Compassion
- The daily practice of recognizing and accepting our shared humanity so that we treat ourselves and other with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering
- Pity is the near enemy and distancing or cruelty the far enemy
Empathy
- Cognitive empathy: perspective taking or mentalizing
- Affective empathy: experience sharing, emotional attunement with another experience
- The best empathy is to understand what someone is feeling, not having to feel it for them.
- You need to move away from walking in someone else’s shoes
The most effective approach to meaningful connection combines compassion with cognitive empathy.
Sympathy
- Near enemy of empathy
- Leads to disconnection and feeling sorry for the other
- Creates compassion fatigue
- Emotional exhaustion or burnout happens when you focus on your own personal distress, which is an inability to respond empathetically to the person in need
- You need boundaries to be able to love yourself and others well.
- Be clear about what is okay and what is not okay.
Comparative suffering
- Fear and scarcity trigger comparison
- Example of rank suffering
- You’re worried about your teenager becoming disconnected and isolated during quarantine when thousands of people in India are dying?
- What we fail to understand is that the family in India doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your concern only for them and withhold it from your child who is also suffering.
- Piss and moan with perspective