Life is full of beautiful moments, like spending time with your loved ones or enjoying a nutritious meal. But with the increase of the internet and social platforms to connect all over the world, it is hard to ignore the heart-pounding events.
Social media channels are often filled with posts and ads encouraging you to empathize with the suffering of others. This could be learning about people less fortunate than you or about a distant natural disaster.
These triggers don’t have to be removed either. You may sympathize with a friend who lost his job or a co-worker who is grappling with the loss of his family.
While empathy for others is natural and helps you connect more deeply, if you are a highly sensitive person, these feelings can become overwhelming and toxic to your mental health. Learning how to protect yourself from toxic empathy will help you retain your emotional energy.
What is empathy?
Empathy is the ability to understand someone’s experience and emotions. Highly empathetic people (sometimes called “empathetic”) are good at recognizing and relating to other people’s thoughts, feelings, and life experiences.
If you suffer when you see someone in pain, it is not just your imagination. Research in neuroscience shows that your pain circuits activate when you see someone in pain, so much so that taking a pain reliever impairs your ability to empathize with the physical pain of others.
What scientists call affective empathy, or the ability to feel the feelings of others, is deeply embodied. When two friends tune in to each other’s feelings, their heartbeats synchronize. And smelling anxious people’s sweat can make you feel anxious and even interfere with your work performance.
When does empathy become toxic?
Constantly feeling pain, stress, and fear of others as if it were about you can overload your nervous system and begin to cause damage: this is “toxic empathy.”
Toxic empathy, also called over-empathy syndrome, is a type of empathy disorder where a person struggles to regulate their emotions and empathize with others to the point that it affects their well-being. This contrasts with empathy deficiency disorder (EDD), in which one lacks the ability to empathize with others.
Empathy is the building block of emotional intelligence. It allows you to form deep emotional bonds, write novels, or be a good parent. But too much empathy can make you depressed, anxious, and unable to focus on your own needs and goals.
4 Signs you are falling prey to toxic empathy
Do you feel emotionally and mentally drained and wonder if you are falling prey to toxic empathy? Pay attention to the following signs:
- You justify bad behavior
Empathy helps you recognize the feelings and external circumstances that cause people to act the way they do. So, if the boss is a bit short-tempered, you may realize that he has an enormous workload, which makes it easier to deal with.
But making excuses for other people’s behavior can cause this to happen, leading to unhealthy relationship dynamics in the long run.
- You find it difficult to say “no”
Empathy makes you sensitive to the needs and wants of others. If you feel these needs intensely when people ask you to do something, you may find it difficult to say no.
Saying “yes” feels good the moment you see happiness or relief on a person’s face. But saying “yes” too much can overwhelm you when all your previous promises catch up to you.
- You are physically affected
Having too much empathy can take a physical toll. If you bear the pressure of others, you also bear the harmful physical effects of that stress.
Empathy can also increase inflammation in the body and trigger the fight-or-flight response, which increases the level of the stress hormone cortisol and damages the cardiovascular system.
- You find it difficult to complete daily tasks
Emotional exhaustion from having too much empathy can affect your energy levels and make it difficult to focus on daily personal and professional tasks.
This can make it difficult to keep track of what you need to do and may eventually lead to burnout. If you suffer from toxic empathy, you may also have trouble maintaining your normal self-care routine because you view the well-being of others as more valuable than your own.
Protecting yourself from toxic empathy: 8 tips
If you notice any of the above signs, it’s time to implement some empathy protection strategies to get rid of toxic empathy before it can do more harm.
Even if you don’t notice any signs of toxic empathy, it’s a good idea to be proactive so that you have some strategies you can take if they appear.
- Develop healthy relationships
Empathy is one of the foundations of a healthy relationship, but only if it is mutual. If you realize that you sympathize with someone who doesn’t show concern and concern for your situation, step back and look at the relationship to see what happens.
Spending more time with this person will likely fuel any tendencies toward toxic empathy.
In healthy relationships, people set and maintain healthy boundaries and respect the other person’s boundaries. Setting boundaries involves learning to say “no” (without feeling guilty) when people ask too much.
If you feel you can’t do this in some of your relationships, you may need to set stricter boundaries with these people to protect your energy.
It’s also a good idea to be selective about who you spend time with. Avoiding emotional vampires (people who drain your energy) and other toxic people can help keep your empathy stock up.
- Name the feeling
Sometimes empathy leads to confusing experiences. Your bowels are twisted or your pulse is racing, but you can’t figure out why.
When this happens, we strive for clarity. What is an emotion (or a combination of emotions)? Where can you feel it in your body? What caused them?
Labeling your feelings using precise language helps you develop self-awareness and emotional regulation skills. With strong emotional regulation skills, you can control the strength of vicarious emotions and reduce their intensity if necessary.
Some empathy becomes toxic because you cannot clearly distinguish between your own feelings and the feelings of the other person. When these boundaries between self and other are blurred, you experience emotional contagion instead of true empathy, so you are no longer in control of your emotions and risk being hijacked by the emotions of others.
Naming your feelings and developing self-awareness will help you distinguish your feelings from those of others.
- Use visualization techniques
Visualizations are a great technique for protecting against empathy. Try to imagine a shield around you that deflects or absorbs other people’s feelings. You can imagine it as a metallic shield or a colorful bubble filled with light – whatever makes you feel more protected and in control.
Another option is to imagine a glass wall between you and the other person, and see their emotions as negative energy hitting the wall and bouncing back without touching you. This technique is particularly effective against catharsis or gossip.
The visuals also help you release the emotional baggage you’ve been carrying on other people. Imagine dropping a leaf into a stream and watching unwanted emotions drift with the current, or blowing on a dandelion head and seeing it float in the breeze.
Take compassion breaks during these events if you can, using visualization techniques or refocusing your thoughts on your own needs and concerns.
Plan who you’ll spend your time with, too. If you socialize too often without a plan for how to deal with an overabundance of empathy, you will drain your emotional resources quickly. Decide in advance who you will focus on and stick to the plan as stubbornly as possible.
Also think about how your behavior contributes to feeling overwhelmed. One study found that “looking at negative news on social media” for just 2-4 minutes made people less happy and optimistic.
Those who looked at positive social media posts, or didn’t look at social media at all, didn’t experience these effects. Try to reduce any habits that you think might be contributing to empathy fatigue, such as scrolling through the pages of death.
- Practice mindfulness
Developing a mindfulness practice can help you address the emotional buildup caused by toxic empathy and stay alert to prevent it from happening in the future.
For example, grounding yourself by touching the physical objects around you, feeling your feet on the floor, and looking around at the physical objects in the room helps connect you to your body, which creates a psychological distance between you and others.
Another form of mindfulness is paying attention to your breath. You don’t have to breathe in any special way, just watch the breaths coming in and out. Keep your breathing the same or take in gradually deeper breaths.
Deep, mindful breathing calms the nervous system, helps you develop mental discipline, and improves emotional regulation.
- Take a vacation
Anything that distances you from others will give your empathy muscles a break. Solo activities are different for everyone. You might want to work in the garden, do crafts, or go for a run on your own.
If you have pets, spending time with them is especially beneficial for sympathizers. They don’t require as much emotional energy from you, instead, they help you recharge your energy by offering unconditional love and affection.
If your work environment is a source of toxic empathy, and your energy reserves are depleted after each working day, a job or career change may be in order.
- Talk to someone
If you are highly empathetic, you probably spend a lot of time listening to and supporting others. This may make you feel lonely. Everyone comes to you with their problems, but you also need a friendly ear to listen and support you.
Try to confide in a friend or family member who you know will show you the same empathy that you offer others. The right therapist or coach can also guide you through emotional exhaustion and help you develop strategies that work for your personality and situation.
Another option is to trust your diary, as this is a great way to let things flow and regulate your emotions.
- Cultivate compassion
Compassion is empathy plus a willingness to take action. If you see an abandoned dog shivering in the street, you might feel sympathy—but once you start thinking of ways to help the dog, sympathy turns into empathy.
To be empathetic, you need to distance yourself slightly from the suffering you see (practice “cognitive empathy”), letting your nervous system interpret the problem as an energizing challenge rather than a threat to your survival.
Compassion includes self-compassion as well. Realize that no one person – not even you – can carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Show yourself the same kindness and care that you show others.
Although important, your empathy isn’t the only thing you have to offer the world. Sharing some of your other positive personality traits may give your empaths a much-needed break while positively affecting your surroundings in other ways.
Make your empathy sustainable
While empathy can become toxic, it is also responsible for some of the high points in human existence. It’s a great feeling to see someone relax when you hug them, or to be genuinely happy for others when they achieve something they’re proud of.
The world is a better place because of your compassion. And learning how to protect yourself from toxic empathy is the best way to make a sustainable positive impact on everyone around you.
