When is Empathy too much of a good thing? When is it a spiritual seduction? Why is Compassion different? Spiritual Intelligence (SQ), is about behaving with wisdom and compassion, while maintaining inner and outer peace (equanimity). There is, fortunately, a lot of recent study of empathy in the world of psychology and social sciences. This is fantastic – as empathy seems to be a requirement for moral behavior*. Yet little of the research talks about the distinction between empathy and compassion. I find this distinction embodies the difference between good EQ (which requires both forms of Empathy described below) and SQ (which goes up one level from Empathy to Compassion). As background, researchers agree that empathy is made up of at least 2 parts: emotional and cognitive empathy. • Emotional empathy means I “feel with you” – as in your sadness makes me sad. • Cognitive empathy means I can put myself in your shoes and take your perspective Compassion = I feel what you feel, see what you see AND it doesn’t overwhelm my circuits. In a sense, compassion calls upon wisdom to balance empathy and keep perspective and act appropriately. When empathy overwhelms people it is usually the emotional or “feeling with” part that is overwhelming. People who are highly empathic might feel like they can never relax as they are always picking up on someone’s sadness or anxiety. They might not be able to watch the news on TV or the internet or even read the paper. They might lose track of where they are when feeling sad vs. someone else in the room is feeling sad (“Whose feeling is this anyway?!”). They might be easily manipulated by the emotions of others. They might become co-dependent, seeking always to make others happy at great cost to themselves and doing harm (unintentionally) to those they try to help. For all these reasons moving from empathy to the more sophisticated capacity for compassion can be really important. There is another possible issue with too much empathy. Empathy can become a fancier form of ego. In other words, it can become ego masquerading as being “spiritual”. As we mature our circle of concern expands to include people very different to us, people far away whose lives we glimpse on TV or the internet, and to different species. This is a really important step and I don’t want to minimize it. Many people become vegetarian or animal rights activists, social activists or political activists during this time. In a sense our self-preoccupation is easing. Yet in another sense it can become a new form of spiritual self-righteousness. We can feel superior to others who don’t empathize so strongly or suffer like we do over the injustices in the world. We can also do harm. When we can confuse our “self” with these others we try to fix them so that WE can quit suffering. Our focus pretends to be on them but it’s really on us. In our rush to fix can we make things worse in the long run. In such a way we can lose our wisdom. It is interesting as well how we look at what we SHOULD empathize with. Why is feeling empathy for suffering “spiritual” but we don’t take on people’s joy? Is this an elaborate ruse of the ego to act like it cares for others when it’s an expanded form of self-care, an acquisition of superior spiritual status or some form of self-abuse? “If I am miserable all the time, then I must be really spiritual.” I find my ego’s need for specialness fascinating to watch. We can be seduced by the need to be happy all the time (or pretend we are). We can also be seduced by the need to “suffer” as a our badge of being serious spiritual seekers. As you know if you read my book, I don’t demonize the ego. We need it. AND we need it to grow up. And we need our Higher Selves to drive the car of our lives. Higher self can “sniff out” the spiritual games and defense mechanisms of the ego, and help us move past them. So excessive or inappropriate empathy has become one more thing I watch for. I think very good altruistic work can come from emotional empathy. And for me there is a reason why emotional empathy is not the end goal. We need wisdom. And we need equanimity. And added with cognitive and emotional empathy – eventually we might find compassion. When we get to compassion we can: • see people’s joy AND their pain • set good boundaries. We let people own their own problems and grow from that accountability • offer help in ways that are much less likely to do harm • sustain our own energy better From that mixture can come genuinely loving behaviors. What do you think? Your thoughts are welcome! Blessings to all of you… Fondly, Cindy Wigglesworth Deep Change, Inc. cindy@deepchange.com