Detangling Empathy And Compassion

Empathy and Compassion are different things. They are not synonyms, despite often being used interchangeably. There is fascinating work on this within neuroscience, notably the research of Dr Tania Singer, who first demonstrated that they take place in different parts of the brain and elicit different physiological responses and therefore different real life outcomes. Empathy can activate the same brain regions as physical pain, and compassion can activate our reward pathways - releasing ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitters such as dopamine. While many, sometimes prominent, ‘thought leaders’ invoke this difference in their work, there is often much missing from their analysis and sometimes vague, irresponsible and harmful intimations about how we should use this information (I’m looking at you, Adam Grant).

Empathy is ‘other’ focused, and this is not as helpful as it might seem. Focusing entirely on whomever you are ‘trying to help’ is how we end up with white saviourism, toxic self-sacrifice and traits of vulnerable narcissism. We need to include ourselves in the context of whatever we are doing so that we can reflect on and be accountable for our own needs and actions. I have witnessed those working in social justice be so ‘other’ focused that they are no longer self aware enough to show up without causing harm, something I know I have done myself. Colonial culture places a huge emphasis on ‘charity’ and ‘sacrifice’ rather than providing the basic human needs that keep us nourished and thriving, nor grounded, equitable encouragement to look after ourselves. It demonises true care for oneself as selfish while still encouraging a glamourised, bastardised version of self-care to make billions from a wellness industry built on the appropriation of ancient Indigenous practices while the true guardians of those practices are exploited and harmed.

Compassion is ‘us’ focused. It begins with empathy, and extends beyond it. We become connected, we recognise that we are dependent on each other, we are community, we are one. It involves considering what is best for them, what is best for me, what is best for us. It is only by holding both of these things, that we can discern a course of action that transcends our individualism and becomes an act of social justice deeply rooted in our shared life force. It is what enables us to remove the layers of colonial constructs that blur our sense of reality, to set boundaries, to act from a place of considered reflection, to act with meaningful impact. When we act from compassion, it is from a place of connected and ancient knowing. That, is why it feels so good, why it nourishes our immune system, our relationships and makes us live longer. It is fundamental to the essence of life as members of an interconnected existence.

If we repeatedly tap into empathy without being able to redirect to compassion, we will experience empathic distress which can eventually lead to empathic burnout - it may manifest as a numb and apathetic feeling in response to the suffering of others, it may manifest as illness, it can even turn us towards violent and oppressive paths. Autistics report everything from not experiencing affective empathy (imagining/mirroring another’s feelings) at all, to experiencing it for inanimate objects and animals but not humans, to feeling debilitating levels of empathy for all beings. Cognitive empathy is being able to relate to/understand someone’s mental state, and this is the version we are most often accused of lacking, however research into the ‘double empathy problem’ has demonstrated that non-Autistics have just as much trouble imagining an Autistic’s mental state as we do theirs, so the issue is much more to do with not being able to predict the thought processes of a mindbody that works differently to your own. Rather than all this information leading to some pathologised and dehumanising rhetoric about Autistics, it should tell us that it is normal for there to be vast variation within the human experience of empathy. I am on the latter end of the affective empathy scale, such that seeing people injured, or hearing injuries described, can result in intense shooting pains in my mindbody - often my legs. I once witnessed my Grandmother stumble and was too far away to prevent her from falling, so my empathy manifested in mirroring the accident by buckling my knees beneath me. The fact I was unable to help in any meaningful way is what is key here. Empathy becomes distress when our actions are either futile or misguided. My mindbody often tells me with physical prompts when what I am doing doesn’t actually help in the long run/bigger picture (i.e jumping up to stop my Grandma falling when I was several meters away). Being able to divert empathy towards compassion, is how we can achieve meaningful action. It’s important also to recognise that one does not need to ‘feel’ empathy, emotionally or physically, to act from compassion. Whether one experiences empathy as an emotion, a physical feeling, or an ethical responsibility - is largely irrelevant. It is the ability to recognise another has unmet needs, and what you do next, that matters.

What this understanding should not lead to, is a watering down of a violent reality, equating the struggles of the oppressed with the oppressor, or giving ourselves a pass to do minimal, vague gestures towards ‘comforting others’. This is not compassion - this is colonised nonsense. This (deliberately) does not lead to challenging the systems that have created the injustice we are grappling with in the first place. It encourages us to just give people hugs and send ‘good vibes’ - not to look for root causes or attempt to change anything fundamentally. To disrupt this, we need to develop our own ‘empathy versus compassion’ barometer for when and how to act and when to pause and reflect. Its also important to reflect on how limiting English can be as a language, and that naming is just a vehicle to understanding complex processes, rather than a complete and accurate reflection of reality. Many languages have extensive words and terms that make up the essence of compassion in its true meaning, far better than we can access with English. Coloniser languages developed around colonised constructs, so it makes sense that we often feel we are reaching for something more when discussing liberatory concepts in coloniser tongues.

The central challenge and task, is understanding the essence of compassion, and then cultivating it, such that it becomes a consistent and sacred practice, and therefore the foundation from which we act. Exploring global concepts of compassion and how to cultivate it within ourselves is something that needs its own article, or several. The starting point is knowing that compassion, at its core, is our path to acting from a place that balances the needs of the one and the all. It is reverence for life and our connectedness to all beings, and it is a place that already exists within you.

—AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• What would you like to do to deepen your understanding of empathy and compassion? How can you take a step towards this today?

• What might be some of the ways we can cultivate compassion?

• How can you interrupt colonial narratives around empathy and compassion that seek to maintain the status quo?

• How can you dismantle appropriated versions of self-care and instead encourage ‘us focused’ compassion?