In her Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, Kristin Neff talks about the idea of mirror neurons and the way that we are, quite literally, wired to feel empathetic pain for other people – especially those we care about. This means that when we see someone we love hurting, we often suffer as well.
The ability to do so does have social and adaptive advantages, giving us the ability to emotionally connect with others and the desire to provide support.
But, resonating with another person’s emotions can be incredibly draining. This effect is often strongest for caregivers and parents who may be living with the person that they’re supporting.
The Problem of Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is a serious challenge that many caregivers, and highly empathetic people, experience. It basically comes from caring too much for too long. The emotions of being caring and supportive can quickly become overwhelming, leaving you physically and mentally exhausted.
The situation may feel almost inevitable, but it isn’t.
You can actually care for and support a person without taking on such a heavy emotional burden. Learning to do so isn’t just important for you, it is also essential for supporting someone else.
After all, being stressed and worn out makes you ineffective as a caregiver. You’re more likely to make poor decisions, to get frustrated easily, and to even lash out at the person you are supporting. And, if you’re emotional yourself, you probably can’t provide strong emotional support for the person that you are with.
Compassion Fatigue vs Empathy Fatigue
Kristin Neff, an expert in the field of self-compassion, argues that compassion fatigue isn’t an accurate term. A better description may empathy fatigue.
In her writing, Kristin draws a clear distinction between empathy and compassion. Kristin quotes Carl Rogers and says that empathy is:
“An accurate understanding of the [client’s] world as seen from the inside. To sense the client’s private world as if it were your own.”
Carl Rogers
In other words, empathy means that your emotions are resonating with that of your family member. You feel their suffering. There’s even a biological mechanism at place, called mirror neurons.
Empathy can be tiring. Anyone who is highly empathetic will know this. It’s hard to hold people’s emotions in this manner,
Compassion, on the other hand, is a little different. Kristin describes compassion as:
“A sense of tenderness and care that embraces the suffering of others, rather than struggling with it.”
She goes onto to say that empathy says “I feel you”, while compassion says “I hold you”.
The distinction might sound minor, but it isn’t at all. Where empathy can be draining, compassion is an energizing emotion. It gives you more power to act.
Making The Switch from Empathy to Compassion
So, how do you do it? How do you move from an empathetic position to a compassionate one?
We’ll talk about some approaches below, but a good place to begin is with Kristin Neff herself. In the video below, Kristin talks about self-compassion. Practicing self-compassion can be a powerful way to decrease emotional loading and to rebalance yourself.
There is also a longer video that focuses on self-compassion in more depth. You can find that full video here. The embedded version below starts part way through, where Kristin is focusing on the idea of over-identification and leads into a practical self-compassion exercise.
In her books and the videos above, Kristin suggests an important part of decreasing empathy fatigue is to take an inward focus first. To be compassionate to yourself for the emotions that you feel. Struggling is allowed, after all.
The idea here is to first breathe in loving and compassionate kindness towards yourself. You might need to physically stop, close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths in to do this.
The process helps to calm and center you, giving you more energy for the other person. This is a practice that can even be done in the moment where life feels overwhelming.
Compassion In, Kindness Out
Kristin talks about how you can breathe in compassion for yourself, then breathe out loving kindness for the other person. Doing so should make it easier to support your family member without taking all of their emotions onto yourself. While the idea of relying on breath in this manner might sound unusual, the idea is a variation on meditation practices and can be powerful.
Kristin also talks about a moment in her experience as a therapist, where one of her clients was suicidal. In her discussion, she mentions that her initial reaction was one of fear for her client. She did not want him to hurt himself.
Such fear is not helpful for the person who is suffering, while an emotional connection is. Kristin kept this distinction in mind as she breathed in compassion for herself and breathed out loving kindness for her client.
Understanding the Situation
She also mentioned being aware of her own position – particularly the fact that her client’s life was not her responsibility.
This distinction is a critical one for caregivers and anyone who is highly empathetic.
No matter who you are caring for or supporting, even if it is your own child or parent, you are not responsible for their happiness.
They are an individual person. You can give them the best tools in the world and plenty of support, but the ultimate decisions that a person makes for their life are their own.
And, sometimes, the person you are supporting might need to make some ‘bad’ decisions before they make the ‘right’ ones. After all, humans learn through experience. There’s often no shortcut to that process. We simply need to go through it.
Mindfulness vs. Over-Identification
Understanding the situation is one example of a more general theme – being mindful rather than over-identifying. As Kristin points out, when we’re in a crisis, we often become over-identified with the story behind the emotions.
It’s really easy to get caught up in everything that we feel, which often creates a very strong feedback loop.
Identifying strongly with your emotions like this can make you much more reactive, often meaning that everything you feel is stronger and more painful. Even just being in this state for a little while can be exhausting.
Kirstin’s approach focuses on stepping back, being aware of what you’re feeling and being compassionate for those challenges. You’re paying attention to the emotions and supporting yourself, rather than buying into the story behind them.
Which is powerful, because honestly, the story is just a story anyway.
Engage in Compassionate Listening
Empathetic responses to a person’s experience can be strong. When this happens, we often unconsciously look for ways to relieve this response, to feel better.
For example, if a friend is talking to you about an emotional challenge that they’re experiencing, like a bad breakup or a problem with their aging mother, it’s easy to jump in and offer advice or perhaps make a parallel to your own experience.
This distress pattern is a way to ease your emotional suffering, but it can be incredibly frustrating for the speaker. They’re often not looking for solutions – and any solutions that you can offer are likely to be ones they’ve already thought of themselves.
Sometimes, often, the most valuable thing that you can do for another person is simply to listen. To hear them and let them talk for as long as they need to.
Listening like this doesn’t need to be difficult or draining.
Kristin talks about practicing self-compassion here too, including the idea of being compassionate with yourself about how difficult it is to sit and listen. It’s also important to be willing to sit with the discomfort, to breathe it in and breathe out love and support for the other person.
It can help if you change your view of your own role. Your goal isn’t to alleviate your friend’s suffering (or your own). You’re not there to make things better. Instead, you’re there to provide support.
After all, let’s face it.
Many of the highly emotional problems that people face don’t have a solution. Some situations, like caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s, are simply challenging – and are likely to remain so.
The same is true if you’re supporting someone with depression. Your solutions and insights often won’t help. Trust me on this, I’ve been on the receiving end.
Unless the person specifically asks for advice or assistance, the most powerful thing that you can do is to simply be there for them.
Final Thoughts
We often have this idea that being caring towards ourselves is selfish. That we should always be reaching out to others and helping them.
Yet, in many ways, the reverse is true.
Not being compassionate to yourself, not supporting your own needs ends up being more selfish, as your ability to support others becomes more limited. The more overwhelmed you are, the more likely you are to react poorly to a situation, perhaps by giving unasked for advice or getting angry over something minor.
Learning to be compassionate to yourself, to support yourself even in the midst of crisis, gives you the tools needed to then be there for another person.
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