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

When someone suffers, it is almost inevitable to tune in to their pain. People are empathetic 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 tune in too much with the suffering of others, far from seeing what to do to improve their condition, we block ourselves and make our own a problem that we should not take care of.

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 get it.

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What is compassionate distance?

Compassionate distance can be understood as place yourself 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 indicates, it implies compassion, providing support from understanding and empathy, but do it with emotional prudence and avoid being overwhelmed by sadness, anger or anxiety alien. It is understanding others, wanting to help them, but avoiding turning their problems into ours.

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 the place of other people, feeling the same as they feel. Connecting with traumatic experiences of others always leaves a mark, an emotional discomfort that can corrode us inside.

It is this same weariness due to empathy that hundreds of professionals who work with people who are having a hard time experience. 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 difficult to avoid it, because we are human and, especially in the care 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 put a limit on it, if we do not apply that compassionate distance that protects us, putting ourselves too many times in the same shoes as those who suffer will leave us with consequences. Our mental health will be affected not by having experienced a traumatic experience, but by being in tune with 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 become very ineffective if that blocks us because of infecting us with 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 to help those who needs to.

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Compassion and its function

There are people who, faced with the pain of others, remain totally paralyzed. People can become very sensitive, so much so that we live in our own flesh the pain, fear, suffering and, in general, the discomfort of those who are real victims of a 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 turn off our reason. It makes it difficult for us to think coldly and rationally, even though misfortune does not go with us. Experiencing this is not useful at all because it prevents us both from continuing with our lives and from helping those who need our help. In this aspect we can talk about the research carried out by Dr. Paul Gilbert, from the mental health department of Kingsway Hospital in Derby (England).

With his work, Gilbert concluded that human compassion is an evolutionary advantage geared towards a single goal: helping others. For this reason, staying blocked by an excess of compassion, or rather by an emotional flood, goes against that functionality. It is precisely in this situation where compassionate distance should act.

Understanding the discomfort of others without making it your own

It could be said that compassionate distance is a skill that acts as a regulator of our empathy. It is like a kind of filter that makes one of our most human capacities, to tune in with the emotions of others, not pass us a bad bill and flood us emotionally. Floods are never good, even the ones that happen in our minds.

By applying compassionate distance we can understand the mental reality of others, because we continue to be empathetic beings, but without being trapped in their suffering. This psychological protection distance should not be understood as turning cold, but maintaining, as we have already mentioned, a prudential distance, enough to be able to see what is happening to another person and understand them but without their pain splashing on us emotional. With it, we can 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 being overloaded with other people's emotions that can turn off our resources to help them. If we place ourselves at the same level of suffering as those who are suffering first hand, 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 cause us the same.

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The consequences of not applying compassionate distance

The compassionate distance is to put yourself in the place of the other, but without installing yourself 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 ours back on. As with real shoes, wearing someone else's shoes can hurt us, especially if they have holes in the soles. The consequences of not applying compassionate distance are all related to emotional exhaustion, being the following:

1. Posttraumatic stress

Making the problems of others our own can make us re-experience their drama over and over again. We remember the suffering of others as flashbacks, despite not having experienced them in the first person. It's kind of post-traumatic stress.

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2. compassion fatigue

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

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

3. self dissatisfaction

As we said, not being able to keep a reasonable 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 not able, why we have been inundated by their emotions, it will be a matter of time before we feel deeply dissatisfied with ourselves themselves. We will feel that we are not helping anyone, that we are not good people or that we are useless.

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Keys to manage the suffering of others

The word compassion has several meanings. Each person can interpret it in their 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 give it a more proactive definition, with strength, determination and courage, necessary to act helping others and be truly help.

The key to compassionate distance is connecting with the emotions of others without being overwhelmed by them. We can achieve this by taking into account several strategies:

1. Understand the pain, don't catch it

Compassionate distance is understanding the pain of others, but not infecting it. It's like taking a round trip to another person's emotional reality, seeing what they feel but not staying there. Your pain is not our pain, but we understand it and feel it too. This way we will avoid blocking us but we can help him knowing what he feels like.

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

We are not obligated to save anyone who is suffering, but it is humanly desirable to accompany him in his 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, not even wanting to. There are things that it is the task of each one to solve them.

3. apply emotional boundaries

A very good way to avoid being flooded by other people's emotions is to apply limits. Clearly establishing what are the red flags that no one should exceed when listening to their discomfort, it will help us to prevent them from infecting us. We cannot be all day at all hours for others, we must set some schedules of emotional availability.

The rest is time for us, moments of the day where we have every right in the world to say “no” when we don't feel like listening to other people tell us about their problems. We already have our own.