Where empathy and compassion converge
Empathy - some people won’t tell you how empathy will kill you. It’s regarded as this exquisite tool for connecting with others, for feeling other people’s feelings in order to resonate. There are workshops on empathy and you can sign up for a coaching session on empathy. You can go see a therapist to learn empathy because, to the world, empathy is the key.
I listened to a podcast recently by Matthias Barker, a psychologist who has a large social media presence. His work moves me consistently and I feel so connected to the topics he discusses with his audience.
He brought a guest on - Dr. Frank Anderson, to discuss empathy, sociopaths and teenagers, and their discussion around the definition of empathy, and the differences in empathy and compassion got me thinking.
I have struggled with empathy for most of my life. I never defined the way I connected with others as empathy or a struggle until, in my first year of my Masters Program I encountered a Shaman who gave a presentation to my cohort. I was intrigued by her energy and her alternate ways of thinking and the ideas she brought to us the weekend she shared. I went up to her after class.
Looking back, I can’t recollect what I said to her - only what she said to me. And I don’t know if I knew exactly why I was approaching her, but there was something pulling me up there. She said “your empathy can be damaging to you, it can really hurt you.”
I never forgot that conversation. It has stuck with me for almost 8 years now. I was confused in the moment but I have come to understand.
When we empathize with others, Dr. Anderson says, we have our own experience of that person’s experience. We create a separate experience of their experience.
I’m not implying that empathy is a bad thing - and Drs. Barker and Anderson made clear that they do respect Brene Brown’s work. Yet, there is something here to explore.
When someone shares something with us, a negative experience, a trauma, they are often sharing in order to receive support or to just simply have a conversation around an experience to help us understand them on a deeper level.
Compassion can help us do just this, in both of these cases. We can hear this person and say “wow, that must have been really difficult, I’m here to help in whatever way I can.” We can also share the experience of “thanks for sharing with me, I can see how traumatic that was for you and I appreciate you being vulnerable.”
In the podcast episode, Drs. Barker and Anderson even laughed a bit at sympathy cards and made me think about how it actually might be quite rude nowadays, now that we have different tools and also expectations of relationships and the purpose of having those connections. Do I want to receive a card from someone who doesn’t know me that well who is expressing “that’s really hard for you I’m sorry about that”? (haha).
In empathy, we are hearing others and having an experience with another’s experience, actually taking our presence and support away from them - and as a result maybe needing some support ourselves.
How can we connect with others if we don’t have the capacity to be with them in the moment, because we are having our own moment?
This is what the shaman meant about my empathy hurting me. If I can’t get my empathy under control and separate myself from someone else’s experience, I will overload my nervous system with everyone else’s trauma and negative experience. I won’t be effective in being with someone in their moment.
Like I said before, empathy is not a moot point. There is value in feeling others experiences. And in the podcast episode, Dr. Anderson shares, maybe empathy is a good lead into compassion. But it takes intention to do this. And this is the skill some of us ‘empaths’ may need to hone. The skill of sharing in that experience, feeling it for ourselves to a point - but separating ourselves from it enough where we can then move into compassion so that our experience of their experience doesn’t take away from the point of the entire conversation.
Our intention is never to be damaging to another person when they share their deepest vulnerabilities with us, but to process the information in a way that is going to be helpful to all parties, to support, connect, strengthen and either be in the moment or move forward with it.