EMPATHY: When It's Helpful and When It's Not

Thanks for stopping by. And this is Josh of Dharma Punks New York. Welcome. I hope you're doing well. I guess mentioned that as a Buddhist pastor, the way I survive entirely is by donations. I never charge for any of the counseling that I do and any of the talks that I give. Just up to whatever you feel is appropriate for you, uh, with the understanding that if you can't give, of course, no worries. If you do give anything is just gratefully received.

It's all done anonymously, so I don't know, but I'm really grateful for the support that allows me to keep doing this. So the Venmos Dharma Punks with an X NYC and the rest of the ways of donating to keep These talks going is on the Dharma Punks within XNYC dot com website. And that's it. Tonight's talk is on empathy. When it's

skillful when it's not and how to keep it beneficial and how to develop empathy when we struggle at times with it. So it's important when giving any talk on empathy to start by reviewing the difference between empathy and sympathy, because they're often blurred. And why one of the above, empathy and sympathy, is beneficial for close relationships, while the other is best for social activism and helping. Peoples we don't No So sympathy is cognitively understanding another person's hardship.

without actually feeling experiencing what they're feeling. We don't actually when we're sympathetic share the emotions of someone who's suffering, but we can grasp the difficulty of what they're facing. Sympathy is primarily localized in the cerebral cortex, meaning it's thought or intellectual response to someone else's suffering. Skillful sympathy when we provide ideas or uh we take actions to address another person's suffering.

And that's very beneficial, especially when it's with people we don't know. Unskilful sympathy is tinged with pity and condescension and a sense of superiority. The the person who walks past an unhoused person and rather dismissively throws a dollar towards them, but the entire exchange is based on a sense of disconnected condescension.

There's definitely skillful sympathy and it's when we really understand how someone's situation is difficult and we take any kind of measure perhaps to address it.

Empathy is actually it's not focused on necessarily addressing another person's situation or fixing or solving, but rather it's focused on feeling to a skillful degree what they are experiencing internally. If you are with a close friend who is very sad after a breakup and you start to feel sad or what it's like and it evokes in you the same sense of loss.

then you are experiencing empathy and and believe it or not, even though you might not know it, you will actually soften the blow for them. And I'll explain why in a moment. Empathy is located in the insular cortex, which is the region of the body that focuses on integrating body states. into our awareness. It's not conceptual or intellectual at all. In fact, the insula is how we develop what we call emotions or affect.

They're embodied responses to situations. And eventually we might call the emotions anger, love, fear, joy, sadness, disgust, uh aversion, resentment, social exclusion, whatever. But these are embodied states. And empathy is based again on to a skillful degree feeling what another human being.

is experiencing in their own body. So there's a kind of what we call mirroring going on. Now Um sympathy w will lead to action, but it doesn't bring necessarily any closeness between the person you feel sympathy for. If you see an an addict on the street begging for money or hear about civilians being bombed in a foreign country? skillful sympathetic response would be to donate to doctors without borders.

So when you feel sympathy for someone you don't know in their situation, you have very you think about the long term solution. You're not guided by emotion.

On the other hand, if someone we're very close to is experiencing distress, the appropriate response is empathy. Being sympathetic to a friend who's obsessing over a breakup or the difficulties of finding housing or family dramas will very often worsen the problem. will simply try to fix and solve what they're going through. And generally they'll already have thought of our suggestions, but anyway they'll they will feel even more alone in their feelings because rather than mirroring and f and

Sharing to a degree what they're experiencing. We're kind of disconnecting and sort of treating their situation as if. they just haven't stumbled across the right they're not smart enough to come up with the right solution. Empathy is being willing to listen and to resonate. which is the best word, with the sadness or confusion or overwhelm that someone we're close to. is going through, or if you're a therapist, someone that you meet with, and generally my practice I lead with empathy, not with

sympathy where I'm just simply trying to uh from a remove fix and solve someone. So practicing empathy um has numerous benefits. Barbara Frederickson's research. Uh I'll talk about some other research, but Barbara Fredericksen's research shows what's called she calls a positivity resonance where We people who practice feeling empathy for others experience reduced stress. uh lowered blood pressure, enhanced immune function, they secrete greater amounts of oxytocin, which is the kind of love

safety uh a secure hormone. In other words, there's many, many, many benefits so long as we are skillful in the way we practice empathy. So empathy strengthens and heals all um relationships. Our core attachment needs from birth is to be seen in the eye of another who signals back they understand how we feel. A mother that doesn't smile when the infant smiles, doesn't express shock when uh their child is shocked, doesn't express a kind of fear when their child experiences fears.

Is not helping that infant, child, baby integrate and feel less alone. They're actually the child now feels. Even more alone because the m the father or mother are not mirroring back the emotion. So we need from birth. the empathetic experience. And if you would like to read about it, Heinz Coa, John Bowlby, Mary Answorth, Mary Main, you could just go down the list of famous psychologists.

who demonstrated how central empathy is to helping children feel less alone in their experience, understand what their emotions are about, and in adult life. If uh many of us, for example, feel lonely. And the lonelier we are, the less we have people to express the feelings of loneliness to, this leads to an even greater sense of isolation and uniqueness.

So if someone meets with that lonely person and the lonely person says, I'm feeling isolated, and then the other person says, Well, go out to a bar or whatever, that person is not It's not gonna alleviate their sense of isolation or loneliness. It's just gonna they're gonna feel like someone is just treating them with condescension. On the other hand, if we It can resonate, find in our own experience, times we've been lonely, know what that's like.

Then we're gonna through nonverbal cues, body states, facial expressions, tone of voice. eye contact, everything about it, we will mirror that loneliness to them and they will feel less alone. And that's so vital to healing.

Um empathy improves communication. Um when we feel another states, internal states, when we know how someone else feels, we become better at understanding their behavior. Uh simply understanding their situation doesn't really often help us understand why someone is stuck. But if we understand the fear, we feel their fear, their overwhelm, their distraction, their sense of hopelessness, then we're less judgmental.

we respond in a less blithe way Um so I can say through doing empathetic counseling work. Um has vastly improved my communication with others. I listen better. I'm less likely to just get lost in my thoughts on how I'm going to fix this person or give them a solution. And I'm more just listening closely and trying to under feel and be with the experience.

Um in couples empathy with a partner, rather than viewing ourselves as like under attack or being on the other end of an argument, being willing to try to when our partner is angry or frustrated or whatever. feel what they're feeling. Just try to understand their internal state. Is the most efficient way to resolve conflicts and disagreements. There's been tons of famous couples therapists like.

Herville Hendricks, Dan Tacken, John Gottman, Sue Johnson, and on who've shown that um the central most foundational practice in couples therapy is when couples l look at each other, one couple speaks about their struggles in childhood and the other person really begins to empathize and mirror back. Then the couple no longer feel um at war or like they're in some kind of a court case with each other. In groups, Empathy definitely fosters um being inclusive. It helps us.

uh express and under and appreciate different perspectives. Part of the pastoral training I did was uh we worked with um Uh teachers of color who basically um Created an empathetic response to the situations of different people, and the empathetic response helped. for me at least, develop a much more uh um profound uh understanding of the experiences of others. Um I could give an entire talk about that, but um empathy is also central finally to emotional intelligence.

the more we understand what other people are feeling, the more we understand our own feelings, our own what our own emotions are signaling to us. And in fact, um And a lot of emotion-focused therapies, um, psychologists really focus on helping their clients. empathize with the emotions of other people in their lives. So it's definitely healthy to reciprocate by sharing our own internal states when The Persen were with is in a more

homeostatic or resolved situation. In so doing it regulates the autonomic nervous system, our endocrine system, our as Barbara Frederickson showed, our immune system. Uh people even who are in empathetic bonds recover from heart surgeries far more efficiently.

So empathy is a good thing generally, so long as there are boundaries to it, but very often there's unskillful empathy. And now I'm gonna talk a little bit about that and then we'll go to the solutions. Um empathy practice without any boundaries often turns into what's called enmeshment.

when the distinction between two individuals, like family members or romantic partners, or a boss and their employee become so blurred or non existent that the individuals have difficulty experiencing separate thoughts or feelings or needs. from their partner. So if one person is anxious and the other f person feels bound to be anxious as well. Uh enmeshment is when I can't relax if you're anxious. I can't enjoy my life at all while you're sad. I I cannot have I do not have any permission to uh

engage with others, have any kind of joy or fun experience at all while you're frustrated, sad, lonely, disappointed. I can't differentiate. my own emotions from yours, nor can you differentiate yours from mine. So... Meshed individuals become so involved in each other's lives that their ability to connect and engage with others make independent decisions. travel on their own, their entire agency is compromised.

I do not like the term and I'd be happy if anyone wants to know why to answer it, but I don't use the term codependency. Uh codependency is a very limited term for very specific situations, but enmeshed individuals are very common in that they become so involved in each other's emotional states. the n there's a kind of what's called a a complete emotion contagion where another's emotional state consumes us.

We unconsciously mimic or catch the emotions of our partner, our boss, our family member, our People catch or unconsciously mimic the emotions of others. Through body, language, tone of voice, facial expressions. The exact same way we develop empathy is how we experience emotion contagion. we start to observe their body state while we hold images in our minds.

of what they're expressing and then suddenly we are totally though without any limitation in the same amount of distress um that they are. Empathy when practiced skillfully we can feel to a limited degree the sadness of our partner. But In so doing, we can also mirror back to them that things will be okay while we understand how difficult it is, while we can feel how difficult it is. In meshment, there's no limitation.

And this leads to burnout, where taking on the emotional pain of another or others leads to burnout is also known as compassion fatigue. We wind up drained. overwhelmed from absorbing all of the negative emotions of someone. Uh over time compassion fatigue or burnout leaves us emotionally desensitized to everyone. We're at a certain point, just as a defense, we're kind of indifferent.

to others suffering because we've been so caught up in a few people's distress. It's unsustainable. It's self-sabotaging and that emotionally enmeshed individuals n when they can't set boundaries and disconnect, they start to prioritize others' needs at the expense of our own, you know. though we will give money we can't afford and give money stupidly to people who will not in any way spend it on ways that will benefit.

uh we start to make we lose objectivity. W it clouds our judgment. Enmeshed parents out of concern for their addicted or emotionally dysregulated children engage in what's known as enabling behaviors. They'll start to pay their alcoholic child's traffic tickets. They'll clean up their apartments, they'll do their laundry, they'll provide lawyers to get out of troubles. Um they'll uh be so invested in their loved ones' problems that they won't take any time to take care of themselves.

Um and a lot of Um helping another person who is addicted or emotionally dysregulated requires what's called at times detaching with love, stepping back. Even if it causes us and the other person pain, being willing to have limits. In the relationship with If we don't our own healthy relationships will suffer. Um constantly living in the struggles and emotional uh pain of others leads to a kind of imbalance where we start taking for granted the people in our life who are

uh emotionally regulated, they'll start to feel unappreciated and neglected. So it's in no way skillful to abandon one person to help. another. That is just, I mean, frankly, that's just dumb. Even if you might think this person who i has got their shit together, doesn't need my attention. What we're doing by abandoning them is we are directly uh basically sacrificing them.

So empathy only works when it doesn't disrupt our attachment to attachment figures and important people when it doesn't affect Or community involvement when it doesn't come at the expense of other healthy relationships.

So empathy is while we're willing to a degree to feel and and resonate with the im internal states of another and from that then also have a sympathetic response where we might be involved in some kind of solution. Um It's essential that we practice boundaries. that in no way do we uh just stay connected beyond our capabilities that we don't get involved to the extent we start to feel indifferent or overwhelmed or drained.

that we don't experience burnout, that we don't start doing things for the person that if we took time out, we would know is unskillful.

So how do we practice empathy without becoming in measure? The first thing is when I do my counseling work, I'm constantly one, keeping myself relaxed. I'm always in a physiologically Uh relax. Stayed. uh when I le start to get tight and lean forward and get pulled in, that's when there's this kind of enmeshment, that's when there's this Underlying stress in me that now needs to fix and solve, or I become caught up in the other person's.

And I start to feel angry if they're angry or whatever, but to an unskillful degree. So when I I'm engaged with someone who is uh very understandably hurt by uh relationship problems, uh inability to find housing, uh an ability to find a new job, whatever. I am making sure that my breath is slow, my belly's relaxed, my shoulders are down, my body is open, my le my arms are not. Cross but open and spacious. That way I can feel

And I can mirror what they're experiencing, but it's not flooding my entire body. It's not pulling me into the suffering to a degree where now I'm no longer capable of conveying that things are overall they're painful, but they're overall going to be okay. Healthy boundaries starts by recognizing my limits. When I notice uh it, you know, after uh the towards the end of the week that it's difficult to follow, um when I start to feel a kind of numbness. If I'm with someone who has been uh

you know, uh emotionally overwhelming in their pain. I am very clear with the time limits and I'll stay at the front of the connection. And if I'm simp if it's not counseling, if I'm showing up for a friend I will connect with them But I'll also at the very beginning make it understood that it's for a specific period of time. I'll say something like I just wanted to make sure I could connect with you before I have to make other calls or meet other responsibilities so I can hang out.

for an hour or an hour and a half, but I have to after that do other things. So from the very beginning, and when I do that, they no longer feel abandon when I do take off. And when I am going to leave a call where someone is still suffering, or uh an engagement when someone is still in a state, I will Tell them or come up with the time I'll speak to them again,

Or at least assure them that, you know, we'll speak next week so that again they don't feel abandoned. But I don't keep staying in there beyond my limits, be where to the point where I'm just exhausted. where to the point I know from that stage on, if I go home, I'm gonna just be in this fatigued state. So very important to take time to express our own internal states with those who are not in distress so that we're not overbalanced to being the person who's always

showing up but never the one that's seeking s uh support from others. That uh has always been something I've had to focus on. Um for those of us that are caught up in um Family. dramas uh that are ongoing and where all of the s sympathy or empathy we've been practicing has not been helping. I always recommend Al-Anon as a foundational pro program. It helps people learn how to set boundaries.

And even though it might not be about someone who's an addict, you can still go to an open Al Anon meeting and listen and learn the principles that they practice and get support from others. Um So those are some

tools that I use to practice skillful empathy. And now what we're gonna do finally, um is there are many people who do at times just find it easy to provide sympathy, which means they understand what someone who is going through and they can come up with all they all these kind of solutions or fixes, but they really struggle feeling empathy. So we're going to practice what's called loving kindness meditation. And loving kindness is actually a very powerful way to induce in us positive emotions.

that increase our sense of oneness. People clinical studies from Hedge Maji and WoW and Ataki and Dunn and Schweitzer and Barbara Frederickson and Richard Davidson and John Cabot Zinn have all shown there's a great study called Open Hearts Builds Lives that shows just how. Effective loving-kindness meditation is not only for building a sense of commonality and helping others who are we're close to in distress, but it's also beneficial for us.

So what I'm going to encourage you to do is go off camera and find the most comfortable position you can Lie down on a yoga mat, you can sit and lean back on a couch, you can rest in a comfortable chair, you can sit upright on a cushion, whatever works for you. And um closing our eyes. And try to bring your awareness from The world around you, or thoughts about other situations that are not happening right now. Try to bring all of your attention.

Reel it in so that you are aware of whatever you're feeling right now. Whatever. uh mood you're in. So feelings are things like, am I comfortable? Am I uncomfortable? Am I completely unaware of my internal experience? And moods are things like Relieved, sad, disappointed, happy, uh, very present and alert, or very kind of Drifting away. Am I unsettled or settled? If there's a dominant affect or emotion that we might call anger. Grief, joy.

Love whatever, that's fine as well. Just know what Being with whatever your internal state is, knowing it, appreciating it. And we're going to try to be with whatever we're feeling or experiencing right now by developing a very, very Soothing breath. And to do that we simply really make sure that our in breath Is really full and complete that we're not just breathing in quickly.

And even more importantly, that we're not holding our breath, that we're fluidly moving from the inhalation into a very long, slow, slow. Exhalation. Use this breath to relax some of the key regions in our body that carry stress from our previous day or days into this moment. So breathing into your belly, try to allow your belly to expand completely to a beach ball size while you're breathing in. And then fluidly very slowly.

Breathe out and release the belly so that it returns to a very comfortable position. We'll do this a few times, like breathing into the count of four. One, two. Yeah. And then breathing out to the count of six. One, two, three, four, five, six. or whatever count feels right for you. And while you do this, inflate the belly and then deflate it back to a comfortable size. So let's move this very complete in breath and long exhalation out to the chest.

Feel the chest, inflate with the inhalation counting to four if you can, and then release back. The chest to a really comfortable position to a count of five or six, so really slow, not pushing out the air, just releasing the exhalation. There's no hurry at all to it. It's a very gradual release. The moving the in-breath now, lifting the shoulders as you breathe in all the way up to your ears, and then as you breathe out.

Rotate them the shoulders back and drop them slowly to the most comfortable position. And do this again. Breathing in, lifting the shoulders. Breathing out, relaxing slowly and settling. And then if you'd like breathing in and squinching all the muscles in the face, tightening the legs and arms and fists. Holding and then breathe out slowly, dropping the legs, the arms back down, releasing the fists, releasing. The all the tightness in the face.

And now for a little while, just see if you can let go of the sensations that are Actually connecting you with the cushion or chair. And imagine if you would. You're floating. Floating in like a sensory deprivation tank or in a zero gravity. Um Spaceship or floating. On an ocean, a salt water. And just breathe. And just release any holding or clenching against the world. Now you're just in your mind floating. And a soothing, warm Limitless. State without any intrusions or impediments.

Nothing to resist.

So at this point Meta starts with practising empathy, kindness, extending A sense of emotional resonance towards ourself As the Buddha noted, all beings are self-included, deserve kindness. And if we don't feel any empathy for our own Stress, sadness, loneliness, overwhelm. Then it is frankly quite difficult to experience empathy for others, it'll more likely turn into this kind of Performative sympathy, but no real evocative, resonant feelings.

So the most important and For the last two thousand five hundred years Buddhist way to build empathy is from the inside outward. So quietly in your mind, very slowly repeat. Phrases of empathy towards yourself. May I feel peaceful and at ease. May I feel well? Whatever phrases works for you, the words don't really matter as much as trying to evoke the feelings that these words represent. Sometimes it helps to remember or evoke an image of ourselves as a child looking, yearning for care.

We might not feel much empathy for ourselves today, but very often visualizing ourselves in an early period where Many needs were unmet when there was childhood loneliness or overwhelm. So while you hold that image of yourself, you can practice again. May I be happy. May I feel peaceful and at ease. There's loving kindness. Meditation is based on feelings, not on ideas. Imagine these words drifting from your head down.

Into your body landing in your heart center and then vibrating outwards towards your limbs and your belly. So when you think may I be happy, just imagine Wish as a surge of bright Calm light drifting down from your head into your heart center. The same with may I be peaceful and live at ease. Bring to mind someone who has expressed now empathy towards us, who's been with us while we've struggled, who's expressed real Concerned. Feness.

İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. remember who they are. Practice Slowly repeating words such as May you be happy. May you feel peaceful and live at ease. May you be happy. May you feel peaceful and live at ease. And now bring to mind Other friends People who we care about and wish them happiness, peace and ease. Really, with each phrase, just feel the Emotion resonating from our heart center outwards towards this person we're visualizing.

I mean every time we wish a being happiness, peace and ease. When it's complete, bring to mind someone else we'd like to extend this. positive embrace towards acquaintances, strangers, Animals, pets. try to practice feeling for as wide a variety of beings as you can.

And lastly, bring to mind someone or a few people with whom you have unresolved, maybe you've struggled with them, maybe at first you really don't necessarily want to consider their well-being. However, there's so many benefits to wishing Those we've had falling out with or have disliked. It doesn't actually change their circumstances, but allows us to move on, forgive, let go of. But while we still experience it, uh resentment or anger, those people keep popping up.

Loving kindness allows us to let go. So thank you for your practice. Take your time. Whenever it feels appropriate for you.