In mid-October, a few days after the attack on Israel, a friend sent me a text from a rabbi. She said she couldn’t look away from the horror on the news but felt completely numb. She was struggling to feel even the tiniest bit useful: “What can I even do?”
Many people are feeling similarly defeated, and many others are outraged by the political inaction that ensues. A Muslim colleague of mine said she was appalled to see so much indifference to the atrocities and innocent lives lost in Gaza and Israel. How could anyone just go on as if nothing had happened?
A common conclusion is that people just don’t care. But inaction isn’t always caused by apathy. It can also be the product of empathy. More specifically, it can be the result of what psychologists call empathic distress: hurting for others while feeling unable to help.
I felt it intensely this fall, as violence escalated abroad and anger echoed across the United States. Helpless as a teacher, unsure of how to protect my students from hostility and hate. Useless as a psychologist and writer, finding words too empty to offer any hope. Powerless as a parent, searching for ways to reassure my kids that the world is a safe place and most people are good. Soon I found myself avoiding the news altogether and changing the subject when war came up. Understanding how empathy can immobilize us like that is a critical step for helping others — and ourselves.
Empathic distress explains why many people have checked out in the wake of these tragedies. The small gestures they could make seem like an exercise in futility. Giving to charity feels like a drop in the ocean. Posting on social media is a hornet’s nest. Having concluded that nothing they do will make a difference, they start to become indifferent.
The symptoms of empathic distress were originally diagnosed in health care, with nurses and doctors who appeared to become insensitive to the pain of their patients. Early researchers labeled it “compassion fatigue” and described it as “the cost of caring.” The theory was that seeing so much suffering is a form of vicarious trauma that depletes us until we no longer have enough energy to care.
But when two neuroscientists, Olga Klimecki and Tania Singer, reviewed the evidence, they discovered that “compassion fatigue” is a misnomer. Caring itself is not costly. What drains people is not merely witnessing others’ pain but feeling incapable of alleviating it. In times of sustained anguish, empathy is a recipe for more distress, and in some cases even depression. What we need instead is compassion.
Although they’re often used interchangeably, empathy and compassion aren’t the same. Empathy absorbs others’ emotions as your own: “I’m hurting for you.” Compassion focuses your action on their emotions: “I see that you’re hurting, and I’m here for you.”
That’s a big difference. “Empathy is biased,” the psychologist Paul Bloom writes. It’s something we usually reserve for our own group, and in that sense, it can even be “a powerful force for war and atrocity.”
Another difference is that empathy makes us ache. Neuroscientists can see it in brain scans. Dr. Klimecki, Dr. Singer and their colleagues trained people to empathize by trying to feel other people’s pain. When the participants saw someone suffering, it activated a neural network that would light up if they themselves were in pain. It hurt. And when people can’t help, they escape the pain by withdrawing.
To combat this, the Klimecki and Singer team taught their participants to respond with compassion rather than empathy — focusing not on sharing others’ pain but on noticing their feelings and offering comfort. A different neural network lit up, one associated with affiliation and social connection. This is why a growing body of evidence suggests that compassion is healthier for you and kinder to others than empathy: When you see others in pain, instead of causing you to get overloaded and retreat, compassion motivates you to reach out and help.
In the midst of the recent turmoil on college campuses, I got an email out of the blue from an old friend named Sarah. Recognizing the impact on me and my students, she wrote: “Nothing more to say really than I just wanted to send along a big big hug. And just a reminder that I love you and your family so very much.” She added, “If I can ever be an ear to talk to, I am all in.” It warmed my heart to know that she was thinking of us.
The most basic form of compassion is not assuaging distress but acknowledging it. When we can’t make people feel better, we can still make a difference by making them feel seen. And in my research, I’ve found that being helpful has a secondary benefit: It’s an antidote to feeling helpless.
To figure out who needs your support after something terrible happens, the psychologist Susan Silk suggests picturing a dart board, with the people closest to the trauma in the bull’s-eye and those more peripherally affected in the outer rings.
The victims of violence in Israel and Gaza are in the center ring. Their immediate family members and closest friends are in the ring surrounding them. The local community is in the next ring, followed by people in other communities who share an identity or affiliation with them. Once you’ve figured out where you belong on the dart board, look for support from people outside your ring, and offer it to people closer to the center.
Even if people aren’t personally in the line of fire, attacks targeting members of a specific group can shatter a whole population’s sense of security. This is how many Muslims are feeling in reaction to the horrific shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont. It’s how many Jews are feeling amid vile expressions of antisemitism. And it’s what leaves many people around them frozen in empathic distress, at a loss for how to help.
If you notice that someone in your life seems disengaged around an issue that matters to you, it’s worth considering whose pain they might be carrying. Instead of demanding that they do more, it may be time to show them compassion — and help them find compassion for themselves too.
Your small gesture of kindness won’t end the crisis in the Middle East, but it can help someone else. And that can give you the strength to help more.
That’s why I’m writing this article. It’s not because I feel your pain. It’s because I see your pain, just as others saw mine and reached out to me. It helped.