Managing Compassionate Responses to Social Impact Issues | Episode 47
As a social entrepreneur, you may sometimes get “empathy fatigue” - the emotional and physical toll that comes with caring for people all the time. In this podcast episode, we challenge you to get some emotional distance from the people you care about and develop a sense of rational compassion, where you help them alleviate pain and suffering. The difference is that from this stance, you think rationally about how to help them while prioritizing your well-being.
Some psychological and physiological reasons for making an internal shift from being empathetic to being compassionate are:
1. reducing the risk of heart disease by slowing our heart rate.
2. more resiliency to stress, strengthening the immune response, and reducing worry and negative emotions.
3. improving mental health, reducing depression and loneliness, and feeling more joy and contentment.
We discuss these benefits and strategies to shift our inner stance to a more compassionate response to other people's needs and suffering in the podcast.
Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
Paul Bloom's "Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion"
The difference between empathy and compassion in the Harvard Business Review
This week's PDF download "Managing Compassionate Responses to Social Impact Issues"
