its own.
• Empathy is a behavior you can learn, and faking it well is a reasonable place to start.
• Small systems keep you checking in on people when the feeling is quiet.
• Not absorbing other people’s emotions can be useful. It keeps you steady in hard conversations, and it lets you put work down at the end of the day.

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What happens when caring isn’t natural, but it is still your job?

There are days when I know I should care — about a project, a person, a conversation — and nothing moves. The switch stays off. I can see what needs doing, and I understand why it matters, but there is no push behind it.

With ADHD, my emotions are not always available when I need them. It is not because I am distracted. It’s more like the feeling is not even there. I used to fight that, as if I could force myself to care by trying harder, until I learned it was part of my rhythm. Caring is not something you force once. It is something you practice.

That is how I learned to care without feeling it.

Practicing Curiosity

Curiosity was never a natural part of me, and it still isn’t, at least not all the time. It has always been part of the job though. Writing code, helping customers, leading a team: all of it needs curiosity. It just took me a while to see it as something I could practice on purpose, instead of something I either had or didn’t.

It surprised me how deliberate curiosity can be. It doesn’t always start with interest. Sometimes it starts with attention.

When I don’t feel engaged, I start small. I ask one question, then another. Sometimes I ask out of habit, sometimes just to keep the conversation going. Every so often one of those questions turns into something I am actually curious about.

The more I engage, the more the interest comes back. It starts as a mechanical trick, until the other person says something that actually catches my interest.

Leadership and Adaptation

I’ve learned to value both reliability and change. I like being someone people can count on, but I also need variety to stay awake. So I try to stay predictable about what I stand for, and flexible about how I get there.

I can’t lead well without it, and I don’t always feel it. But I know what happens when I stop asking questions. I start assuming I already know the people I work with. I lose context, then perspective, and eventually the connection that makes people feel safe to speak up.

That is why I created systems that help me get to that care: reminders to check in, take notes, follow up.

Learning Empathy When You Don’t Feel It

Curiosity wasn’t the first thing I had to learn. Before that, it was empathy.

Between 2016 and 2020, when I was closer to web development, my team lead was Job Thomas. I was still a developer at heart. I’d been moved into support at a previous job, not because I wanted it, but because I was good at it. My mindset back then was simple: if your site is broken, it’s probably your fault. And often, I was right.

Being right didn’t help anyone feel heard. I struggled to connect with customers because I didn’t feel their frustration. I only saw the logic of their mistake.

Job noticed. After trying to say it nicely a few times, he said it straight:

“I don’t care if you don’t care. Fake it.”

I’m paraphrasing, but not by much.

That changed things for me. It was the first time anyone had described empathy as a skill rather than a personality trait.

He didn’t mean “pretend to be nice.” He meant that empathy is not always a feeling. Often it is just a behavior. People didn’t need me to fix the problem first. They needed to know I understood that it mattered to them.

So I started faking it. I matched their tone. I said out loud that the problem was frustrating. I treated their issue as if it were mine, even when it wasn’t.

It got easier with practice. I learned to recognize what someone was feeling, even when I couldn’t feel it myself.

I still don’t absorb emotions easily.

I don’t cry with people. I rarely feel what they feel. I can still tell what they need.

That turns out to be enough to respond with care. I don’t know why I’m like this. Maybe it’s ADHD, maybe it’s one of my saboteurs, or maybe I’m just a jerk.

Either way, the difference between feeling what someone feels and understanding it is one of the most useful things I’ve learned. It helps in the hard conversations: performance feedback, terminations, conflict. It keeps me fair when it would be easier not to be. It also means I can put work down at the end of the day without feeling guilty or underperforming.

It doesn’t come without a cost. That distance often reads as cold. I’ve been called blunt, direct, and harsh. I’ve learned to soften it where I can, and the people I work with have learned not to take my clarity personally. Executives usually like it. Peers sometimes need a while. Some days I sound like a strict parent saying “one day you’ll thank me,” and I am not always sure they’re wrong.

When I do care about someone emotionally, it is rare, and it means something. It is never casual.

And it all started with faking it.

Practicing Curiosity in Support

The same lesson carried into support work, and it changed how I think about expertise. A lot of the job is asking questions you already know the answer to, so the other person can get there themselves.

When someone says “I want to make more sales” or “my site isn’t working,” that is not the whole story. Curiosity helps me look past what they said to find what they actually need.

For them, it is the first time. For me, it is the thousandth. Closing that gap is the job, and it is also what makes me useful. After fourteen years in support, I recognize patterns and needs before customers name them.

Some days I’m not interested in the problem itself. But the person on the other side is, and that is reason enough to ask another question.

• Why does this matter to them right now?
• What are they not saying yet?
• What would make this easier for them next time?

You don’t wait for interest to arrive. You go and find the context that creates it. Every conversation is a chance to show someone something they didn’t know they could do.

The Balance of Detachment

The longer I’ve led, the more I’ve come to see that keeping some distance is its own kind of care. It lets me tell what matters from what is just loud, and work on a problem instead of spinning inside it.

I don’t treat it as a flaw anymore. It is the boundary that keeps me useful and stops me burning out.

What matters is knowing when to step closer and when to stay still. A lot of leading is knowing when to listen to the complaint, and when to ask what they plan to do about it.

When Curiosity Shifts

Curiosity isn’t constant. It moves with energy, context, and who you’re talking to. The aim isn’t to keep it burning all the time, but to set up your work so it can come back when it fades.

Here’s what helps me:

• Ask before assuming. Most of what I miss is the part I assumed I already knew.
• Write things down as questions, not checkboxes. It keeps me thinking instead of just ticking.
• If you’re bored, go looking for the missing context. Ask who benefits, what it unlocks, or why it matters now.
• Look at dull work through someone else’s eyes. If I can’t care for my own sake, I can usually care about what it does for them.

I can’t make myself curious on demand. What I can do is set the work up so curiosity finds its way back on its own.

Showing Up Anyway

There are still days when the caring doesn’t come. When curiosity feels mechanical and empathy feels forced. When the system runs, but I don’t.

Those days used to frustrate me. Now I take them as they are. Caring isn’t always a feeling. Sometimes it is just something you do. If I can’t feel it for the work, I can usually feel it for the person the work is for.

That is what I hold onto as a lead, as a colleague, and as someone trying to stay connected: if I don’t care about it, they care — and I care about them.