An Excess of Empathy Can Be Bad for Your Mental HealthHere are three steps for overcoming the distress caused by a surfeit of empathy.
In other words, too much empathy for others in Yahweh's world could completely break you, therefore you must tone your empathy for others down so that you soul is not left permanently broken and you will be able to SURVIVE Yahweh's prison for yet one more round!
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Have you found yourself irritable, sad or close to tears when watching the news lately? If so, you are not alone.
Experiencing empathy has its benefits, but there are also many downsides to it, which is why we must learn to practise healthy empathy.
Empathy is an ability to sync emotionally and cognitively with another person; it is a capacity to perceive a world from their perspective or share their emotional experiences. It is essential for building and maintaining relationships, as it helps us connect with others at a deeper level. It is also associated with higher self-esteem and life purpose.
Should a person not want to experience empathy and compassion for other people, even to the extent that it breaks themselves completely?
Who do these authors define as "people"? If non-humans do not fall into the author's of this articles definition as 'people', are the authors even that empathetic or compassionate to begin with?
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While this emotional contagion is suitable for positive states, having too much empathy when watching people suffer can be very upsetting and even lead to mental health problems. Too much empathy towards others, especially when we prioritise other people’s emotions over our own, may result in experiences of anxiety and depression, which explains why so many of us feel bad when watching the news about the war in Ukraine.
Are the authors Westerners? See also:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/news/ethnonepotism/I personally did not want war in Ukraine, but I pity neither Ukrainians nor Russians now that it happened. I would consider myself a highly empathetic person, I just know for a fact, and in my heart, Westerners deserve neither empathy nor compassion as they have shown non-Westerners absolutely none of either themselves for the last 500 years! Ef a muddatruckin westerner, they deserve everything they've done to non-Westerners 100 times over!
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The other type of empathy – cognitive empathy – refers to seeing the world through other people’s eyes, seeing it from their perspective, putting ourselves into their shoes without necessarily experiencing the associated emotions and, for example, watching the news and understanding at a cognitive level why people feel despair, distress or anger. This process may lead to emotional empathy or even somatic empathy, where empathy has a physiological effect (somatic being from the ancient Greek word “soma” meaning body).
The effect of empathy on the body has been well documented. For example, parents experiencing high levels of empathy towards their children tend to have chronic low-grade inflammation, leading to lower immunity. Also, our heart beats to the same rhythm when we empathise with others. So the impact of empathy when watching the news is both psychological and physiological. In some circumstances, it may result in what some refer to as “compassion fatigue”.
Misnomer
The burnout experienced by excessive empathy has traditionally been termed compassion fatigue. But more recently, using MRI studies, neuroscientists have argued that this is a misnomer, and that compassion does not cause fatigue. The distinction is important because it turns out that compassion is the antidote to the distress we feel when we empathise with people who are suffering. We need less empathy and more compassion.
Empathy and compassion are distinct events in the brain. Empathy for another person’s pain activates areas in the brain associated with negative emotions. Because we feel the other person’s pain, the boundary between the self and others can become blurred if we do not have good boundaries or self-regulation skills and we experience “emotional contagion”.
Westerners will show up to this forum I suspect, witness us speaking of compassion and empathy, and automatically assume we give two
**** about their survival as much as they themselves do? I think deep down westerners know they need a savior from themselves, and anyone who speaks of empathy and compassion for others must be it!? I feel like I have experienced "emotional contagion" from westerners searching for a savior from themselves myself...
Best advice from this article:
3. Take action
Empathic distress evokes negative feelings, such as stress, and prompts us to withdraw and be unsociable. In contrast, compassion produces positive feelings of love for another. It prompts us to take action. Most specifically compassion helps motivate sociability. One way to [counter empathic distress] is to get involved: donate, volunteer, organise.
Entire article:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/an-excess-of-empathy-can-be-bad-for-your-mental-health?utm_source=pocket-newtab"One way to [counter empathic distress] is to get involved: donate, volunteer, organise." Most of the rest of humanity should probably start by looking in the mirror and stop being Westerners immediately FFS!!!