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Empathy… some scientists call it our evolutionary ability, others warn against the dangers of merging wholeheartedly with another out of a desire to help him. Psychologist Amy L. Iva shares four strategies that will teach you how to help others without getting trapped in your own emotions.
Empathy – the ability to feel and share the emotions of others – is a gift that helps us connect with each other. But sometimes it unsettles us and deprives us of strength. Scientists have found that the primary empathic response can develop in one of two scenarios: result in empathic distress or take the form of empathic concern.
Empathic distress provokes negative emotions and leads to burnout, health problems, and withdrawal from other people. Empathic care, on the contrary, evokes positive emotions, promotes health and awakens a desire to help another. In the first case, we concentrate on ourselves and get stuck in the trap of experiences, in the second, we focus on others and strive to alleviate their suffering.
It is important to separate yourself from the suffering person, without becoming indifferent to his experiences.
The mechanism of empathic distress is based on biological causes. A review of numerous studies has shown that a person experiencing pain and someone who expresses empathy towards him, show similar patterns of brain activity.
With empathic care, you don’t have to share the other person’s painful feelings, such as fear or sadness. You remain aware, understand that you are a separate person, and do not merge with the sufferer.
It is important to be able to protect yourself from emotional distress and separate yourself from the suffering person, without becoming indifferent to his experiences. Here are some strategies to help you develop the skill of empathic care and empathic distress management.
1. Track your condition
Let’s say you’re teaching a lesson and you see that the student in the back is overwhelmed with fear. If you feel her condition and begin to worry together, then you will not be able to help. Researchers Robin Stern and Diana Divecha called this phenomenon the “empathy trap.” When you find yourself stressed out by someone else’s experience, stop, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, “How exactly am I feeling? What do I need right now? When and how can I respond?
It is especially important to maintain this level of awareness and self-observation for those who work in areas related to helping others. Many teachers complain that their energy seems to be dispersed throughout the classroom and they don’t know how to pull themselves together.
In such cases, the analogy with an oxygen mask is appropriate. Checking your “mask” is not selfish, but critically important for everyone. Ask yourself questions: “Do I have everything I need to move on? I took a deep breath and felt my feet hit the ground? Am I calm, unruffled, and able to react thoughtfully? If you don’t do this, the state of distress will persist and you won’t be able to show empathic care.
2. Question your thoughts and feelings
If you have strong negative feelings, a cognitive reappraisal strategy can help. It allows you to change the interpretation of an event or situation, reduce anxiety, get rid of depression after a stressful event. To re-evaluate a worrying situation, ask yourself the following questions:
- What exactly hit me?
- What do I think and what do I represent?
- How do these thoughts make me feel?
- Why do I think these thoughts reflect reality?
- Why do I think these thoughts do not reflect her?
- What will help me to look at this problem differently?
- What actions can I take right now?
If you regularly question your thoughts, you will learn to change your point of view, reduce the influence of negative emotions, and begin to respond more deliberately to the experiences of other people.
3. Put feelings into words
In one recent study, researchers followed health care professionals who were being trained in nonviolent communication. Those who expressed their feelings more often during the training reported a decrease in empathic distress.
The process of non-violent communication involves the expression of empathy for the feelings and basic needs of another and is based on our innate capacity for compassion. Participants in the study, when discussing real problems, focused on expressing strong emotions such as despair and anger. The organizers provided participants with discussion plans and taught them how to conduct non-violent communication.
If you can identify, name and accept an emotion aloud or silently, it loses its intensity.
During the group sessions, the researchers recorded and counted the occasions when subjects simply and clearly described their feelings—for example, saying, “I am satisfied/pleased/glad/happy.” The results of the study showed that participants who said such phrases more often during the training were better at coping with empathic distress at work after the training was completed, compared with the control group, which did not receive training.
Researchers suggest that nonviolent communication training helps reduce empathic distress by teaching people to distance themselves from their emotions. If you can identify, name, and accept an emotion out loud or in your mind, it loses its intensity.
4. Try to respond with compassion
Compassion training can also help reduce empathic distress. Scientists believe that empathic care and empathy are based on similar mechanisms that push us to help others. Compassion includes both concern for a suffering person and the desire to help in order to alleviate this suffering.
Last year, I myself took an eight-week course on compassion. Thanks to him, I realized that as a mother I experience empathic distress, and I learned to separate myself from the child. It’s not always easy, but the meditations that underlie the training have helped me regularly practice several key skills: observing my sense of empathy, separating myself from the suffering person, channeling caring and good feelings to the outside world.
Mindful meditation strengthens the ability to respond with compassion to the pain of others
Compassion training often teaches the “loving kindness” meditation, in which you spread a feeling of warmth and care in an expanding circle: first towards yourself, then to a loved one, then to someone to whom you are neutral, then to a person in difficult situation, and last but not least, to a total stranger. Research shows that mindfulness meditation strengthens our ability to respond compassionately to the pain of others.
Remember, we have many tools at our disposal to help deal with difficult emotions and strengthen our ability to help friends and family. Check your condition, question thoughts and feelings, verbalize emotions, and develop compassion through mindfulness practices. This will help develop mental resilience at home and at work.
About the author: Amy L. Iva is an educational psychologist at the Center for the Science of the Higher Good at the University of California, Berkeley.