How to become more empathic

Recently, a friend reached out to me to vent about work. Generally, I’m the kind of friend you call for advice. I want to help. But as she started sharing her work problems, I started feeling overwhelmed and anxious. Eventually, I had to stop her midstory and tell her I was going to have to call her back. I hung up the phone, exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to feel empathy.

What is empathy?

Empathy is our ability to understand how others are feeling. It helps us forge connections and make meaningful relationships. Empathy is comprised of three primary components: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate. The cognitive component is our capacity to understand another person’s thoughts, feelings, or perspective. The emotional component is our ability to share feelings and relate. And the compassionate component helps us not just hear someone’s concerns, but also actively reduce their pain and suffering.

Why are we less empathic now?

Empathy is an important part of the human experience, but the moments we experience it are fleeting as we spend more time preoccupied with work, stressed out about obligations, and absorbed in our digital lives. In fact, we’re becoming less empathetic and it’s affecting our personal relationships, the way we navigate workplaces, and how we interact with each other in our society.

I was recently listening to a Wall Street Journal interview with Brian Chesky, the founder, and CEO of Airbnb. He’d announced that the company’s employees can now work from anywhere remotely. Chesky said he make this decision because he wanted to give his employees more flexibility. But he also said he wanted to create community spaces that help cultivate empathy because being on screens all day disconnected people from each other.

“I hope that we still have physical communities because I think right now when you hear the word community, most people think of social media… The problem with online interactions is there’s not a lot of empathy. The interactions are more fleeting. You don’t really build the same kind of understanding. You’re not as curious. You’re more judgmental,” he said.

This decline in empathy has been happening since the early 2000s, experts observed. Researchers at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research analyzed data on empathy from 14,000 college students over 30 years and they found that most students were less empathetic than college students from 1979 — an era notable for its women’s rights, gay rights, and environmental movements, as well as the Watergate scandal, the energy crisis, and the ongoing Vietnam War.

“We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research. “College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”

This data, although older (2014), shows we’ve been trending downward on the empathy scale.

What causes us to lose empathy?

Researchers believe we’re losing our empathy because we’re exhibiting the negative consequences of repeated exposure to stressful or traumatic events. For example, the pandemic was traumatic for many people, especially those who weren’t able to stay home during the peak of the virus and had to work on the frontlines. During that time, the U.S. saw an increase in domestic violence. It was also common to see social media videos of people displaying incivility. And that constant stress and trauma can cause people to withdraw from others.

@jareenimam It’s not in your head, civility is dead @jareenimam #takeaNAIRbreak #understandingourselves #burnedoutadult #rudepeopleoftiktok #betterjob #workculturematters ♬ Succession Main Theme (From " Succession") - Geek Music

I remember when I was a young journalist, I was left alone during the weekends to report on major breaking news. One of those events was a mass shooting. My job was to speak to the people who were affected by the shooting. It was obviously a really painful experience listening to these people share the worst moment of their lives. After I finished my work, I locked myself in my bedroom during my days off, barely eating or sleeping. I didn’t have the energy to speak to anyone. The vicarious trauma I took on from work had sparked a habit of self-isolation. As my career continued and I covered more of these traumatic events, the more numbness I felt.

What is empathy fatigue?

Whether you work as a journalist, healthcare provider, or teacher, empathy fatigue is a real problem. Empathy fatigue is when we’re emotionally and physically exhausted and we lose our ability to care. And with the pandemic, racial injustice issues, climate change, and inflation, there are too many issues to worry about, causing us to feel overwhelmed and apathetic.

“Over time, we start to see people experiencing a sense of numbness and distancing themselves from others,” said Susan Albers, a psychologist with the Cleveland Clinic.

Extreme cases of empathy fatigue are dangerous. For example, it can trigger depression. It doesn’t just affect our mental and physical health, but it also affects how we treat each other.

How do we treat empathy fatigue?

Psychologists suggest that you can combat empathy fatigue by doing the following things: Focus on being aware of how you’re feeling. For example, if breaking news and Facebook stress you out, then limit the amount of news you watch every day, and put a limit on your social media exposure. Add balance back into your life by exercising, going on walks, getting proper sleep, and connecting with people around you.

How to become more empathetic

Empathetic people tend to have higher life satisfaction, stronger relationships, and better health. So how do we increase our empathy? Scientists have two theories for how we can become more empathetic. Research shows that we have neurons called “mirror neurons” that activate when we see and feel emotions, according to WebMD. And scientists believe these “mirror neurons” help us experience empathy. However, there are other scientists who believe empathy can also be learned. When we see how people react and feel we can intellectually understand their emotions and learn how to empathize.

There’s consensus from scientists that empathy is a vital quality. It’s an important part of not just the human experience, but the natural world, even animals like squirrels, dogs, cats, and elephants, show empathy. One of the ways to become more empathic is to practice.

What should you do to be more empathic?

Be curious about the world: Empathic people strike up more conversations with people around them, even strangers. They want to understand their surroundings. They listen to others. They’re better at perceiving what’s happening in their environment. Curiosity is a great teacher. It helps us better understand different perspectives, beliefs, and information.

Find things that unite rather than separate: Finding commonality can help create stronger bonds. Whether that’s where you went to college or your love of the same TV shows, finding similarities can help you connect with people.

Perspective-taking: Ever heard of the phrase, “put yourself in someone else’s shoes?” Perspective-taking allows you to see and experience how others go through life. Volunteering is a good way to gain perspective. Growing up, it was common for me and my brother to volunteer on the weekends. We did beach cleans up. We helped little sea turtles get safely into the water during hatching season. We removed invasive plant species from the Florida Everglades. We picked up trash from gopher tortoises’ homes. In hindsight, all these experiences helped me appreciate nature better. And today, I find myself opting out of using single-use plastic when I can or preferring to buy products that are made from glass and aluminum instead. Empathy doesn’t just help us treat others better, it helps us treat our world better.

Listening and sharing: We all know listening is essential. But it can be hard. Social media has trained us to put our needs and thoughts out first. But by taking a step back and listening to others, we can form deeper connections. And that can inspire us to share our perspectives and feelings as well, which can help strengthen relationships.

Experience art and culture: Going to a museum, looking at artwork, reading new books, watching an indie movie, and exposing ourselves to creative and thought-provoking content can help us better learn about the world around us and help us appreciate people, places, and things.

Meditation: Just a few minutes of compassionate meditation, silently repeating phrases that express intention that moves us from being isolated to connected, apathetic to caring, judgmental to understanding, can help us empathize better, according to researchers at Emory University. In general, meditation has a profound effect on our brains. Mount Sinai Medical Center researchers scanned the brains of people who were meditating and found the areas that experience empathy brightly light up. In addition, meditation can also help calm our nervous system, so that we’re able to be more receptive to other people’s feelings.

Why should you be more empathetic?

Empathy helps us understand the world around us. Kindness and compassion make us better friends, parents, leaders, lovers, citizens, and humans. There’s a lot of scientific research about why empathy is important. But I think we all know that we need to fix this loss of empathy urgently. We’re drifting apart from each other. We’re lonelier, angrier, more anxious, and divided than ever before. We’ve seen protesting, fighting, and even wars break out because people can’t understand each other’s perspectives.

Practicing more empathy can help us start filling the void that we’re feeling. It can be a way to bring us closer together. And maybe it can help us get back to loving one another, and ourselves again.