Empathy/Compassion. 14th July 2020.
During counselling training a lot of emphasis is put on empathy and advanced empathy, but very little is said about compassion. Empathy is a key skill but compassion does not feature in this way.
I have just read a book called Humankind…A hopeful history by Rutger Bregman. He wrote a section titled ‘Temper your Empathy, train your Compassion.’ It made me think, and in particular it made me think about what the client needs from their counselor. I want to write about and quote some of this because I think it is very interesting and important.
He quotes a Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard who had spent much time meditating and thinking. He was invited by a neurologist to have his brain scanned, to find out what brains do when we feel empathy. Ricard had to watch a film about ‘lonely Romanian orphans.’ Having watched this Ricard was asked to go into the brain scanner the next day and recall how those orphans looked and imagine how they felt. An hour later he was described as being a wreck. Empathy is exhausting.
The next day the neurologist asked Ricard to think about the Romanian orphans while he was in the scanner, but this time he was to ‘feel for them not with them.’ Instead of experiencing their suffering as best he could ‘he kept himself removed from it’ and applied feelings of ‘warmth, care and concern,’ in other words, Compassion. Different parts of his brain lit up this time.
Compassion unlike empathy is not exhausting. ‘Compassion is more controlled, remote and constructive,’ and more energy inducing rather than energy sapping. You recognize someone elses ‘distress and you can then act’ accordingly. Reason can also be helpful here, because it allows us to put things into a rational perspective and understand the other person.
Counselling puts a lot of emphasis on emotions, and feeling the feelings. But I have often wondered as a client and sometimes as a counselor whether this is very productive. Having suffered acute anxiety at various stages in my life I have not found it to be of any use on any occasion. Reason is far more useful, but anxiety just happens and tries to derail reason. The amygdala where anxiety emanates from is often too big. It is a legacy from the past when we had to look out for lions because we might get eaten, or some other threat. Some low key anxiety or some nervousness can be useful, but not crippling anxiety that stops you leaving the house.
I have heard of counselors who have been overwhelmed by their clients stories, even reduced to tears. But feeling for the client, not with them, and being removed from their suffering as Ricard experienced, and then being compassionate instead and using your intellect might be more beneficial to the client. An overwhelmed tearful counselor is not really much use.
So perhaps compassion and reason rather than empathy are more constructive and supportive of the client.
