Shifting from Pity to Empathy by Lucy Pattinson

I am writing this blog from Samye Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist centre in Scotland.  The heart of Buddhism is about compassion, so it seems fitting to reflect on this subject of pity and empathy while I am here.

In my work with clients and participants in courses over the past 30 years I have heard some truly heartbreaking situations for people.  Life is only temporarily comfortable and sweet.   When I say comfortable and sweet I am really talking about the inner world, as I have met many individuals who have a seemingly “easy” outer life, but their inner world is tormented.  While others can overcome with extraordinary courage and grace extremely painful outer situations to a place of inner peace.

How can we be genuinely helpful without absorbing the troubled energies of another? 

People, and healers in particular, have often said to me “I am an empath, so I feel everyone’s energies and I need to create boundaries, and I can’t be around others for long”.

 What I would say to this is that it is only part way there to empathy.  There are some crucial further steps which go beyond the need to create boundaries and beyond this absorption of others’ energies.

Pity and empathy are often muddled together unconsciously.   We need to go beyond pity and shift into empathy. 

We all have this seed within us of compassion, of love and a wish of better for others.  It is part of the fabric of a human being, that often gets covered up with the mess of chaotic life situations, thoughts, emotions.  When someone is in trouble, it tugs at most of our heart strings.

This is part of the shared experience of humanity – this wish to care for others.

The 2 traps that many fall into is firstly to go into the feeling of pity and secondly to passively absorb the energies of the other without any inner control.  This is not helpful to the other and does harm to us as the pitier.

Pity is seeing someone as a victim, seeing that they are unable to fix their problems themselves.  This is disempowering and also comes from a place that you are somehow “better”.

Empathy is feeling the other’s energies from the level of the heart with detachment.  It is the ability to see through the eyes of another and resonate directly with their soul.  

Here the place of being of assistance to another does not come from a place of thinking of yourself as “better”, but from a place of simply being a tool, a channel of universal resources.  So, humility is also a quality within empathy.

It is really important to be active in this process.  If you are passively empathising it slips into pity and feeling drained and needing boundaries.

Keep observing your inner state.  If you feel light inside then all is good, but if you are feeling low, heavy, down then your empathy wasn’t genuine and was mixed with pity.  Take time out from assisting the other until you can raise your inner wellbeing.  Keep checking you don’t cross the boundary into pity.  Step back and be the observer of your inner processes.

Empathy is trainable.  It requires a gradual opening of the heart centre and detachment.  Detachment comes from a certain amount of common sense, wisdom and actively choosing the role as the observer. 

When you truly feel empathetic you are in touch with your own soul and that of another and it is a beautiful, expansive feeling.  This is a clue – if you are feeling contracted, rather than expanded helping another it is not empathy. 

Empathy crucially involves knowing that all that happens to another holds a lesson for them in this life.  There is always gold in every situation, no matter how heart wrenching.  This is the key to see the other not as a victim but as a powerful being with the tools within them to transform from life’s curveballs.

It is zooming out and seeing the much larger picture.  This is how we can begin to be of much more service to others.  Often it is hard to see the larger picture when we are in the midst of depression or trauma.  If we can shine a light beyond the narrow perspectives and open up the wider horizons for another, they can begin to raise their heads and open to a higher understanding.

Remember this is not only towards others – we need to catch ourselves feeling self-pity and to transform this into compassion and empathy for ourselves.

 So, to sum up:

•  Pity sees the other as a victim and drags us into the others’ energies and helps no-one.
•  Empathy is a trainable quality, innate in all of us and involves an expansive feeling of another’s soul from the centre of the heart. It is detached, expansive and energising for the one feeling empathy.
•  Empathy connects us to our true inner nature – the Godly seed within.
•  True empathy is the starting place for being of authentic guidance, service to another.

Blog written by Lucy Pattinson, Director of The Quantum Questions

https://www.thequantumquestions.com/