[teampractices] Empathy vs compassion, when helping others

[Max Binder]

I ran across an article claiming that empathizing with others on their
issues can be a slippery slope to bias, or at the very least unnecessary
absorption of another person's issues and feelings. The article was
political in nature, so I won't post it, but it did make some claims that I
thought to research.

That let me to this article on compassion as an alternative to empathy:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/when_empathy_hurts_compassion_can_heal

I can't attest for the reputation of the site linked, but it makes some
interesting arguments. I thought those arguments might be relevant since we
often operate in an environment with, and espouse values using, words like
"empathy."

TL;DR:

we can better cope with others’ negative emotions by strengthening our own
> compassion skills, which the researchers define as “feeling concern for
> another’s suffering and desiring to enhance that individual’s welfare.”
>
> “Empathy is really important for understanding others’ emotions very
> deeply, but there is a downside of empathy when it comes to the suffering
> of others,” says Olga Klimecki, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute
> for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany and the lead author of
> the study. “When we share the suffering of others too much, our negative
> emotions increase. It carries the danger of an emotional burnout.”
>
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