On Empathy vs Compassion

The Google Trends chart below compares the use of the terms empathy and maturity (psychological) on the web since 2004.

Those of you who have heard me speak have likely been subjected to my rant against empathy in favor of compassion. I view empathy (actually feeling the emotion of another) as a psychological disorder. The definition of the term empath is “one who experiences the emotions of others.” Think of President Bill Clinton’s famous phrase, “I feel your pain” and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Deanna Troi.

What we want from our leaders is not empathy, feeling what we feel, but, rather, compassion. Compassion is sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it. We want them to be fully present with us in our suffering.

Compassion allows us to help those in pain. All empathy does is to take one person’s pain and transfer it to another.

Here is where maturity comes into play. It is the capacity to remain fully present compassionate, yet non-anxious in the face of someone in emotional pain. Maturity recognizes the subtle but important differences between empathy and compassion.

We need more maturity and less empathy in the world.