When Empathy Leads To Burnout
How To Help Others Without Burning Out And Hurting Yourself
Humanity is an intricate web of mirrors woven together by the very fabric that holds this universe together. Every thread intricately connected to the next, creating an almost magical entity. To hold this fabric in place, there is a delicate balance of the bonds and it is when these bonds are worn that things fall apart.
At the core of our human nature is the need to connect to others, to keep in place the ties that bind us all together as one. For indeed, when we look at others they are nothing but a mere reflection of ourselves. Throughout history, man has tried to explain the reason behind the need to connect with others, without which man, as a social animal, feels lost.
We are in a constant endeavour to balance the relationships around us, interconnecting with those around us as we live our lives. Whether we take cognizance of it or not, we are all part of the greater community of the universe, of the one, as we all have a part to play in the greater good of that which surrounds us.
As we cannot extricate ourselves from the ties that bind us together, standing aloof and observing the pain of others from a distance, detached from it all, will only bring harm to ourselves.
Stoic philosophy aptly describes it, we are all parts of the same body and not caring or harming another person is akin to dismembering our own body.
‘Acquire the habit of attending carefully to what is being said by another, and of entering, so far as possible, into the mind of the speaker’ ~ Marcus Aurelius
For Marcus, the ability to show kindness and compassion toward others, rather than wallowing in anger, was one of the most important signs of true inner strength and manhood.
The Social Neuroscience
In recent years social neuroscience made considerable progress in revealing the mechanisms that enable a person to feel what another is feeling. Consistent evidence shows that sharing the emotions of others is associated with activation in neural structures that are also active during the first-hand experience of that emotion. Part of the neural activation shared between self- and other-related experiences seems to be rather automatically activated.
Several neuroscientists have discovered in their studies that one person’s pain, activates the same pain centre in the brain of the empathizer, without any first-hand infliction of pain on their person.
We literally feel the other person’s pain.
It is through empathy that we can connect with other people. When we see ourselves through the eyes of the other, we understand what they are going through, and in consequence, establish better relationships founded upon a commonality. When we empathize, we uphold the fabric of the universe, for we see in others what we see in ourselves. When we show empathy, we put ourselves in their shoes, so to speak, and we feel their suffering as though it were our own.
‘Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another.’ ~ Alfred Adle
Empathy towards our fellow humankind is an important cornerstone of religion and philosophical thinking alike. Through empathy, we cannot bear to see the suffering of another, we identify with other people. We identify with all things, as it were, we reject ego and we truly become one with the universe.
Empathy Burnout
While empathy is a precursor to peaceful coexistence among men, an excess of it can become detrimental to ones-self. When we empathize, our bodies respond to the pain of the other as though it were our own pain. In so doing, we accept the pain of the other and allow it to become part of us. In the process, it drains our very being, and we give a part of ourselves to the pain.
When we absorb the pain and suffering of those around us, it overwhelms our sensory perceptions, our cognitive minds, and indeed the very inner core of our being. We become trapped in the pain, ultimately causing us to disconnect from our being and become flooded with pain and depressive thoughts.
There’re many who regularly spend much of their time and energy caring for others which in turn exhaust them to the point of burnout, a state typically described as a mix of stress, anger, depression, and extreme frustration.
Neuroscientists referred this state of excessive caring for others as Empathy Burnout. In this state, we become crushed by the pain of others, despite our well-intentioned attempt to care which can cause us to disconnect ourselves from our pain, removing ourselves from the mesh of humanity and ultimately destroying ourselves in the process.
The Transcendental Balance
To stop being empathetic is to stop being human. But overexertion of empathy is itself counterproductive. Empathy alone will become a self-destructive tool by which we likely will destroy ourselves and the greater weaving of reality.
We must, therefore, achieve a balance in our empathy. We must transcend from the point of merely feeling for others, to having compassion for others.
We are accustomed to using the words empathy and compassion interchangeably, but if you look at the teachings of our ancient sages, teachers and philosophers you will know that empathy alone is not sufficient but it is rather compassion which will lead us to have passion for all.
The idea that there can actually be too much empathy can be traced back to early Buddhist teachings. Instead of focusing on empathy to the point of draining ourselves emotionally, Buddhism teaches the practice of compassion, called karuna. This is the idea of sharing in suffering, having concern for another, but essentially ‘feeling for and not feeling with the other.’
Empathy can be defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another while compassion is sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.
Though these definitions may, at first glance, look to be the same, they in effect convey different meanings. While empathy focuses on identifying with the pain, compassion intends to care for and try to alleviate the suffering of others while recognizing that it is not our own.
I put it to you, therefore, that to balance our empathetic feelings towards others, empathy should be a precursor to compassion. We empathize with others to understand what they are going through, then we move towards having compassion for them aspiring to help them through their pain but no longer taking the pain as our own.
We allow ourselves to feel the reality around us, to enter into our present. To stand aloof from our feelings, and cognitively recognize the pain as belonging to someone else. We recognize the pain as the illusion that it is, we allow ourselves to feel the pain, but for a fleeting moment, and then immediately return into our now, our present moment.
To rise above the ego that makes the pain our own and to see the illusion of pain for what is it.
When we recognise that pain is not real, that we, together with all beings, are both mortal and immortal simultaneously, our pain and suffering fuse together with our joy of eternal life and an incomprehensible peace takes over and we are now fully compassionate to others. In this state, our compassion goes beyond just empathy.
‘When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.’ ~ Pema Chodron
It is this balance of empathy and compassion that we must attain. A behavioural change that we have to practice, both cognitively and emotionally. When those around us come to us with their problems, we allow ourselves to empathize with the pain and transform this pain into compassion by focusing on our present reality.
Let ourselves feel our feet on the floor, feel the breeze, the heat, we remind ourselves that this pain has not been inflicted upon us, and we take control of it. We free ourselves to help others while we preserve our own health.
We must allow our minds to make a distinction between ourselves and the others to avoid burdening ourselves. When we maintain this definitive barrier, we see the pain of others for what it is. We empathize, we show compassion but we do not allow ourselves to become entangled in the pain.
