The Neuroscience of Empathy Pain vs Compassion: How to help without burning out | Animation

#compassion #empathy #neuroscience #compassionfatigue
© Created and produced by Dr. Christine Brähler & Dotolina, 2020, All Rights Reserved
You will learn about how to apply the neuroscientific components of compassion to transform empathic pain into compassion and prevent helper burnout.
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Research studies referred to in this animation (available in November 2020): (…) These common factors are much more important in explaining positive therapy outcome than any technique we might use.1 (…) Thanks to neuroscience we know that compassion is a distinct emotional state, which energizes us and protects us against burnout and malpractice. Mental training can help us to turn on the neural networks involved and shift from empathic pain to compassion.2 (…) It also helps to be aware of top-down processes such as our thoughts, biases, beliefs, attitudes, and our emotions regarding those perceptions3. Interoception is needed to have a sense of self 4, to notice and regulate emotions 5, 6, to make decisions 7 and to control our behaviour8. (…) And without being able to feel our own body, we will struggle to feel another’s pain or pleasure 9 10 (…) This is called empathic pain. 11 (…) If we know ourselves well enough, we are less likely to react in an unconscious way and we are better able to understand our clients 12 (…) Activating the care system is what generates positive emotions and thereby gives us energy.13 (…) Research has shown that interoceptive awareness alone is not sufficient to regulate social stress. Additional strengthening of the socio-affective and socio-cognitive pathways is needed. 14
Research available in November 2020
1. Wampold, B.E., How important are the common factors in psychotherapy? An update. World Psychiatry, 2015. 14(3): p. 270-277.
2. Singer, T. and O.M. Klimecki, Empathy and compassion. Current Biology, 2014. 24(18): p. R875-R878.
3. Cameron, O.G., Interoception: the inside story-a model for psychosomatic processes. Psychosomatic medicine, 2001. 63(5): p. 697-710.
4. Park, H.-D. and C. Tallon-Baudry, The neural subjective frame: from bodily signals to perceptual consciousness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2014. 369(1641): p. 20130208.
5. Bornemann, B. and T. Singer, Taking time to feel our body: Steady increases in heartbeat perception accuracy and decreases in alexithymia over 9 months of contemplative mental training. Psychophysiology, 2017. 54(3): p. 469-482.
6. Koch, A., Pollatos O.(2014a). Cardiac sensitivity in children: sex differences and its relationship to parameters of emotional processing. Psychophysiology. 51: p. 932-941.
7. Sütterlin, S., et al., Enhanced cardiac perception is associated with increased susceptibility to framing effects. Cognitive science, 2013. 37(5): p. 922-935.
8. Herbert, B.M. and O. Pollatos, Attenuated interoceptive sensitivity in overweight and obese individuals. Eating behaviors, 2014. 15(3): p. 445-448. 9. Singer, T. and C. Lamm, The social neuroscience of empathy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2009. 1156(1): p. 81-96.
10. Terasawa, Y., et al., Interoceptive sensitivity predicts sensitivity to the emotions of others. Cognition and Emotion, 2014. 28(8): p. 1435-1448.
11. Lamm, C., J. Decety, and T. Singer, Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. Neuroimage, 2011. 54(3): p. 2492-2502.
12. Böckler, A., et al., Know thy selves: Learning to understand oneself increases the ability to understand others. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 2017. 1(2): p. 197-209.
13. Engen, H.G. and T. Singer, Compassion-based emotion regulation up-regulates experienced positive affect and associated neural networks. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2015. 10(9): p. 1291-1301.
14. Engert, V., et al., Specific reduction in cortisol stress reactivity after social but not attention-based mental training. Science Advances, 2017. 3(10): p. e1700495.