Have you ever stayed up all night worrying about the wellbeing of someone you care about? You might have just learnt about this person’s difficulties over the phone or, worse, learnt that they have been admitted to a hospital following a car accident. Such reactions are normal. Worrying is often an expression of caring, after all even though our hearts go to victims of all kinds of accidents, we are much more likely to lose sleep over the wellbeing of those we have close emotional connections with. Still, is worrying and caring truly one and the same?
Have you ever spent a night at a hospital following an accident and might be ended up on a receiving end of multiple calls and messages of concern. Some people might have messaged you multiple times. They were actively waiting for updates. How many of these people were available in the morning to give you a ride back home? Did someone stay with you throughout the night? Did anyone ask what would be helpful to you?
One way or another, we all have been in these situations: sleepless over something we
cannot change or barraged by well-meaning inquiries without helpful follow-throughs. This is what happens when we confuse helping with feeling and pragmatic assistance with emotional support. We all want to be of help and emotional currency is the fastest to muster. Once activated, we remain vigilant, ready for action even when such action is not yet possible or required. Or, worse, the state of vigilance depletes our energy reserves to a point of being too tired to fully deliver the previously promised assistance.
Compassion refers to concern for the suffering of other people. Compassion is a great emotion. It alerts us to misfortunes of others and calls on us to do something about it. The question is what is that we are going to do?
Confusing helping with feeling is our first trap. It leads to worry-filled vigils and helpless exhaustion. Some people try to help by putting themselves in the emotional landscape of the ones that they are trying to help and end up suffering in concert. Wang imagines the pain coursing through the veins of his spouse when she is undergoing chemo. Barbara tries to recreate how death might feel like while grieving loss of her mother. Andrei has been avoiding the news as he feels overwhelmed with anger at the state of world affairs. Feeling those things does not render chemotherapy, death or war any easier to handle. Yet it allows us to feel good about our compassion and ignorant of our own lack of impact. Or the inability to erase such suffering can transform compassion into a helpless rage. In our examples, helping would mean dropping by during chemo to jointly listen to some tunes (Wang), recognizing the finality of death and learning to re-engage with life (Barbara) and canvassing for donations for a local food back (Andrei). We cannot stop our feelings, but we can regroup, face the facts and concentrate on what is useful albeit emotionally difficult to deliver. Compassion without help is not worth much.
Confusing emotional support with pragmatic assistance is the second pitfall. We need both. A kid who just scraped her knee needs a hug and a Band-Aid. Excessive compassion takes away pragmatism. My grandma warned me not to pet my cat to death and to remember to feed it.
