[teampractices] Empathy vs compassion, when helping others

[Kevin Smith]

Thanks both for sharing those links. It quickly became clear to me that my
definitions of empathy, sympathy, and compassion, are fuzzy. Quick skims of
the relevant wikipedia article intros didn't really help.

I have heard that sympathy is "bad", so I'll just empathize instead. Oops,
empathy is now dangerous? No problem, I'll just have compassion. Did I
actually change anything other than the word?

I just proposed a Tea Time topic for this.



Kevin Smith
Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation


On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 3:09 PM, Natalia Harateh <nharateh at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Thanks for sharing, Max! I’ll definitely read the article. If I can add to
> the discussion, here’s a short 2:53 min video explaining empathy in a way
> that resonated with me <https://youtu.be/1Evwgu369Jw>.
>
> TL;DR:
>
> *What is the best way to ease someone's pain and suffering? In this
> beautifully animated RSA Short, Dr Brené Brown reminds us that we can only
> create a genuine empathic connection if we are brave enough to really get
> in touch with our own fragilities.*
>
> On 23 Feb 2017, at 23:53, Max Binder <mbinder at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> 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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