Tania Singer, expert in social neuroscience at Max Planck Institut, studied brain reactions to empathy and compassion.
People with a lot of empathy want to change that to compassion so they don’t get overwhelmed when confronted with suffering.
Read the full article at:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/12/tania-singer-compassion-burnout
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Singer. I’ve experienced what the article describes but with a weird twist. Over ten years ago my job entailed dealing with total strangers, about four to five thousand a year. It was inevitable that I met people with massive social problems and after five years of working non-stop my doctor told me that I needed a change. Basically I had fallen into the trap of empathizing with the clients. All this, as Dr. Singer suggests, happened at a subconscious level and it was making me sick, little by little and over time. In fact, after I managed to convince my boss to switch me to a different department I immediately began to feel better.
Over the last six years I’ve been again dealing with lots of different people although it’s to do with our internal Human Resources department. Meeting many colleagues, I’m getting the same bad vibes from people with personal problems (many are friends) but this time I’m not suffering as before. It must be the process that the article describes; I’ve switched from empathy to compassion and it’s not making me ill. It must be because I can relate to colleagues better (all in the same boat) and perhaps because I can suggest possible solutions from an HR perspective. Also, there’s a twist, in many cases I know for fact that the moaning and groaning of many colleagues is all an “Act” to gain some kind of advantage, information, etc. etc., and I’ve learned to identify the time wasters much faster than before. In these cases the emotion in neither empathy nor compassion but disgust and ultimately, total disregard.
I had not noticed this inversion in my outlook so I can only put it down to another subconscious mechanism. Since reading the article I’ve been thinking about the other interactions I have that make me teeter emotionally, in particular, with regards to animals. I love animals and can’t stand to see them suffer. I’ve realized that with animals I have a completely different reaction; I find that I feel both empathic and compassionate at the same time. I hate this trait of mine but I automatically stare into the eyes of animals I encounter and I can instantly empathize with the creature. Can it be that an animal can communicate so much through their eyes; perhaps the literal “loss for words” gives them this only channel of communication (apart from body language). If this is so then I believe it is a much more sincere and precise way of communicating with us. Humans seem to have lost this form of interaction; perhaps we need to practice more [in front of a mirror] eye expressions and maybe, one day, we’ll all be able to communicate better without having to say a word.
Sorry for going off on a tangent, having a weird day. Great article nonetheless and food for thought. 🙂