People use words often Compassion And Compassion Interchangeable – and certainly they share important features. But there’s a subtle difference between empathy and compassion, and studies show that mindfulness can be key to ensuring that our efforts to help are coming from a healthy, connected place. Here’s a deeper look at how mindfulness qualities like present-moment attention can help us be more genuinely of service to others, and how mindfulness can help us feel good about helping.
People have an innate tendency to empathize with others, report C. Darrell Cameron and Barbara Fredrickson in the January issue of the journal. Mindfulness. But empathy can go wrong when empathy leads to anxiety. We can help out of guilt, liability, or interdependence. Or, helping can cause resentment, which can cause us to avoid helping people in the future. Or sometimes, in the absence of strong boundaries, we may inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings, and if we can’t deal with those hurt feelings, we’ll probably pull away.
Another possible answer is: empathy, which causes people to try to relieve suffering in others.
A healthy way to help
As the authors hypothesize, “Helping should be most common among those who are capable of maximizing empathy while minimizing suffering.” Previous research has shown that cultivating moment-to-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings, and surroundings can lead to greater empathy. But what specific components of mindfulness predict real-world helping behaviors? In other words, what skills can we develop that make us more likely to help each other?
The study examined two mindfulness characteristics—focusing on the present moment (aka, “present-focused attention”) and nonjudgmental acceptance of thoughts and experiences (“nonjudgmental acceptance”). Cameron and Fredrickson assessed the mindsets of 313 adults by asking whether, for example, they “criticize how my emotions affect my thoughts and behaviors” or often criticize themselves for having “irrational or inappropriate emotions.”
The researchers confirmed their hypothesis: Both present-focused attention and nonjudgmental acceptance predicted more helping behavior … Intelligence participants were more likely to experience emotions such as compassion, joy or elevation when giving help. This may mean that they simply feel better when helping others, which may lead them to engage in more helping behavior in general.
Next, the survey asked if they had helped anyone recently. If they had, participants answered questions about how they felt about helping. Do they feel positive emotions such as gratitude, hope, inspiration, or joy? Or do they have negative ones, such as irritation, insults, disgust, anxiety, guilt, or panic?
Analyzing the responses, the researchers found that 85 percent of the participants had engaged in some form of helping behavior during the past week, such as listening to a friend’s concerns, babysitting, giving someone a car ride, donating to charity, or volunteering. In the process, they uncovered some accidental but interesting facts:
- Males were marginally less likely than females.
- Age did not predict help. And
- Participants with higher incomes were more likely to report helping others.
However, the largest predictor of helping behavior was unrelated to these demographic characteristics. In fact, the researchers confirmed their hypothesis: Both present-focused attention and nonjudgmental acceptance predicted more helping behavior. This link between mindfulness and helping can be traced to the fact that mindfulness participants experience emotions such as sympathy, happiness or elevation when helping. This may mean that they simply feel better when helping others, which may lead them to engage in more helping behavior in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxtQxleziva
What helps him to continue to help?
The study also revealed an important scientific finding: participants who scored higher in present focus were more likely to experience positive emotions. In other words, acceptance can only clear the way to help. It’s this present focus that can actually help you have an emotionally rewarding experience. Taken together, it turns out that approaching these situations mindfully helps us feel good, or at least better, about extending ourselves in service.
Insights from this study have clear practical implications for teaching support with children. This line of research may also help people in professions who are at risk of burnout, or people whose mental illnesses make it difficult for them to connect with others.
This study also has extremely helpful implications for the rest of us, because anyone can feel bad about helping other people. To step into it is an invitation to look at our motivations, our limits and boundaries, and our need for true rest. And there is an opportunity to enter into opportunities of service with deep empathic focus and an open heart. Isn’t it nice to know that when we do something nice for someone else, we can help ourselves feel better?
A version of this article was originally published more goodthe online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindfulness’s partners. To view the original article, click here.
