by Tamara Kulish from https://tamarakulish.com/

The paradox of empathy and indifference

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.

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.

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?

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
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Tamara

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4 thoughts on “The paradox of empathy and indifference”

  1. It is an interesting thing to see and ‘understand’ something as we go through life. A child is smacked for doing something wrong and your empathy and compassion go out to that child…because you understand it, have experienced it, relate to it. You see two teenagers falling in love for the first time…and you empathize totally with them, because you understand it. And in each of these you ‘hold’ yourself in varying degree’s because it affects us in that empathy. Holding tears, holding the emotion that goes with it because we don’t want to open ourselves so painfully to something that we have touched before.

    But there is one where it will stop and we can finally ‘let go’ that on guard feeling we associate with all these things so that we aren’t hurt…and it is our fear. The instant you understand your fear…the ‘let go’ is immense. And in that instant of understanding you can see all that you have been, all you have gone through, all that has affected you, and the meaning it meant to you. There is no longer anything to ‘hold’, be wary of, be afraid of…so you then ‘feel’ it all…and allow it…in everything. There are no ‘afraid’ bits, and for the first time you can ‘just be’ yourself, your true self and share that love, empathy and compassion that you have now become. In everything. You become it, that love and its emotions no longer restricted by that fear.

    Anything we understand, we ‘let go’ of. It is no longer an unknown. Going back to to that smacked child, we ‘feel’ it totally because we’ve been there and understand. But if we are that child we are in an uproar, because we don’t truly understand yet. That empathy is in feeling their pain, relating to it, and because we haven’t truly fully understood it in ourselves. So there is an ‘on guard’ part to it. The fear part imprinted by those many experiences we have.

    When I stepped through my fear, I could ‘see’ right back through my life, where it all associated with so much in those many things I had experienced. So now I can see it in others, just as we all do ‘in those things we understand’. To a point that I can see that we all must experience those many things to reach where we need to go, even to the point that I can see wars and feel that journey to reach a place where we will no longer accept what ‘they’ say is needed for us…and change because of it. Go beyond it, push us through it, until our fear is no longer our guide, and become the love we have ever looked for, through it.

    Empathy and compassion is a guidepost, love is the path. It isn’t that I am now indifferent but can just understand its beauty because I have experienced it up to that point. There may be much more to go. But this conditional world is poking us from so many directions, especially the emotional ones, so that we can understand and let go that final block into a clearness that only that love can be, the unconditional one where we ‘just are’ us, no longer bent by those fears or see everything only from that place.

    Very beautifully written Tamara, your journey from that beauty you have found, and found well. Merry Christmas kind lady, may the love within it share and be open as you always do because of what you’ve discovered 🤗🥰🎄🎅🎶🎁🕊️🦌☃️❤️🙏

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    1. Thank you so much Mark for your heartfelt response and for your ki d words. You’ve put a finger firmly on the pulse of what empathy is and the route we travel to understand it in a deeper way. Our journey there is vital for each of our growth.

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  2. Tamara, while there are times I cannot hold back the tears on learning about the suffering of others near and far, I find balance through daily prayers for all those in distress. I believe that “our thoughts and energy [do, indeed] affect the physical world around us.”

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  3. I can relate to the girl Dr. Stein talks about, as well. I haven’t watched the news in 15+ years, but I still regularly see the faces of people in old headlines on a weekly basis, clear as day–lives cut short by war, murder, or suicide. It felt in my heart as if I’d lost my parents and siblings, and I know that sounds crazy, but maybe you feel the same? Like you, I was burdened by sorrow, and absolutely buried in grief of people I didn’t know personally and it totally disrupted my life. I’m still tormented by random headlines that flashed by 20+ years ago.

    I glad that you discovered this: “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.” I found the same. It’s hard, but–I feel–necessary for the survival of those us of so deeply empathetic. This is such a great piece, Tamara, and more and more I realize we’re walked quite similar paths.

    To answer your question, like you, I’ve focused my attention on my local community, with perhaps smaller “issues,” but areas in which I can see my positive impact. I volunteer and donate to the food bank, but I’m also very involved in a program for underprivileged kids that provides school supplies throughout the year and this Christmas we’re gifting board games and snacks to promote quality family time. No politics, no violence, no drama; just trying to do right by the next generation in the small ways my heart is capable of.

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