How we avoid empathy.
The 7 ‘Ds’.
How empathic are you? How easy do you find it to sustain empathy? What happens when you don’t? Here we take a psychological look at 7 ways we defend against empathy.
In a moment I am going to invite you to do a short exercise. It’s an exercise that could be applied to any type of suffering — but here we will use the example of people fleeing difficulty.
A few years ago I gave this exercise as part of a training I was running for some newly appointed guards at Campsfield House, a prison for asylum seekers in the UK . They reported that it had a powerful effect. All credit to them for engaging with it.
To do the exercise you need to set aside 5 minutes to look at two pictures before you read the analysis — don’t skimp this or it wont be so powerful.
So, let’s go:
As you look at the pictures below track all your own feelings and thoughts. Be honest with yourself. You could experience a whole range of reactions including physical sensations in your body…Nothing is right or wrong here, this is just your internal process.
Observe whatever you are thinking and feeling:
Before you read on, write down what happened when you looked at these pictures. Be honest with yourself, no-one else need ever know…
***
When you have finished, take a few moments to be kind to yourself, whatever your reaction was. What I asked you to do is really hard so there is no shame if you found this difficult. It’s hard to open up to suffering in others. It’s painful. Scientists have evidence of this in brain scans of people experiencing empathy — the areas of the brain that light up are the areas to do with pain. For more on this see my article on Empathy fatigue and what can be done about it.
There are really only two ways of reacting to suffering in another person. Defensively and un-empathically, or expansively and empathically. I think of it as like a switch inside us with only two positions. I reckon pretty much all of us are capable of having the switch in either position — I certainly am. Defensive, or expansive. Heart open or contracted. We toggle back and forth. Sometimes the switch can move several times in a single minute. Perhaps, if you were really honest with yourself, you may have noticed some defensive reactions. If you didn’t see any in yourself then you could be a modern day saint!
…Or, it might mean that it could be helpful to look a bit deeper into this side of yourself, at your defensive reactions.
But make sure you do it in a kindly way.
Our defensive reactions can be described by 7 ‘D’s. Here we will illustrate them with reference to asylum seekers.
Distraction – e.g. Thinking about something else, letting our minds wander. Let’s change the channel — we don’t need to focus on this. Did you really spend 5 minutes looking at the pictures or did you move on quickly? Did you write down your reactions? Be honest! You may have sped on because you felt you were in a hurry or wanted to get to the explanation quickly and that may be perfectly valid — you didn’t have to do as I asked. Or this may have been a rationalisation. We don’t like to focus on suffering and will use all kinds of excuses and distractions to avoid doing the work. It’s a discipline to stay connected with suffering, it takes time and patience. We need to open our hearts and keep breathing.
Denial/Disbelief– e.g. Refugees fabricate their stories- they are just manipulating the system. They are not really refugees or they would have stopped in the first country they came to. They are really economic migrants, not refugees. Their stories are unbelievable- it can’t be this bad. Surely there was something else they could have done? Perhaps these were fake pictures taken from a film.
Disassociation e.g. It’s not my fault. This isn’t my problem- they aren’t from this country, they don’t have the same religion as me, they don’t look like me, they don’t have the same colour skin, the same culture. They are not from my tribe. Charity begins (and ends) at home. It’s nothing to do with me.
Disempowerment– e.g. There isn’t anything I can do so there is no point in focussing on this. Anything I might do would just be a drop in the ocean anyhow. (Mother Teresa when accused of being ‘just a drop in the ocean’ responded that the ocean is made up of drops).
Distortion of internal feelings– e.g. Especially feeling angry rather than guilty. Bruno Bettleheim wrote about this in his book ‘The Informed Heart’. Bettleheim was in a concentration camp. He watched the Nazi guards as they reacted to Jews requesting a day off because of ill health. Those that pleaded were rarely given a day off whereas those that were more matter of fact sometimes got some mercy. Bettleheim deduced that the ones that pleaded made the guards feel guilty — but because they didn’t want to feel guilty, it’s a painful feeling, they became angry at its cause instead. We have to be really careful with guilt. If you felt guilty looking at the pictures then it may have evoked feelings of anger in you. How dare this blogger (the author!) inflict these images on me? He’s being totally unethical showing such terrible images. Sometimes we convert the guilt into anger so quickly that we don’t even clock that we started off feeling guilty. Next time you get angry with someone close check out if you have an underlying feeling of guilt that you don’t care to admit, even to yourself. If you are anything like me you might notice that it happens a lot. Another distortion is to feel powerless (as above) . We’re not powerless, there are plenty of ways to help refugees.
Distrust– e.g. if I do open up to these people’s suffering and try to help them they might manipulate me, exploit me, take me for granted. Also: if I allow myself to feel this I may never be able to feel OK again. I might get stuck in the emotion.
Defamation (also scape-goating) e.g. asylum seekers are scroungers, greedy, lazy, dependent, unskilled, dishonest, criminals, terrorists, cowards who should have stayed and fought etc. Scapegoating is an ancient practice said to come from the Greeks. At regular intervals the villagers would round up, find a goat, give the goat all their difficult feelings and then either kill it or chase it out of the community. Everyone got to feel better (for a bit), except, of course, the goat.
Well done if you noticed that you had any of these reactions. It is perfectly natural to be defensive, we all do it. By becoming more conscious of our defences, though, we can become less controlled by them, and progress towards being more empathic.
Lets have a quick look at what that means — at the more expansive, compassionate orientation. I think it is best described by a lovely Nguni Bantu word ‘Ubuntu’ which does not have a direct translation into Engish. Roughly translated it means ‘I am because we are’ and ‘your problem is my problem’. Someone with Ubuntu is deeply concerned for the welfare of others and identified with the community as a whole in its widest possible sense. They see that humans are all the same species and inter-related — whichever part of the planet we come from. They see that none of us own the planet, or any part of it, and that we need to share it with each other and the plants and animals.
They see this man or woman from another country who has is suffering after travelling many miles on a boat as ‘my brother or sister’…
Perhaps you will have accessed some version of this orientation, however mildly, in the mix, when you contemplated the pictures?
Don’t worry if you didn’t though — it’s so easy to block it out- in the ways discussed.
Also don’t worry if you didn’t have the pure feeling just described (this is very rare in my experience — mostly we have a range of feelings and thoughts and our motivations are almost never ‘pure’ — but we need to make sure this realisation doesn’t disable us.)
May you dwell in ubuntu.
Your comments on this article are welcome. Perhaps you would like to share how the exercise was for you and anything that you learnt, or found hard, or maybe you have thoughts to contribute to the discussion. You can also contact me privately by email here.
And, if you’ve found this article useful, please do spread the love by sharing it with others.
