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Reading about empathy and compassion this morning. Fascinating. Compassion is to take action to relieve suffering, but showing compassion while working with others helps with the relationships. We can strengthen compassion but things get in the way too - 1/n
Empathy and compassion are often confused. Empathy is being able to understand, relate to and/share in another person's experience. Empathy can feel so strong that it overwhelms - it can lead us to change the topic of conversation or jump in to try to fix the problem 2/n
to make it go away. We feel cognitive empathy (understanding) and affective (embodied - taking on others distress) empathy. If we experience both of these, it can be overwhelming. In this case, empathy can lead us away from compassion when we don't know how to hold the 3/n
intensity of a shared suffering. Sustainable compassion - where you aren't overwhelmed and try to avoid others suffering, means separating self from others. Compassion fatigue is about being overwhelmed about your own feelings about the suffering of others 4/n
Disgust in caring situations, can be as a result of empathy overload - you understand and feel the suffering of others but you are so close to it that it makes you want to turn away. Compassion involves empathy - you start with the awareness of suffering, you feel something 5/n
about it, and you want to relieve that suffering. You believe there is something you can do to help. You are willing to respond to the suffering - take action and then you feel something good about that response. You feel good if you help to relieve the suffering, and/or your 6/n
relationship with the other person helps. Compassion fatigue can happen if you continually go through this process and you encounter barriers. e.g if you are a healthcare professional, not being able to access the right services for patients or you look out in the world and 7/n
see people actively creating more suffering. Compassion comes from a mindset of believing in the good and that it is possible to relieve suffering. Support from society, adequate supports for people nourish all of our ability to sustain compassion. If compassion is lost, 8/n
it is often because people aren't supported or feel that showing compassion is pointless.
I'll share more later as I read more. But it does look like our current world with all its suffering and barriers could be impacting our ability to be compassionate.
I'll share more later as I read more. But it does look like our current world with all its suffering and barriers could be impacting our ability to be compassionate.
Useful book...
