Empathy is about experiencing the emotional perspective of another, like “walking in someone else’s shoes”. Compassion involves empathy, it also includes acting. For instance, we may notice someone drop their shopping and offer to help.
Understanding the feelings of others reaches right back to our early ancestors when emotions evolved to support social bonding and collaboration. Interestingly, scientists have also found empathy in other animals including great apes, dolphins, elephants, dogs, and even rodents. The recent neurobiological discovery of mirror neurons explains how we pick up on what others are feeling in our own bodies. Similar to a radio receiver, we’re all vulnerable to picking up the expressed emotions of people around us. This even works remotely; watching someone taking part in a stressful event on television can cause anxiety and produce symptoms of stress, including rising levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Emotions can also be unconsciously shared over social media. In one experiment researchers found that when timeline stories were manipulated to be more negative than usual, user posts tended to be more negative.
We can experience emotional empathy, where we feel the same as another person, and cognitive empathy, where we simply understand in a more detached way, which is the definition of sympathy. For example, sympathy cards often have the message, “Thinking of you”.
Of course, empathy can be positive when you feel the positive emotions of others. For instance, when someone full of energy and happiness enters a room. Clearly understanding and empathising with how other people feel is important, but if this means taking on other people’s feelings that do not serve us, then what is the point? If you try and help someone full of anxiety, but feel anxious yourself, are you really helping or hindering the situation?
Although empathy and compassion are often used interchangeably, the differences are that:
- Empathy is feeling with the other person, tends to be reactive and passive, and feelings are less regulated.
- Compassion is feeling for the other person, tends to be responsive and active, and feelings are more regulated.
An experiment that proves these differences involved scanning the brains of monks who were experienced in developing compassion. Although it sounds a bit bizarre, the monks were asked to practise a compassion meditation known as loving-kindness, while they heard the sounds of people suffering. Non-meditators, who were controls in the same experiment, showed activity associated with empathy, and feelings of sadness and pain. Interestingly, the brain scans from the monks showed that activity in areas linked to empathy was suppressed, while areas involved with care and positive social attachment were active. When researchers taught the loving-kindness practice to people in the control group, they found that people responded in the same way as the monks. And when followed up, these people also reported that they were less stressed at work and experiencing increased well-being.
Empathy is an automatic reaction that often goes unacknowledged. Compassion is more to do with being calm and aware enough to avoid taking on unnecessary emotional distress from others, so we’re better resourced to provide help and support when it’s needed.
Suggested weekly practice
- Notice when you take on other people’s feelings – feeling with rather than feeling for
- Explore the difference between empathy and compassion during the week
- Try using the loving-kindness practice as a meditation, but also when you are out and about. For instance, sending loving-kindness to strangers on public transport.
Guided practice
- Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
- Play the first mindful mantra practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
- Then close your eyes while this meditation plays to experience using the loving-kindness practice.
