Emphatic Distress - Why Your Empathy Might Be Destructive

A common argument made against organized religion is that it's followers aren't genuinely good people or that their good deeds aren't done out of the kindness of their heart, but to receive some sort of reward in the afterlife. My go-to counter-argument against this used to be that nobody does good out of the kindness of their heart; people do good things because it makes them feel good. For example, a person might give money to a homeless person to avoid feelings of distress at seeing them suffer.

However, after listening to the audiobook The Science of Compassion by Kelly Mcgonigal, I realized my argument might have been less than true and that my entire understanding of compassion was flawed. The book outlined the difference between Emphatic Distress (described above) and Compassion.

Using the definitions, here, Empathic Distress is "the strong aversive and self-oriented response to the suffering of others, accompanied by the desire to withdraw from a situation in order to protect one’s self from excessive negative feelings." Compassion however,  "is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern, and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other’s wellbeing. Compassion goes beyond feeling with the other to feeling for the other"

In many ways compassion is the exact opposite of Emphatic Distress. While Emphatic Distress motivates a person to relieve their own suffering, Compassion aims to relieve the other person's suffering. The difference is that compassion aims to improve the situation while emphatic distress - or empathy - motivates a person to try to relieve one's own distress. Empathy can actually be destructive, so destructive  in fact, that there's an entire book written on how it can lead to cruelty

The difference between compassion and emphatic distress can be hard to parse out since a person can feel both emphatic distress and compassion at the same time but it's quite crucial. Studies have shown that empathy and compassion light up different parts of the brain.

An example that highlights this distinction would be the overprotective or over-controlling parent Overprotective parents shelter their children from danger to a degree that it's detrimental to them since the children don't develop the skills or confidence to handle life's challenges.   A common notion people have about overprotective parents it that their overprotective nature is motivated by love and that they are simply misguided at what is best for their children. This might be true in some cases, however I suspect that in many cases overprotective parents take part in their destructive behavior not out of ignorance, but because they want to protect themselves from the difficult feelings that come up when their children are in danger or take risks. Compassion in this case would look like allowing their children to do things beneficial to their well-being despite the distress a parent feels.

This is much easier said than done, especially given that it's easy to confuse the two. In addition, compassion is harder and actually takes courage since you are moving towards the suffering instead of away from it. I think a crucial first step would be to recognizing the difference between the two and acknowledging that just because an action is motivated by empathy, doesn't make it the right action in that scenario. It can also be useful to ask the question on whether or not an action is improving the situation.