Indifference seems to be almost TOO prevalent these days, where the bad news from across our nation and around the world assaults us multiple times a day. Even the most empathetic people are needing to put up emotional walls in order to protect their mental health. Less empathetic people seem to be becoming quite hardened and very accepting of the violence and turmoil.

Where does one find the balance?

Our separateness guarantees an imperfect grasp of others and the impossibility of being as easily touched by their sufferings as we are by our own. Of course, exceptions exist, as when our children are in pain, but it is not hard for some to look away from others. Indeed, it can be automatic, a defense mechanism that makes the world tolerable.

To look, to see, to recognize leads to searching one’s conscience and a question. Do I have a responsibility to help?

I met only one person in my long clinical practice who lacked the capacity for indifference to others’ distress. She was a bright, young teenage woman whose parents brought her to my office.

This girl could not watch television news without being tormented by human tragedy. It was unbearable, and her heartbreak was beyond her mother and father’s understanding and my own.

Dr. Stein’s post Thinking About Indifference

I read the part of Dr. Stein’s post where he speaks on the subject of suffering and how a young patient who wasn’t able to tune out others suffering in turn became tortured with it. It reminded me of a younger version of me, when in adulthood I became wide open an saw all the suffering around me and felt it deep in my soul. I felt overwhelmed with the weight and burden it imposed, to the point of feeling very sorrowful.

I then had people in my life who told me I needed to close off a portion of my heart to the suffering or it would consume my mind and my sanity. I did listen, for I was overwhelmed with the suffering around me as well as the very real difficulties of being married to an alcoholic and drug addict who was struggling to find a need for his own sobriety. All of that stress combined had overwhelmed my nervous system and I came down with shingles, and then had relapse after relapse after relapse.

I was told I needed to learn how to overcome my stress in order to regain my physical health. I went through almost 10 years of shingles episodes, one on the heel of the other. The emotional pain I felt was manifesting in my body as physical pain. I slowly learned to handle my personal life, the biggest break happened when he left me for another woman. While his leaving caused great pain in my heart it also gave me respite because he was no longer my problem.

I was also quietly learning to put up walls inside of myself so that I was no longer so deeply affected by the suffering of the people around the world. I knew that the cost of hardening my heart would result in less empathy for others, but it was a step I needed to take in order to be able to live a sane and healthy life.

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Finding balance: of being empathetic to the people around us while also protecting our mental and physical health is where we sit in our current lives.

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I have found this inner balance of feeling and showing empathy by helping my family, and by participating in outreach in my community. I will go to the local community center and pack grocery bags that will be handed out, I spearhead adopting a local family through United Way with my department at work so we can collect Christmas gifts and money for the family. I keep sandwich baggies with rolled up socks in them to hand out at traffic lights when the in-house are begging for money.

On the other hand, I do scroll past a lot of the news items about the wars, the latest mass shooting here in the USA, the plight of so many families these past few months, for there’s so much I feel powerless to help with. Yes, I offer prayers. Sometimes I’ll make a financial contribution to a non-profit or buy some items in benefit fundraisers.

It’s a daily thing to find the inner balance of having a soft heart for those around us and putting up shields to the barrage of suffering that comes though the feeds and inboxes every day.

I know the adage of “sending thoughts and prayers” has been mocked, because often it is used as a replacement for doing anything tangible to help. However, if we’re doing what we can to help those in our lives and our world, offering additional thoughts and prayers then works on a level Quantum Physics has proven is real, for our thoughts and energy have been proven to affect the physical world around us.

We don’t even need to join any particular church or temple to be able to do this. We don’t need to tell the people around us; we can do it quietly. In the car driving to and from work, standing in a grocery line of grumpy people are 2 of my favorite places, for I can’t distract myself on my phone, so why not go into a more meditative, gentle mode of thinking, while still being alert to what’s going on around?

Christmas is seen as a time of giving, and we often stop being generous once the holidays are done.

What if we were to incorporate a balance in our lives where throughout the year we made mindful efforts to give financially and physically to help, while also  energetically sending out prayers and positive thoughts for our communities and the world?

One doesn’t replace the other, they work together to create a healthy symbiosis, which then helps our own mental health, because we aren’t allowing ourselves to be flooded with the suffering we see, but we know in our hearts we’re doing what we can to help.

How are you managing to keep a soft heart to help people, while not getting overwhelmed with all that is going on?

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• Mindfulness Resources
• Need to start over in life, or need to make life-altering changes, but don’t know how?
• Life will continue to go on… choose the direction you wish to go
• Relationship affirming behaviors
• 13 Signs of Serious Anger Issues (you may not think yours are all that bad!)
• Why venting anger just makes us angrier, and ways to deal with it.
• Everyday is a new beginning. Take a deep breath, smile, and START AGAIN.
• The power of stepping away!
• 16 Phrases People Use When They’re Angry Inside but Don’t Want to Show It, (and how to move beyond.)
• What’s the opposite of “Hurt people hurt others”?
• Love is NOT all you need!
• God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know… it’s me.
• Love is not what you say. Love is what you do.
• The power of love is the strongest force in the universe.

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for liking, sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts Main page divided up into 3 sub-pages: Mental Health and Rewiring the Brain || Healing and Developing Ourselves || Positive thoughts and Affirmations to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
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