Empathy is important if we want to connect with others. But when can it be too much? Are there times when being empathetic can be a drain on us and how do we know? Listen to Leanne VanBeek, OCL Michigan Chapter Lead talk about this difficult concept with honesty and empathy.
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Adam Salgat:
Hello and welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast. I’m Adam Salgat and with me today is Leanne Van Beek, Chapter Leader for OCL, Michigan. Today’s topic is empathy, when is enough enough? I know that empathy is a big part of OCL, Leanne. Can you tell me a little bit about where this topic came from?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah, sure, Adam. It’s probably a little counter-intuitive. We spend all this time in class teaching people how to have empathy. And now this question seems to be saying to us, am I supposed to stop it?
Adam Salgat:
Yeah, it does a little bit. And I see what you’re saying.
Leanne Van Beek:
I think that one of the things we’ve heard from a lot of alumni is that certain situations they encounter are very emotionally draining. And when they are trying to have empathy and connect with people in that space, and maybe the person’s really struggling, they start to experience a drain themselves. So I think this question is really coming from a place of, I do care about people. I want to have empathy. I want to connect. But what happens when I’m losing myself, maybe, in the process, right? When I’m just totally drained and I’m feeling like how long do I have to try to stay in this space with someone?
Adam Salgat:
Right, so your fuel gauge is on E and that E is empathy. Maybe we should start with breaking empathy down, because a lot of times when something is large and cumbersome or it takes a lot of energy to do it, it’s easier when you can break it into pieces and start to understand it. So can you do that with empathy?
Leanne Van Beek:
Absolutely. I think this is a great chance for us, for alumni’s sake, especially for those people who are listening, to go a little bit further beyond what we can do in the three-day class. So when we talk about empathy in the class setting, many of you probably remember, we talk about how do I see it as someone sees it? How do I feel it as someone feels it? How do I make that connection? What’s interesting about empathy is that there’s been a lot of social science research done in this space. And Daniel Goleman is one of the people who’s probably at the forefront of that. He was the person who wrote the Emotional Intelligence book in 2005. He’s a well-known psychologist and he’s really broken empathy down into three different types. The first type that they talk about is cognitive empathy, which is basically I can hear what you’re saying and I can understand it. So it’s sort of like my head can connect with what it is that you’re talking about in this moment.
Adam Salgat:
But not necessarily the feelings and that’s something we get to later. So there’s cognitive empathy. What kind of professions might someone deal with this type of empathy?
Leanne Van Beek:
We frequently hear that a lot of times in certain professions, people will move to cognitive empathy almost as a defense mechanism, like I understand where you’re coming from, but perhaps me having to feel that with you is so taxing that I can’t let myself go there. You’ll hear this a lot of times with medical professions. I know we have nurses in our alumni base who will say, “I can’t do that. I can’t go to that space.” Social workers. So there’s lots of fields where people sometimes will maybe intentionally choose that as a protection mechanism.
Adam Salgat:
Because if they were going into the next type of empathy, affective and emotional, every day, all the time, I can’t imagine what that would be like for them.
Leanne Van Beek:
The second type of empathy that we’re looking at is called affective empathy or emotional empathy. Actually, this one is fascinating to me. This one is actually emotion is contagious. So if you come into work and you are just stressed to the max and you’re telling me, “Everything has gone wrong. I’m so frustrated.” As I’m listening to you, I’m actually picking up those emotions from you and feeling it right along with you. There’s been a lot of research that’s been done on people’s brains and wondering why is it that some people just naturally seem to pick up on emotions and feel them right along with you and other people don’t? So there’s a part of our brain where we have something called mirror neurons and those mirror neurons are what is firing when I see you having an emotion. People with a lot of mirror neurons in their brains have a very easy time going into this emotional empathy space and they may struggle more to shut it off.
Adam Salgat:
You may have two people hearing the same story, sitting in the same room with the same atmosphere. And one person might be starting to feel down if it’s a negative story, let’s say. And the other person might just simply be able to let it, I guess, roll off their back. So that can be different per person?
Leanne Van Beek:
Absolutely. The level of mirror neurons that you have in your brain is going to dictate the level of emotional empathy that you will really just naturally respond with. So the thing with this affective emotional empathy, especially if you’re someone who has a lot of mirror neurons, is that when someone is struggling and that triggers a response in you, if you’re not aware that that’s what’s happening, you can really find yourself getting sucked in. You’re thinking about that person constantly. You’re worrying about them. You’re almost carrying that load with them just as a natural response. This is the kind of empathy where I think sometimes people start to feel like this is so taxing, because I do care about the person, but to feel it right with them all the time is creating a wear on that person, just like it is for the person who’s actually going through the situation.
I will also say that I think the affective empathy is not necessarily a bad thing. If we look at our class content and we talk about, again, I think we referenced this before, but if you’re the bearer and you’re going down into the pit and you’re trying to connect with something inside of yourself in order to connect with the other person, to a certain extent, we are saying that’s a vulnerable choice. I am going to choose to remember what it feels like to feel sad or to feel frustrated or to feel pain. I am going to choose to enter into that kind of emotional empathy with you. I think the question we now have to ask ourselves is, how long can I sustain that? How long can I afford to sustain that?
Adam Salgat:
Right. And we’re going to get into those steps, but there’s one more type of empathy that I know you want to cover and that’s compassionate empathy.
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah, thanks. The compassionate empathy is the third version of empathy. This is really viewed as empathic concern. So when I can say to someone, “Gosh, I feel for you.” It’s a way to acknowledge yes, my head resonates with what you’re saying. My feelings can connect to where you are. But empathic concern still is a level of preserving. And at the end of the day, I can hope good things for you. I can wish good things for you. I can want for that situation to get better, but I don’t have to carry the weight of the responsibility or the weight of all of those feelings with me. I think in a lot of ways it’s maybe looked at as the healthiest form of empathy, where we are genuinely caring and connecting, but we also know our own limitations.
Adam Salgat:
As concisely as possible, explain the difference between affective emotional empathy and compassionate empathy.
Leanne Van Beek:
I think that the emotional empathy is probably the deepest level of feeling that you’re going to get with a person. I think it’s also the one that is incredibly draining, that it’s hard to put a boundary around. I think the compassionate empathy is a way of drawing a personal boundary. To say, “I will feel this with you and I can feel for you, but I also have to remember where I fall in this and how long I can extend myself for.”
Adam Salgat:
So that deep affective emotional empathy, those are the people that cry at the Sarah McLachlan donate, save or rescue a dog? Is that the kind of thing?
Leanne Van Beek:
No comment.
Adam Salgat:
So no matter what type of empathy you’re typically expressing, it can all become too much. We know that this wears on us eventually. How do we know when enough is enough?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And for those people who’ve had me as a professor in class, I hope they all smile when they hear me say wisdom and discernment, because I feel like that is one of my taglines in the classroom. It’s hard to make that call for someone else, but I will give you a couple thoughts. I think that that emotional empathy is very impactful. If you’re really struggling, if you are the person in the pit, knowing that somebody is there trying to feel that with you and really walk that out, is powerful. Hear me on this, this affective emotional empathy is not something we should avoid. I think we just have to be aware of what it takes of us.
I would use the example of when my best friend was going through her divorce. I know I spent a lot of time in affective emotional empathy with her. It was distracting at times. It was probably heavier than what it may have needed to be. But when I look at the strength of that relationship and how important it was for me to be there for her, I think I intentionally made the choice to be overextended because I needed to be there for her in that moment. And given that she didn’t have a lot of other people who could do that for her, I think that was another factor in my decision. So I think sometimes we’re going to have to weigh out how close am I to this person? What are the other resources they have? Sometimes I may consciously choose to step into that space and say, “You know what? For this season, I am going to choose to be a little overextended here because this person really needs me in that space.”
There may be other times where we look at that relationship and we say, “You know what? They have other support people. I need to encourage them to connect to those people. Maybe this situation is beyond me. Maybe I don’t have the resources to support them and I need to connect them to someone else. And I’m going to choose to connect with them periodically and touch base and check in on them and still have that deep empathy, but know that I have to ration it. I need to stagger out what I can handle myself.”
Adam Salgat:
If someone is in a space that you know you’re not able to do what they need from you, you’re not able to give them the empathy that they need and you want to talk to them about utilizing resources around them, is that borderline getting into a confrontation?
Leanne Van Beek:
Oh, I think that’s a great question. Yeah, in my mind, you are now dovetailing into potentially an affective confrontation. I know we don’t want to probably segue too far off here, but I think it takes us right back into the portion of affective confrontation where we talk about my three moves. My three moves, I always have moves, I can accept the situation. I can accept that I need to be a mainstay for this person right now. I can adjust to the circumstances. I can back away. I can try to connect them to someone else.
Or I can ask for a change. I can intentionally put together that confrontation message and say, “This particular behavior that I’m seeing is having this impact on you. And I’m feeling out of my depth. I’m feeling like I can’t help. I’m feeling scared or overwhelmed,” or whatever those feelings are that we’re experiencing. So yeah, I think you’re making a great connection there. When we hit that point where we realize I can’t do this in the way this person needs, I need to have some way to frame that for them.
Adam Salgat:
It sounds like that’s a lot better than go talk to someone else. Or, I can’t hear this anymore. I mean, those are not going to get your message across.
Leanne Van Beek:
They may not be the most empathetic. Let’s say that.
Adam Salgat:
Exactly, because if you’re trying to talk to someone you love, you want to find the right way to say it.
Leanne Van Beek:
Sure.
Adam Salgat:
So if we find ourselves in situations where we’re constantly running on E, we have nothing left in our tank and the next station is miles down the road, which is a vacation to Aruba and sitting on a beach to fill yourself back up with emotion and fill yourself back up with energy and the empathy that you need to put out there for other people, if we notice these behaviors are happening and we’re constantly running out, what kind of actions can we take to correct that?
Leanne Van Beek:
Is Aruba an option? Because I liked the mention of Aruba in there.
Adam Salgat:
It sounds nice this time of year, here in March when it’s still cold in Michigan.
Leanne Van Beek:
I think it’s a great question, Adam. I’m pausing a second just to think about how do we step into that space? I think there are some actions we can take. I think we’ve maybe slightly touched on them already, but I think the first thing is being willing to take a really good look at ourselves and try to self assess. Do I have the resources that I need for this person or that this person needs right now? I think you probably want to look at quality of life. How am I present with the other people who need me? Are parts of my life, maybe, suffering because of what I have to give in this one area? That’s a hard thing to do, because we care. Presumably we care a lot about this person that we’re extending ourselves for. But I think that that self-assessment is a really important part of stepping back to figure out, can I do this?
I think another thing that’s been helpful for me in the past has been to try to give myself timelines, as funny as that sounds. If I realize I’m in a place where I’m really overextended, maybe I can make space in other areas of my life that I can recharge a little bit to be able to pour out. But if I can’t, there’ve been times where I’ve said, “Okay, I can give this another week. Let me see where things are in in a week. But if things haven’t changed at that point, then I probably need to try something else.” So I think those are a couple tips maybe for people to think about, that real self-assessment, that hard look at what I’m doing and how it might be impacting other parts of my life. Then maybe trying to think about, is there a realistic timeframe? Can I feel good about giving it a certain amount of time and then maybe having to make a different call?
Adam Salgat:
Leanne, what would you say the takeaways from today’s conversation are?
Leanne Van Beek:
I would say, Adam, that I think it’s an understanding of these three different types of empathy, the cognitive, the affective and the compassionate. And probably also knowing that this emotional empathy is a powerful tool, but it’s okay sometimes to realize when you’ve done as much of it as you can and that you may have to make that switch back to compassionate empathy. And that’s okay.
Adam Salgat:
Allow yourself to be okay with that.
Leanne Van Beek:
Allow yourself to be okay with that. Yes.
Adam Salgat:
So for today’s In Your Words section, we have a comment from a OCL alumni from Charleston, “Listening to someone is so close to loving them, you almost can’t tell the difference. What this reminds me of is when you first start dating someone and those butterfly loving feelings come and you just feel it right away. And all you’re doing is listening to them. That’s all you do. You want to soak everything in. And I think there’s times when we get older or deeper in our relationships where we get so busy, we forget to do that. We lose track of the idea that love really is listening. Just paying attention, giving them the empathy, giving them the attention that they deserve goes a long ways.”
Leanne, thanks for the information today. I’m pretty excited to go home and talk to my wife about the mirror neurons that cause me to tear up each time Sarah McLachlan comes on TV singing about the dog that needs some help.
Leanne Van Beek:
Adam, sorry, we don’t have a class for that yet.
Adam Salgat:
Well, either way, I think it’s time to wrap up today’s episode. We would love to hear your comments and questions. Find us on Facebook as, Michigan OCL Alumni. And for all of the alumni out there, don’t forget, you are the message.