Can too much compassion be bad for you? We don't think so.
Dr. Phoebe Long Franco
What would the world be without empathy?
A world without empathy is a world where we are dead to each other. But also, in a world where we are always vicariously suffering, it can be overwhelming. We need to maintain our capacity to be in resonance with other people, but also to see clearly—I am not that person.
- Roshi Joan Halifax Empathy fatigue
Have you ever felt worn out or fatigued from pain that’s not even your own?
In healthcare, we interact with people experiencing traumatic events, chronic illnesses, and life changing diagnoses. This work can be meaningful and rewarding, especially when we feel connected to our patients, our colleagues, and our sense of purpose.
Sometimes other people’s suffering can feel like it’s too much to bear. “Compassion fatigue” refers to when frontline professionals feel helpless, immobilized, and exhausted by their work.
With access to news of the world’s suffering at our fingertips, we can all experience chronic distress about the pain of our fellow humans.
We might physically feel exhausted after scrolling social media or listening to the news. We might think, where would I even begin to help? Would my small action make a difference anyway?
Avoiding other people’s pain
Lately, I’ve noticed how this sense of exhaustion and helplessness makes me want to avoid other people who are suffering.
I’ll avoid listening to the news all day because I can’t bear to hear another story about a starving child or a person losing their job.
I avoid other people’s suffering in small and subtle ways too. The rush to fix a colleague’s problem rather than to sit and listen to them is a sign that I want to avoid the distress their story stirs up in me.
Compassion is different from empathy
So is compassion really exhausting us when we feel like shutting down or avoiding other people’s pain?
Neuroscience suggests not.
Rather, it’s empathy, our quick ability to understand and feel what others are experiencing, that fatigues us. In fact, cultivating more compassion for ourselves and those around us can make us feel better, as well as more empowered to help those who are struggling.
Empathy is painful
When people are empathizing with others in pain, pain pathways light up in their own brain, suggesting they are experiencing distress as though it were their own (although less intensely).
Being able to imagine what others are experiencing is how empathy connects us to the outside world, as Halifax notes in the quote above.
Empathy is a helpful survival tool for humans, who can’t compete with larger predators, and whose young are born helpless for relatively long period of time. Empathy facilitates our ability to form social connections, raise our children, and cooperate in groups.
Unsurprisingly, we are more likely to empathize with people we perceive as being similar to ourselves.
As a mother, I can more easily relate to other parents’ struggles than I used to because I now have similar experiences. Most of us more readily understand and feel for people with similar cultural and identity backgrounds too.
As healthcare professionals, empathy can bias us towards providing better care for people who seem like us over those who seem different from us.
While empathy connects us to each other, empathizing can also make us feel like we don’t know where we end and another person begins.
It’s hard to help others when you are in the same pool of distress. It’s like jumping into a roaring river to save someone, when it probably would have been better for both of you if you had stayed on land to help.
Compassion connects us
Compassion can help us maintain our connection with others in pain, while simultaneously experiencing ourselves as separate enough to not be overwhelmed by their distress. This puts us in a better position to help.
To understand the distinction between empathy and compassion, I always think about a study done with Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk who was a participant in several neuroscience studies in the 2000’s.
While he was in an fMRI machine, he practiced a compassion meditation for people in distress, sending them loving kindness. In distinct contrast to what researchers had observed in him and others who were empathizing with people in pain, areas of Ricard’s brain associated with positive emotions and connection to others were activated. Interestingly, areas of the brain associated with negative emotions and distress were not activated.
This research suggests there is a way to witness other people’s suffering without being overcome by distress. Compassion makes us feel good and connected to others, rather than depleting or exhausting us.
In support of the idea that compassion is good for us, a large study found volunteering was the only intervention that significantly predicted employee well-being.
How to cultivate compassion
So if compassion is so good for us, what can we do to experience it more often? And how can we regulate our empathetic distress when we feel overwhelmed?
In Resiliency Training, we teach these tools
Compassion with equanimity phrases
Repeat these phrases from Mindful Self-Compassion’s practice, Compassion with Equanimity when you’re feeling distressed by another person’s pain:
I am not the cause of this person’s suffering, nor is it entirely within my power to make it go away, even if I wish I could. Moments like this are difficult to bear, yet I may try to help if I can.
Breathe
Breathe in compassion for yourself and exhale compassion for another person. You can do this silently when you’re interacting with someone who is struggling.
Find your anchor
Bring your attention all the way down to the soles of your feet or another body part that meets the supporting surface of the floor. You can use any sense to find your anchor, but we like the soles of our feet because it’s far away from our head.
A social worker told me she did this when she was supporting a client who was really struggling and it helped her pay more attention to them. “It was weird,” she explained, “because I was focusing my attention on my feet. But I actually was able to hear them more clearly when I did.”
Turn compassion inward
When we feel as though we have no compassion left to offer, focusing compassion on ourselves can help. Although this might feel selfish at first, the idea is to fill our own cup up with compassion so that we have more to pour out. We can offer ourselves a supportive gesture (e.g. hand on our heart) or consider how we might treat a friend and treat ourselves that same way.
Compassion regulates empathic distress
Each of these tools can help us better regulate our capacity to empathize, so that we can stay connected to those around us who are suffering. Imagine if people at all levels of healthcare and policy making used these tools to regulate our empathetic capacity.
What would happen if we could bear witnessing each other when we struggle, knowing that we had the inner resources to handle our distress? Perhaps we all would more skillfully act at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels in support of each other’s well-being.