Feeling empathy without losing yourself in it and the suffering of the world – is that possible? Yes, with the right approach.
She sits in front of you and you can practically see her broken heart as tears stream down her cheeks. As you look at her, helplessly holding her hand so she has something to hold on to, you feel cracks ripping through your own heart, hot tears welling up in your own eyes, like an abyss between the two of you falls down.
Empathy makes us human. It can feel wonderful when we are overwhelmed by the joy of our loved ones and we want to jump into the air. But it can also tear us down and turn the suffering of others into our personal pain. Both are – like so many things in life – okay and healthy in moderation. The alternative would be to be emotionally isolated from the world and our fellow human beings, no longer having access to other people’s emotions – and ultimately no longer even to our own.
But if our own spiritual well-being depends on the whims of those around us, then we lack important boundaries. In this article we have summarized how we can pull this off without distancing ourselves emotionally and how we can be compassionate without breaking ourselves.
What empathy means and why it is so important
The American Psychological Association (APA) describes empathy as understanding another person from their position – rather than our own. It can also mean that we vicariously experience the person’s feelings, perceptions and thoughts. This can – but does not have to – awaken the need in us to help this person. After all, how often do we encounter people in our everyday lives who awaken our compassion, whether in everyday life or in the media? And how often do we stop to be a support to these people? How often do we even have the capacity to do this? However, in some cases, according to the APA, our compassion can turn into finding the motivation to help – or even to feel personal suffering.
As “Greater Good Magazine” writes, there is loud Research two forms of empathy: empathic suffering and empathic concern. The former has negative connotations, meaning situations in which we concentrate on our own negative emotions and are trapped in our suffering. In contradiction to this is empathic concern, which is directed towards our counterparts and evokes compassion and a desire in us to help our fellow human beings.
Basically, empathy helps us to put ourselves in the shoes of our environment, to build a – sometimes very deep and loving – connection with our fellow human beings, and to create real and strong connections. At the same time, it can help us understand our world – what drives and moves the people around us. Empathy is missing where hate, racism, violence and injustice prevail. But empathy, where there are no boundaries between the feelings of others and our own, where our own emotions are distorted, is anything but healthy and desirable for us. How can we manage to regulate them?
How we develop healthy empathy
If we know about the pitfalls, it is usually easier for us to maintain the necessary level of emotional availability and distance in demanding situations. Here are some tips.
Avoid the “empathy trap”
As “Greater Good Magazine” describes, the “empathy trap” is a situation in which another person’s feelings make us feel uncomfortable – So we are unable to establish the necessary distance from the emotions of other people, to draw the line between the feelings of others and our own, which is why the two are mixed together.
Let’s go back to the example of the friend whose heart is broken: Of course, in such situations it is sometimes difficult for us to “keep calm” ourselves. But first we need to focus not on the other person, but on ourselves: What do we need right now? And how can we be of real help to our friend right now? The online magazine gives a well-known and popular example of the oxygen mask: If there is turbulence on the plane, it has nothing to do with selfishness to first take care of your own oxygen mask and only then make sure that others are taken care of .
Ask yourself: What is going on inside me right now?
Sometimes feelings get the better of us. When we see our friend sitting in front of us, devastated and swollen with tears, we may feel transported back to a time when we felt very similar. Maybe we had to deal with a broken heart back then, or maybe it was a completely different reason that threw us so cruelly to the ground. Ultimately, this is secondary, because the fact is: Even if it may feel like that at this moment: what is going on with those around us and what was bothering us at the time is not the same.
We all too quickly draw conclusions from ourselves and our experiences about other people – which is understandable, but rarely does justice to the situation of our fellow human beings. Rather, in moments when we feel strongly triggered, we should ask ourselves why this is the case. What are we thinking about right now, what images do we have in mind? What do these images and thoughts trigger in us? Are there other possible perspectives? If we try to question ourselves and our thoughts and feelings instead of surrendering to them, we can avoid feeling empathetic suffering and instead have healthy compassion for those around us.
There is a possible connection between empathy and fear, like one study stated. This is when we have the feeling that we cannot help our fellow human beings and are afraid that we have let them down and disappointed them. But by being there for our fellow human beings – listening and seeing their needs and giving them the space to talk about their emotions (and also allowing ourselves this space) – we are already helping them.
Nobody expects a solution to the pain, and often there is no quick help. But being there for each other – without losing sight of yourself or making yourself the focus – is often enough.
Sources used: dictionary.apa.org, greatergood.berkeley.edu, healthline.com, researchgate.net, psychologytoday.com, blog.calmclassroom.com, theconversation.com, uh.edu