Causes Burnout
Similar to EMPATHIC DISTRESS
Klimecki, O., & Singer, T. (2012). Empathic distress fatigue rather than compassion fatigue? Integrating findings from empathy research in psychology and social neuroscience. In B. Oakley, A. Knafo, G. Madhavan, & D. S. Wilson (Eds.), Pathological altruism (pp. 368-383). New York: Oxford University Press.
Olga Klimecki Interview
When Empathy Leads to Burnout – Redefining Real Love
Sharon Salzberg
Feb 20, 2018
"In other words, too much empathy can cause us to burn out"
"As humans, we’re wired to feel emotions — our own, but also those of others. Modern neuroscience has actually proven that we’ve evolved to feel empathy: Our brains have specific circuits that enable us to “feel with” others. Seeing someone in pain can cause us pain. Some might call it emotional intelligence, others sensitivity. Terms aside, feeling for others is actually part of our survival. ...
References Tania Singer Study
In 2004, a neuroscientist named Tania Singer and her colleagues published an important research study that showed how pain-receptive regions in the brain activate when we feel empathy with someone else’s pain. Since their paper came out, Singer has called empathy a “precursor to compassion,” differentiating these two words we too often use interchangeably. In an interview with the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Singer explained the difference: “When I empathize with the suffering of others…I am suffering myself…In contrast, if we feel compassion for someone else’s suffering, we…feel concern — a feeling of love and warmth — and we can develop a strong motivation to help the other.”
In a new book, Bloom argues that empathy leads us astray when we rely on it to make moral decisions
By Lea Winerman
May 2017,
"You propose another problem with empathy, which may be of particular interest to clinical psychologists: burnout. You suggest that being especially empathic could be problematic for therapists and those in similar professions. Why?
First, I don't want to be the language police. If a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist says, "I think empathy is incredibly important, and what I mean by empathy is understanding and compassion," then I would agree with that.
My claim is narrower: Empathy in the sense of "feeling what other people are feeling" is not what you want as a successful therapist. It will hamper you, it will exhaust you. It's probably one of the many reasons I'd be a terrible shrink. If I'm around someone and they're depressed, I get depressed. If they're freaking out, I start to get anxious.
I've talked to a lot of clinical psychologists and what they tell me is that when they interact with their clients, they care about them and they try to understand them, but they approach them as a puzzle to be solved."
"While empathic people only last for a few rounds, compassionate people are able to do good over and over again — which is exemplified by the story of the 9/11 first responder couple. This was confirmed by another fMRI research, in which participants were asked to engage in either empathic or compassionate thought practice.
Compassion doesn't exhaust because it doesn't require you to feel the other person's pain to wish her well. Empathy burns you out; compassion energizes."