Empathy vs. Compassion: Understanding the Difference for Deeper Healing

The other day I was sharing a frustration I had with a friend of mine. My friend is an amazing listener and often one I rely on to understand my feelings of frustration. As I was sharing, I noticed that when she was listening, she would nod her head often and say to me “I’ve been there, I totally get that feeling. That is so frustrating.” I realized what relief that felt inside, to be understood and to not have to explain why I was feeling what I was feeling. In that moment, I felt her empathy and it felt like a wave of relief to be understood. It was like the storm within me brewing could relax and not turn into a tornado.

Over the past couple of years I have studied and looked at the difference between empathy and compassion. I had heard alot about empathy and felt confused when I started to hear about compassion, because I thought they were the same thing. It felt to me that they both had to do with feeling for and with another person. They are similar in many ways and yet important to distinguish the difference between them as well.

When someone is healing from anxiety and trauma, it is crucial for one to experience both empathy and compassion. In the Internal Family Systems community, Frank Anderson often talks about when a traumatic experience happens, it takes us out of the experience of love within our internal system. In order to heal from trauma, we need the experience of love to help heal our internal system. To experience love, we need both empathy and compassion. Through this loving light, it can be warmth and comfort to the darkest places within us.

What is Empathy?

I started to get curious about it when I was reading Brene Brown’s books on empathy and learned how when someone experience’s shame, empathy is usually the experience that will help to shift one out of shame.

According to Brene Brown, empathy is “feeling with people”. It’s connecting to the emotions that underpin an experience. It involves perspective taking, staying out of judgement, recognizing emotion, and communicating that understanding.

In other words, it’s about putting yourself in someone’s shoes and understanding their emotional experience. Just like in my earlier example of feeling with, my friend felt with me in my moment of frustration and could support me through her own experience of “getting it”. This is so helpful.

So why is something this can be so helpful at times also create difficulty. In the act of expressing empathy, it means being able to feel with people. When we feel with people, that means that we are “blended with a feeling” and we all have different attachments to our feelings. If we are attached to our feelings in such a way that it can then take over and create distance from understanding because we assume we know exactly what one is feeling. The part within us that is feeling might then try to take are of the other person (because when we were feeling that way we wanted to be taken care of). Or that part of us that is empathic may really want to get it right and ask a ton of questions to help clarify. In times like these, empathy can be overwhelming. For women who are anxious or have a history of trauma, parts of them may get flooded when they feel too seen by others in this kind of way.

What is Compassion?

Compassion can be described as literally “to suffer together.” It’s when those feelings and thoughts include a desire to help. When we feel compassion, physical changes show up in our body such as our heart rate slows down, feelings of pleasure light up, and hormones such as oxytocin flood through us. It is a bonding hormone that allows us to feel connection (mother’s often are flooded with this emotion when caring for a baby). To be with some in their suffering and to feel pleasure/connection, to be that deeply moved by it and have the capacity to be with it in that way.

According to Krishnamurti, compassion is, “Compassion is not the doing of charitable acts or social reform; it is free from sentiment, romanticism and emotional enthusiasm. It is as strong as death. It is like a great rock, immovable in the midst of confusion, misery and anxiety. Without this compassion no new culture or society can come into being. Compassion and intelligence walk together; they are not separate. Compassion acts through intelligence. It can never act through the intellect. Compassion is the essence of the wholeness of life.”

Imagine being with someone who is suffering in that kind of way. Where you are not just feeling with them in their feelings but have the capacity for deep connection in that moment, that caring love of oxytocin running through your blood so much that your heart rate slows down. I think of the times I am in a deep meditation or the moments of deep connection with my babies. When someone is suffering, to be in that place of love is so incredibly difficult. Because I have parts of me that want to help, want to make that person feel better, parts that feel responsible, parts that get angry, parts that get scared. All these parts within me that show up when pain is there. This is why so often compassion is difficult to tap into and really allow.

How Therapy and Yoga Cultivate Compassion

Therapeutic approaches such as Internal Family Systems therapy and Somatic Therapy help to create healthy emotional boundaries and help our systems move to a place where compassion is available. Through Internal Family Systems, it works on being with parts of us that show up (to help, to fix, to get rid of, to carry) so that we can develop a relationship with those parts to Self (the core, undamaged part). When that happens, it then leads to greater self-awareness, balance, and overall wellness. From this place compassion flows because in the core, undamaged part of Self, there is the flow of compassion.

Yoga also carries a similar philosophy that you are already whole and deeply connected. Through yoga, we do not do these practices to be more complete, rather we work on removing the barriers/parts that prevent you from knowing your true nature.

Ultimately, the aim of these practices is to cultivate a felt experience of equanimity as a counterpoint to the destabilizing impacts of stress and trauma. From this foundation, you can settle into stillness and allow yourself to be nourished by states of rest and relaxation. - Dr. Arielle Schwartz

Finding this core center of inner stability is key to finding compassion and yoga and mindfulness has strategies that help to promote that stillness and flow. From this place we prevent emotional exhaustion. Through self-reflection, begin to ask yourself if you can tap into times when you have felt empathy be overwhelming or feels like work. Use Yoga and breathwork to help cultivate emotional balance. One quick and easy tip, is just place your hand on your heart. Even say to yourself, “I am here with you.” See what shows up and try not to push it away but instead welcome it in with loving arms. Notice what arises and can you be with it?

Continue to practice self-compassion and explore therapy and yoga and tools for healing. If you are interested in learning more and need support, as always feel free to reach out to book a session or join in our weekly yoga classes. We offer 1:1 therapy and yoga support, 1:1 mindfulness coaching, and group yoga classes.

Warmly,

Leslie