Born for Love: Too Much Empathy?
As promised, here is my first post about Szalavitz and Perry’s book Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential- and Endangered. If you have also picked up this book, please share your thoughts. What did you find striking in the first few chapters? Keep reading, because at the end of this post is DGT’s very first CONTEST! You’ll have the chance to win next week’s Kinder Book Club pick.
According to the authors, empathy emerged by evolutionary necessity.
Humankind would not have endured and cannot continue without the capacity to form rewarding, nurturing, and enduring relationships. We survive because we can love. And we love because we can empathize – that is, stand in another’s shoes and care about what it feels like to be there.
Having worked with Doing Good Together for more than a year, this idea is certainly not new. Still, I was fascinated by their discussion of nature’s tricks to evoke empathy in us.For example, why are all babies cute? Even not-so-cute animals (think crocodile) have relatively cute offspring. It is nature’s way of rewarding us hardworking parents and of triggering an empathetic response to their cries (versus, “SHHHH, I need more sleep!”).
If we are hard-wired to develop empathy, is it possible to have too much? To Over-empathize?
It sounds odd, but the authors make a compelling argument. Empathy, as opposed to sympathy, implies that as empathetic observers, we directly feel some measure of the other person’s pain. Even as bystanders, our neurons “mirror” the event we are empathizing with (think of flinching as you watch someone else get hit by a stray ball).
This distress triggers our stress response systems, usually in subtle ways that we scarcely notice. The brain chemistry of this is fascinating, but rather detailed for a blog post.
If our coping mechanisms are underdeveloped, we empathetic observers might get too bogged down in our own distress, even though it is second-hand, to effectively react with the kindness and empathy we intend. According to the authors
[One] study, which had kindergartners play the roles of children who were sick or in pain, found that those who measured highest on empathy beforehand were least likely to help others after they had played these roles.
This brought to mind my last visit to our family doctor. Little Miss Three needed a strep test (one of many this year), and Miss Kindergarten necessarily accompanied us. Poor, empathetic Miss Kindergarten was so upset by the tests she imagined the doctor would do to her sister that she entered the examination room in tears.
Meanwhile her sick little sister, sat on the examination table all smiles and swinging legs. I held her hand while the nurse administered the test, during which Little Miss Three didn’t even flinch. While I held the patient’s hand, her big sister sobbed into my t-shirt.
This is, perhaps, over-empathy on a smaller scale than the ones covered in Born for Love, but Miss Kindergarten could stand some help in the coping department.
If you are interested, check out the book Dealing with Disappointment: Helping Kids Cope When Things Don’t Go Their Way, by long-time parent educator Elizabeth Carry. While the title implies remedies for tantrums, this book is an incredibly pragmatic, step-by-step tool for boosting your child’s coping strategies at various ages and stages of development.
I’ll be using it on Miss Kindergarten, and I’ll let you know if her capacity for empathy (rather than raw terror) improves during the next medical appointment.
How about you? Have you seen any evidence of over-empathy in your life? How do you help your child cope with distress – deep breathing, a lovey, engage them with art?
Like our Facebook page and leave a comment here and YOU will be entered to WIN a copy of next week’s Kinder Book Club Book: Swimmy by Leo Lionni. 
Tags: Big Ideas, Books & Resources, Grown Up Books
June 20th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
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