Compassionate distance: what is it, what is it for and how to apply it in relationships?

Compassionate distance allows us to give emotional support without suffering a high psychological toll

When someone suffers, it is almost inevitable to tune in to their pain. People are empathic by nature and, thanks to this, we can live in society, helping each other.

However, an excess of empathy and compassion prevents us from being helpful to others. When we become too attuned to the suffering of others, far from seeing what we can do to improve their condition, we block ourselves and make our own a problem that we should not be responsible for.

If we want to help those who suffer it is necessary to maintain a compassionate distance protecting our emotional balance but understanding how the other person feels. Let's see how to achieve it.

What is compassionate distance?

Compassionate distance can be understood as placing oneself in a psychological space of protection, where it will be easier for us to avoid being impregnated by the emotions of others.

As its name suggests, it implies compassion, providing support from understanding and empathy, but doing so with emotional prudence and avoiding being flooded by the sadness, anger or anxiety of others. It means understanding others, wanting to help them, but avoiding turning their problems into our own.

Not knowing how to set limits to our compassion for others can lead us to suffer from empathy burnout syndrome. This peculiar condition consists of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion caused by putting ourselves for too long in other people's shoes, feeling the same way they feel. Connecting with the traumatic experiences of others always leaves an imprint, an emotional discomfort that can eat away at us from the inside out.

It is this same empathy burnout that is experienced by hundreds of professionals who work with people who are having a hard time. Doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists... all of them professionals who suffer the same as their patients when they tell them about their painful experiences. It is hard to avoid it, because we are human and, especially in the caring professions, we are attuned to the emotions of others.

It is almost impossible not to identify with the suffering of others to the point of feeling it as one's own. But if we do not set a limit, if we do not apply that compassionate distance that protects us, putting ourselves too often in the same shoes as those who suffer will leave us with consequences. Our mental health will be affected not because we have experienced a traumatic experience, but because we have tuned into the lives of those who have.

If we want to help others, we must learn to separate our own burdens from those of others. It is true that empathizing and feeling compassion for other people is human, but it can be very ineffective if it blocks us because we become infected by their discomfort. On the other hand, when we manage to put an adequate distance from those who suffer, understanding how they feel but seeing it for what it is, a Pain that is not ours, it is possible to give the best of each one of us to help those who need it.

Compassion and its function

There are people who, when faced with the pain of others, remain totally paralyzed. People can become very sensitive, so much so that we experience in our own flesh the pain, fear, suffering and, in general, the discomfort of those who are real victims of misfortune. The emotional pain caused by empathy is so intense that it makes it difficult for us to react.

The ability to empathize with the suffering of others, whether physical or emotional, is a process that can dull our reason. It makes it difficult for us to think coldly and rationally, even though the misfortune is not with us. Experiencing this is not at all useful because it prevents us both from going on with our lives and from helping those who need our help. In this respect we can speak of the research carried out by Dr. Paul Gilbert, from the mental health department of the Kingsway Hospital in Derby (England).

Through his work, Gilbert came to the conclusion that human compassion is an evolutionary advantage oriented to a single purpose: to help others. For this reason, being blocked by an excess of compassion, or rather by an emotional flood, goes against this functionality. It is precisely in this situation that compassionate distance should act.

Understanding the discomfort of others without making it one's own

It could be said that compassionate distance is an ability that acts as a regulator of our empathy. It is like a kind of filter that prevents one of our most human capacities, tuning in to the emotions of others, from taking a bad toll on us and flooding us emotionally. Floods are never good, even those that happen in our mind.

By applying compassionate distance we can understand the mental reality of others, because we are still empathic beings, but without being trapped in their suffering. This distance of psychological protection should not be understood as becoming cold, but to maintain, as we have already mentioned, a prudent distance, enough to be able to see what is happening to another person and to understand him or her without being affected by his or her emotional pain. With it, we will be able to achieve enough mental clarity to help those who suffer.

When people suffer, our personal drama can become a black hole that traps others. Compassionate distance avoids falling into such a hole, avoids overloading ourselves with the emotions of others, which can shut down our resources to help them. If we place ourselves at the same level of suffering as those who are suffering firsthand, we will not be able to help them. The same pain that makes them not see the light at the end of the tunnel will do the same to us.

The consequences of not applying compassionate distance

Compassionate distance is to put ourselves in the other person's shoes, but without putting ourselves in their pain. It is totally normal that when a friend, family member or acquaintance tells us something that makes them suffer, we put ourselves in their shoes, but we must put our own shoes back on. As with real shoes, wearing someone else's shoes can hurt us, especially if the soles have holes in them. The consequences of not applying compassionate distance are all related to emotional wear and tear, being the following:

1. Post-traumatic stress

Making other people's problems our own can cause us to re-experience their drama over and over again. We remember the suffering of others in the form of flashbacks, even though we have not experienced them in the first person. It is a kind of post-traumatic stress.

2. Compassion fatigue

Tuning in to the feelings of others involves investing our cognitive and emotional resources. In other words, when we put ourselves in other people's shoes, we imagine what they felt, and this mental exercise consumes energy. If we do it several times during the day, we can fall into a real compassion fatigue.

In addition, we will live irritated, sad and angry because of other people's experiences. Negative emotions consume us psychologically and physically. The fatigue they cause will prevent us from making decisions and thinking clearly, and we will not be able to concentrate well because we are all the time remembering the many bad things that may have happened to our close circle and that we now experience as if they were our own.

3. Dissatisfaction with oneself

As we said, not being able to maintain a prudent distance from the emotions of others can block us. The main evolutionary task of compassion is to help others by understanding how they feel, but if we are unable to do so because we have been overwhelmed by their emotions, it will be a matter of time before we feel deeply dissatisfied with ourselves. We will feel that we are not helping anyone, that we are not good people or that we are useless.

Keys to handle the suffering of others

The word compassion has several meanings. Each person can interpret it in its own way, although the most frequent is to think of pity, pity and kindness. It is true that it has to do with these feelings, but when we talk about compassion taking the perspective of Dr. Gilbert we must assign it a more proactive definition, with strength, determination and courage, necessary to act helping others and be of real help.

The key to compassionate distance is to connect with the emotions of others without becoming overwhelmed by them. We can achieve this by considering several strategies:

1. Understand the pain, don't become infected by it 2

Compassionate distance is to understand the pain of others, but not to become infected by it. It is like making a round trip to the emotional reality of another person, seeing what they feel but not staying there. Their pain is not our pain, but we understand it and feel it too. In this way we will avoid blocking ourselves but we will be able to help them by knowing how they feel.

2. We cannot save others, but we can accompany them

We are not obliged to save anyone who is suffering, but it is humanly desirable to accompany them in their suffering. it is humanly desirable to accompany them in their pain. Compassionate distance implies being aware that it is not our task to carry the heavy pain of others. We cannot solve problems that are not ours, even if we do not want to. There are things that it is up to each one of us to solve.

3. Apply emotional limits

A very good way to avoid being flooded by other people's emotions is to apply limits. Establishing with clarity which are the red flags that no one should exceed when listening to their discomfort, will help us to avoid being infected will help us to avoid being infected. We can not be all day at all times for others, we must set a schedule of emotional availability.

The rest is time for us, moments of the day where we have all the right in the world to say "no" when we do not feel like listening to other people telling us their problems. We already have our own.