Exploring the Relationship Between Empathy, Trauma and Mental Health
Have you ever wondered if the way you connect with others has anything to do with the things you’ve been through? Today we’re talking about the relationship between empathy and trauma and the impact on our mental health. For the curious and compassionate among us, this blog is just for you!
Before you begin, remember that our professionals are always here to help
The relationship between empathy and trauma
If you have experienced trauma at any point in your life (and most of us have in some way), it has likely impacted the way you experience the pain of others. Empathy, or connecting with someone else’s emotional experience, is heightened in the face of trauma. But what that means for your own experience can be quite varied!
For some people who have experienced complex trauma in adulthood, particularly those suffering with PTSD, you may feel disconnected from empathy when supporting or just speaking to others. For others who experienced trauma in childhood that changed their worldview beyond their emotional sphere, you may have grown up with an increased empathy response.
The relationship between empathy and trauma is complex with a lot of gray area but there’s a definite connection between the two. Let’s take a look at some of the ways empathy and pain (old, new, big or small) are connected in science and mental health.
Here’s what the science says…
If science and research are your thing, you may be familiar with research that correlates your experiences in the world with your emotional intelligence—there’s actually quite a lot of diverse research. But if that’s not you, don’t worry, we’ll break it down for your curiosity without dwelling too heavily on the research side of things.
Social neuroscience is a blossoming field. It’s closely related to psychology and explores the way we experience emotions within relationships. Empathy in the context of our connections with other people is reflected in how we feel what they feel as well as how we respond to what gets stirred up. The research largely supports an increased empathic ability in humans who have felt either physical or emotional pain. This empathic response or “empathy superpower” is highlighted in research across the globe and exists for emotional pain, trauma and physical pain. Even imagined pain can foster stronger empathetic reactions in others.
But what does it really mean?
From isolated incidents of hearing about another’s difficulties to global pain like the pandemic, we are all capable of feeling and responding to pain that isn’t ours on an emotional and biological level. Basically, it means that your brain uses similar emotional resources when you feel pain as it does when you share the experience of someone else’s pain.
If you’ve been through something difficult, your own pain enables you to more effectively connect to what another person is going through. In this, we’re creating our own virtual reality to encourage connection, and from it, we experience empathy.
Empathy and your mental health
So if increased empathy is a trauma response, wouldn't it cause us further trauma? Not necessarily. On the podcast Curiosity Cake, they explore how we experience our own emotions versus empathetically experiencing someone else’s. You might feel a temporary increase in anxiety or even a wave of sadness that wraps around your own emotions. Still, there is a healthy distance from the intensity of those emotions.
Your response to empathy is important to pay attention to as you cultivate your own emotional strength and positive strategies for mental health in the wake of trauma. Your sense of self may cause some discomfort in being near someone else’s pain and that’s perfectly normal! It may also put up some sort of barrier to insulate you from extraneous pain.
Regardless of the emotional coping mechanisms your body and brain help you out with, empathy won’t add permanent trauma or harm to your mental health. However, it may cause temporary fatigue that fuels the desire to avoid.
What is empathy avoidance?
When your coping mechanisms create that insulation or discomfort in your internal relationship between trauma and empathy, it can leave you wanting to avoid these connections at all. This is called empathy avoidance and it happens when you distance yourself from feeling that empathy because you don’t have the emotional bandwidth to contain it.
Even though you may logically recognize that the pain of others doesn’t belong to you, it takes energy to process that empathy. You may feel helpless, frustrated, or hold on to that anxiety. Empathy avoidance would mean that, instead of risking that overload and emotional experience, you choose not to engage with it at all.
You can create compassionate connections while healing
Whether you experience heightened empathy or prefer to push away the pain you don’t have to feel, there is plenty of space to invite compassion into your life. From how you connect with your own trauma and mental health healing to building relationships with loved ones, simply being aware is a profound step in navigating your emotional landscape.
LunaJoy is here to support you in cultivating your empathetic response or creating boundaries around a bleeding heart today. For more empathy, emotions and mental health content, connect with us today!
