GHCl Digest - JANUARY 2018

Issue 93, February edition
18
Negative Empathy
– feeling too much or too less
Is it possible to have too much empathy? If we ‘feel with’ other people, is it possible for us to become
swamped by their feelings, especially if they are experiencing nega$ve states. This ar$cle will help you in overcoming
this feeling of Nega$ve Empathy….
Negave empathy is a state of being so sensive to other people’s experiences that we become overwhelmed
by their suffering, to the point where we begin to suffer ourselves. This is a very real problem,
which many of us experience from me to me. Because of the risk of negave empathy, some people
close themselves off from other people’s suffering, build an armour around themselves, to minimise
the risk of further emoonal damage. But as empathy is one of human beings’ most precious and noble
capacies, so it would be absurd for us to suppress it. And there should be no need for us to suppress
it, if we take the right approach. It is not inevitable that other people’s suffering should disturb
us. It is possible for us to be deeply empathic, without suffering any potenal negave effects.
The most important thing is not to ‘latch on’ to other people’s suffering, or to idenfy with it. We
should allow other people’s suffering to flow through us like a river, without clinging to it, and creang
stories relang to it. We can be affected by it at the moment we experience it, and respond to it in the
appropriate way but then allow it to pass through.
This is quite difficult to do, but it’s not dissimilar to how we should ideally respond to our own experience.
When we experience emoonal pain as individuals, we oBen make the mistake of latching on to
it. For example, if we have an experience which is embarrassing or disappoinng, we oBen ruminate
over it for a long me aBerwards. And as we ruminate, the experience wounds us more deeply, and we
build up more resentment and anger. But usually, if we don't latch on to the experience, the emoonal
damage heals quite quickly. It is latching on to and idenfying with the experience which brings most of
the pain.
And this applies to other people’s sufferings too. It’s important for us to maintain a place of stability,
where we can ‘feel with’ other people, without being disturbed by their suffering. This doesn’t mean
being detached or aloof. It means being inmately involved in other people’s lives, but at the same
me not immersed in them.
And significantly, this actually makes us much more capable of responding effecvely to other people’s
suffering. Ideally, empathy leads to altruism - benevolent acts which help to alleviate the suffering of
others. But negave empathy can create such a state of discord and confusion that we may not be able
to act in this way.
So remember, to ‘feel with’ does not necessarily mean to ‘suffer with’ others. In fact the less we
suffer ourselves, the beJer we are able to respond to suffering.