When Empathy Hurts
What is empathy?
Your best friend’s grandmother passes away, and your heart aches for him. Your colleague’s daughter reaches her crowdfunding goal for her gender-affirming surgery, and you rejoice. This is what empathy is; it’s our ability to recognize, understand, and share in the feeling of another person’s emotions. It’s an amazing phenomenon, and one that can greatly strengthen interpersonal relationships. But if you’ve ever shared in another person’s emotional experience in this way, chances are you may have gone overboard, empathizing to the point at which you carry their emotional burden with you throughout the day. And empathy, like many good things, can take a toll when unbridled.
Rather than a personality trait, empathy is something that’s built into many of our brains (though not all, and not all to the same degree).
Neurons in our brains allow us to unconsciously mirror those around us through stimulation of the same parts of our brain that are being stimulated in another’s. When we say we can “feel someone’s pain,” this is true - seeing someone prick their finger on a thorn can activate sensory areas in our brain just as it does theirs.
This mirroring doesn’t just take place when we watch someone physically suffer; it also happens on an emotional level thanks to the many, minute cues we have of how someone is feeling, including tone of voice, facial expression, and body language. Our brains can literally recreate emotions internally that we are watching play out in front of us.
Just as distressing emotions felt on the individual level can be detrimental to your psychological and physical well-being, so can those we experience second-hand from people around us. It can activate our stress hormones and fight-or-flight responses. It can make us physically ill, or distract us from important responsibilities in our own lives. It can also lead to resentment, if we consider the other person responsible for all that we have taken on.
So what can we do to temper the impact of empathy on our minds and bodies?
One strategy is mindfulness. The more aware we are of our own thoughts, emotions, and sensations, the better equipped we are to recognize whether they are serving us or not. While basic empathy with a friend’s struggle can be an important indication of care, it doesn’t help anyone if we are overtaken by their distress—in fact, it can paralyze us and render us incapable of supporting them at all. Take a moment to reflect and ask yourself whether what you’re feeling is truly a feeling of your own, a feeling of someone else’s, or a combination of the two.
Grounding exercises, like body scans and deep breathing, can also remind our brains of our individual experience. If we can recenter ourselves in the feeling of our own feet touching the ground beneath them, it can be easier to release our reactions to others’ experiences. Here are a couple examples to try out:
Body Scan
As you slowly shift your attention from the bottom of your body to the top, notice sensations of all kinds: warmth, coolness, a breeze over your skin, pain or discomfort. Start at your feet, eventually moving upwards to your calves, thighs, pelvis, stomach, chest, back, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, neck, and head. Once you’ve reached your head, do the same process in reverse until you finish with your feet on the ground.
Five Senses
From wherever you are sitting, identify 5 things you can see. These may be things you’ve never noticed before, or things that you haven’t noticed in a while.
Identify 4 things you can feel. If you aren’t already touching 4 items, feel free to pick up an object and notice its texture.
Identify 3 things you can hear, including background or outside noises.
Identify 2 things you can smell. If only one sticks out, light a candle or pick up a piece of food.
Identify 1 thing you can taste. If no taste sticks out, chew a piece of gum, or take a sip of a drink.
Some of us would describe ourselves as so sensitive and empathetic that even emotionally charged movies and TV shows can be overwhelming. While it’s always handy to practice mindfulness and grounding skills, there’s also nothing wrong with choosing light-hearted entertainment over the more heavy hitting content. There’s no need to cause yourself undue distress if an emotional movie or TV show isn’t particularly important to you.
And lastly, reflect on the give-and-take of your relationships.
If you find yourself constantly absorbing a friend’s distress while they hardly ask about your own, this might not be a particularly rewarding relationship. Setting personal boundaries can help you remain cognizant of the support you deserve and the protective strategies you are allowed to employ. It’s possible to have fulfilling, reciprocal, and emotionally attuned relationships, and we all deserve to find them.
BLOG AUTHORS ALL HOLD POSITIONS AT THE GENDER & SEXUALITY THERAPY CENTER (G&STC). THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN BY G&STC THERAPIST IN TRAININGSULA MALINA. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT OUR THERAPISTS AND SERVICES PLEASE CONTACT US.