The last several years have brought challenges on many different fronts: a pandemic, a major war in Europe, multiple mass shootings in our own country and wide-spread divisiveness in the world. With 24-7 coverage of everything as it happens, we are constantly exposed to stressful situations, making it difficult to maintain a positive feeling about the world around us and our roles in that world.
April was Stress Awareness Month and a recent poll from the American Psychological Association found Americans are under an unprecedented level of stress. Sixty-five percent said they were stressed about money and the economy, in addition to the war in Ukraine. Dr. Gregory Jantz, a psychologist and best-selling author, told ABC News Wendy Ryan that we are at the beginning of a mental health pandemic because of the ongoing crises over the past two years from the pandemic and related issues. Dr. Jantz said that in the face of continuing disturbing information from many fronts we need to limit the amount of negative information we allow ourselves to be saturated with.
He said it is important in troubling times to find ways to move beyond ourselves. Our fears can be very real, but Dr. Jantz says we cannot dwell on them or risk having them take us to places we don’t want to go. He recommends finding ways you can be of help and service to others like working in local volunteer organizations. Simply making a conscious decision to treat those around us in a way in which we would like to be treated can do so much, from bringing a smile to someone’s face, to lessening their anxiety and equally important to bringing the same benefits to ourselves.
Empathy and compassion were terms largely used in the fields of social work and counseling in the past. Now leaders in business, sports, education and many other fields hail compassion and empathy as critical to dealing successfully with the many challenges of our modern world. These terms stem from the same desire – better relating to and understanding others’ experiences, but there are differences.
Empathy is so deeply rooted in our brains and bodies that it is considered to be actually instinctual. It refers to experiencing another’s negative or positive emotions as if they were our own. A down side of empathy is what psychologists refer to as emotional empathy, which is trying not only to understand what other people feel but to actually feel their pain. This, of course, can lead to burnout for caregivers and even for people in their everyday interactions with others. Another issue is that empathy isn’t neutral and makes us sympathetic toward individuals we relate to more closely. It can make us less likely to connect with people whose experiences don’t mirror our own.
Compassion is defined as acting from a sense of empathy and altruism to relieve other people’s suffering. Real compassion requires action to relieve the pain of another while empathy merely requires feeling their pain. You must make a choice in order to fully experience compassion, whereas empathy is a reflexive emotional response. Compassion allows you to deeply understand another’s issues without losing your sense of separateness and stability. Raw empathy can leave you in as much emotional distress as the other person. Compassion creates an emotional distance from the individual and the situation. We can allow others’ negative emotions or actions to affect us or even cause us to misjudge them based on our own biases, but the practice of compassion can allow us to rise above this.
It is now recognized that empathy and compassion are not simply characteristics you have or don’t have. Both areas can be improved through training and exposure by increasing our awareness of others’ needs, values and life experiences. Compassion can be as simple as giving a seat to a pregnant woman on the bus or being patient while listening to a much-repeated story from an elderly relative.
Compassion starts with ourselves. We need to connect with our own values to allow us to increase our concern and acceptance for others. As we practice compassion and see the impact it has on others around us, we will recognize that compassion is the beginning of a positive feedback loop. When we respond to even the most trying people in our lives with kindness and understanding, it is very likely that their response to us will be more positive. Compassion is a true win-win and everyone benefits. It leads to an environment that is energizing, supportive and sustainable for us all, which is even more important during the challenging times we have been experiencing.