July 21, 2023

#97: The Compassion Conundrum: Is Empathy to Blame for Our Emotional Burnout, and Adjusting Your Experience Through Neuroplasticity. With Dr Olga Klimecki.

#97: The Compassion Conundrum: Is Empathy to Blame for Our Emotional Burnout, and Adjusting Your Experience Through Neuroplasticity. With Dr Olga Klimecki.
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Season 1

Join us as we explore the concept of compassion fatigue from a fresh perspective. We take a closer look at the underlying mechanisms behind the terms commonly used when we talk about sustainable careers. While empathy and compassion are often used interchangeably, they are actually distinct concepts, and it's not just a matter of semantics - it’s a matter of neurology, which has practical implications for you, your career, and your happiness. 

Dr Olga Klimecki is a neuroscientist, psychologist, and certified mindfulness and meditation teacher. She holds a PhD from the University of Zurich in Switzerland and is currently a lecturer and senior researcher at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in Germany. Her research focuses on advancing sustainable development goals related to peacebuilding, conflict resolution, socio-emotional education, and overall well-being. With over 70 publications to her name, Dr Klimecki's work on neural plasticity and conflict resolution has earned her prestigious international awards, grants, and fellowships. Additionally, she runs her own consulting, training, and research company to implement evidence-based strategies in various organisations, start-ups, and companies.

During this conversation, we explore the nuances of empathy and compassion, highlighting their differences and learning why empathy can sometimes have negative consequences, and the term "compassion fatigue" might be a misnomer. We also learn how we can practically apply of this knowledge, explaining how you can rewire your brain to experience the hard things we sometimes need to do as positive experiences, rather than something painful and draining. 

 

Topic list:

6:02 Empathy and compassion. Are they the same thing?

13:52 The connection between empathy and prosocial behaviour.

17:39 Can we really change the way we empathise with others?

20:59 fMRI results from training compassionate and empathetic responses.

27:17 If compassion is good, then where does the term compassion fatigue come from?

29:13 Why empathy first, compassion next?

30:36 It’s not the compassion causing your fatigue... you are just fatigued.

32:16 How do we train compassion? Olga’s tips to train your brain.

39:03 The hardest part of meditation training.

41:39 Put out the welcome mat and notice your judgements.

44:34 Between a stimulus and a response, there is always a space.

47:03 Reflex responses and training ourselves out of them.

 

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Olga's Research Article - Empathy and Compassion

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That's one word.VETVAULT at checkout to get 10% of your purchase.Or follow the link in the show description wherever you're listening to this to run the Future with Tarkine also.What a cool.Slogan OK, our episode and our guest.
This is not just another discussion about compassion fatigue.It is instead a fresh look at the inner workings behind the terms that we commonly use when we talk about sustainable careers.We throw around words like empathy and compassion fairly interchangeably.But as you hear in this conversation, they are not the same thing.
And it's not just a matter of semantics, it's a matter of neurology, which has practical implications for you and your career and your happiness.This episode is the product of a series of rabbit holes that I'd gone down over the past year that led me to having the pleasure and the privilege of having this conversation with Dr. Olga Klimetsky, the author of a paper on empathy and compassion.
Well, many papers actually, but one in particular that we talk about here.That really flicked a few light bulbs on for me.Dr. Olga Klimetsky is a neuroscientist, psychologist and a certified mindfulness and meditation teacher.She's a lecturer and senior researcher at the Frederick Schiller University of Genna in Germany and holds a PhD from the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
Augusta Research focuses on the promotion of sustainable development goals for peace building and conflict resolution, qualitative socioeconomic education, and the promotion of health and well-being.She's authored and coauthored over 70 publications, and in recognition of her research on neural plasticity and conflict resolution, Olga has received several prestigious international awards, grants, and fellowships to help implement evidence based strategies in organizations, startups, and companies.
She also has her own company for consulting, training, and research.And as you'll hear, she's also very human and very nice.In this conversation, we explore empathy, compassion, the difference between them, why empathy can be a bad thing, why compassion fatigue is probably a misnomer, and how you can use this knowledge to rewire your brain to experience the hard things that we sometimes need to do as positive experiences rather than something painful and draining.
Olga Klimetsky.Am I saying your name right?You do?Yes, I've got the first part of the podcast nailed.Thank you so, so much for joining us on the Vet World Podcast.It's a pleasure.I've been digging deep into your work over the last couple of months.I've been going down a rabbit hole of empathy and compassion, and to a large degree because of one of your articles that I came across a while ago.
With your work that you do, oh God, do you, have you come across any work in the veterinary profession at all?You've obviously worked in human health and all sorts, but any vet stuff?No, not at all.It's actually funny because today at lunch a colleague mentioned that veterinarians are at one of the highest risks of burnout among the healthcare professionals right among the doctors.
So it's apparently one of the.Biggest risk professions?I wasn't aware of that before, yeah.So I'll give.You a bit of a background of a probably why this podcast exists and then this particular episode we have a profession of people who are generally again you can never generalize but mostly super passionate, super caring.
They have a love for animals.They want to be in this helping profession and go and make a difference.And it's often a it's a dream job for a lot of people.I mean if you think of how many kids think I want to be a vet when I grow up and then we join this profession and then a large percentage of people end up being anywhere from dissatisfied to you said burnout, burnt out the high risk of burnout to even suicidal at the, you know the worst case scenario.
You say we're at high risk of burnout.We're also the the profession in the world.We have the dubious honour of being the highest suicide risk.And a lot of what we talk about on the podcast is, is why I'm personally really fascinated.And I was.I was that for the 1st 10 years of my career I was dissatisfied.
I wasn't ever that bad or never burnt out or anything, but but I didn't.I didn't like it.It was stressful.I found it really stressful and I spend my time thinking about why, what are the reasons and what can we do about it.So why the empathy, Compassion conversation is probably about 10 years into my career.
I I decide or not decided, I realized or I started feeling that some of the issue maybe is that we super and we're going to get into the difference between the two terms.Or I'd love to hear your words, but empathetic or compassionate towards our patients because that's what complicates our profession.
We have a patient that comes in with suffering and we want to help them.But then there's a client attached, and what I often see, and I still see it quite a lot, is sometimes there's a little bit of almost an antagonistic relationship there, or or at least a lack of empathy, international passion or sympathy.
So an attitude of, yeah, animals are great, people are assholes, you know, people are stupid, these stupid people bringing their pets or people are.So if only they did this to their pets, or they didn't neglect them or there's a lot of friction between that and and I.Feel strongly and I'm learning that through the podcast that the veterinarians who have a good relationship with the client components of this relationship thrive much better.
They they do better and I experience that myself if I try and take an empathetic stance towards my clients.Life's better, I enjoy work more and I I thought it was empathy, but I always thought empathy is what we need.And then.
Through reading Professor Paul Bloom's book Against Empathy, which then led me to your article Compassion and Empathy from I think 2014, I started getting some new ideas around Maybe it's not empathy.Maybe empathy is the problem or part of the problem.Now I'd love to know from you A quick recap on that article, plus that anything.
I mean, that's 2014.We're ten years on.Beyond that, talk about empathy and compassion.Is it the same thing?If not, how does it differ?Yeah, I think Paul Bloom likes to polarize, right?He likes to polarize.
And if my stance is that, OK, empathy is not always great, but in very many cases, empathy is very useful.So empathy is the capacity to feel with another person or with an animal, right In in the case of veterinarians and.
So in an When I am, or when anyone empathizes with another person, what happens is that the same kind of emotion is being felt right?So when I empathize with a friend who's happy, I feel happy.When I empathize with a friend who's sad, I feel sad.
I can even empathize with people who are angry, with protesters, for instance, who are angry.And then I feel angry.So empathy means feeling the same kind of emotion, not necessarily the same.Quality of that emotion, because every everyone might feel things a little bit differently, but the feeling the same kind of emotion and knowing this is the second important part in empathy, knowing that the origin of my current feelings.
So if I empathize with angry protesters, I know that the current feeling I have, the anger, doesn't stem from me but stems from another person.Because if I wouldn't have that second component, that knowledge that it's not originally my emotion, but I feel with someone else is.
If I wouldn't have that, I would have emotional contagion so I could be contained by another person's emotion without noticing that someone else or an animal is the source of my current feeling, right?So that's empathy.Feeling with someone and then when it comes to suffering, so we can empathize with the joy or with the sadness, or with a range of emotions, positive and negative.
When it comes to empathizing with negative emotions, it can go two ways.So one is empathic distress, which denotes a feeling of being overwhelmed by someone else's suffering.By a feeling of negative emotions, distress, right.
And this wish to withdraw, this wish to protect oneself.And initially I thought that's that's bad, this wish to protect oneself.And there are studies from the 80s showing that people who feel this kind of empathetic distress, they tend to not help others in need if they can withdraw.
But in hindsight, I think that's a very adaptive response.Because for instance, if you work in a medical profession or in any other profession where you have to deal with a lot of suffering, it's sometimes very healthy to withdraw and to set boundaries to protect yourself, right?
So that's the withdrawal response and it's for self protection, which is really important to to being able to carry on with the work anyways, right?And the other part which.Or the other kind of feeling that can occur is compassion when we feel with someone else's suffering.
And compassion denotes a feeling of care and benevolence for the suffering of others and is associated with the motivation to help.And we found that compassion is a positive emotion that it.In compassion people maintain the sharing of negative feelings.
So if I.I'm compassionate with someone else.I still feel the negative stuff, so I would feel the sadness or I would feel the pain.But on top of that I have a I have this caring impulse, this benevolence, which is more of a positive emotion on top of that, right, and this, this wish to help.
So in that way, compassion we think is is quite protective because it adds that positive caring stance.And we have seen from studies on, for instance, meditation, that we can train compassion, we can increase positive emotions, we can increase brain activations related to positive feelings even in the face of suffering.
And we know now that meditation training can also increase resilience, which is important in the prevention of burnout, right?So to clarify, so with empathy, when we talk about it in that regard in terms of suffering and negative feelings, is it a case of?
I see suffering, I feel suffering and that's where it stops.I kind of get stuck in that.I have this emotion and I'm sometimes not even aware why am I sad, why am I distressed?And I'm kind of stuck there and with compassion.Not necessarily.
Empathy can also lead to pro social behavior, and it does so quite a bit.So, for instance, a few years ago some colleagues and I, we conducted some studies with economic games.And empathy is a huge predictor of prosocial behavior.
It's one of the largest predictors that has been found to date.So the more you empathize with people, or the more our participants empathize with people, the more they gave money to those people, right?So empathy can, and this is known from other psychological research as well, that empathy can boost prosocial behavior if it goes to empathic distress.
And if you have the choice to leave, you might want to leave.But overall, empathy boosts prosocial behavior and.I think one of the arguments that Paul Bloom uses as well is that empathy is more of a tribal emotion.So we know from conflict research, for instance from my colleagues in Israel and other countries, that when we empathize in a conflictual situation, we tend to empathize more with people we're close to.
And less with people we're not so close to.And so of course then we help those, we empathize more with more and we help the others less so, but that is that is more a group related thing.I experienced that with my children in their sports games and when something happens when somebody gets injured in one of my kids team, it's terrible and they said I want to help it and then it's sort of the other team.
You're like, yes, good.Take that.That's probably for minor inch reason.Minor inch?Absolutely.Absolutely.You're right.You know, I wouldn't feel that way for us, a real inch.And I'm always embarrassed when I feel it.I'm like, I can't believe I'm such a terrible person.
But you know, our American colleagues, they they have a concept called Intergroup.Empathy bias, which says that basically you feel more empathy for the in Group, less empathy for the out group.And then on the reverse side that you feel more shattered for the out group or more malicious joy and less for the in Group, which is what you described.
And they theorized that you should feel that more in violent protracted conflicts like the Israeli Palestinian conflict.But we don't find that.We don't find it and we we've done several studies and and it's just not there and I think to a degree.
You need to feel kind of close enough to another group to even feel malicious joy for minor events, not for major events, but for the minor events.Like when the child of a of a adverse soccer team slips, then you feel the joy.If they would get hurt badly, you wouldn't feel that joy.
And I think that's a kind of healthy, competitive kind of emotion.And I think we have to rethink this, this notion that it's.It's something bad to feel that I yeah, but we haven't published that paper.Yet that's really interesting though, so so with.
The.Violent conflict thing.So even if the air quotes bad guys, if somebody from that side gets seriously injured or killed, you say that.If it's serious, they do feel the the less empathy and more sudden for it.But if it's everyday misfortunes, like if Israelis read something, oh, this Palestinian person just.
Poured some coffee over his shirt and he doesn't have a shirt to change or something and they don't have that bias.They don't have that for these everyday things where you and I have it right.I I played cards over the weekend with my family, with my son and my parents and my my siblings and we were always so glad, my son and I, when we we could make the others draw more cards or lose.
So and this is kind of this healthy competition I think.So.Can empathy be bad?So for a profession like ours where you are faced with either again the animal component or as I said often the the human component, because the humans who come in to see us are often also in distress.
They're suffering so animals really injured or they've done something really sick or there's even the.I personally find that I struggle with empathy about finances because they come in and they.Suddenly they've got a major surgery and it's going to be expensive.And then they hate, they're distressed because suddenly they out of pocket all this money and that that gets me, that that's a negative emotion for me.
I can see a family like me with kids or I can see an older person could be my mom.So there's all these emotions that we feel.Can it be a negative thing for us?It can.It can.So what I found interesting when I started my work on empathy 16 years ago or so, was that.
There were, there were some studies on burnout and what predicts burnout, and this was in the medical profession in general.But what these studies said is that one of the major sources of burnout is how you perceive the suffering of others, how you perceive the suffering of others.
And I thought that's interesting.So that was more of a predictor than the degree of of the severity of the illness or the amount of hours people worked.And I thought, that's interesting, how you perceive the suffering of others.And that brought me to this question of can we change the way we empathize with others, right.
Because empathy is how you perceive the suffering of others.So that was what brought me to all these studies on the plasticity of our socioeffective system.Can we change the way we perceive the suffering of others?And yes, we can.We can boost empathy.
We can also increase the way we empathize with others and increase empathic distress, right?So if you really feel into the suffering of others, as many people in the medical profession do, it can burn us out.It can increase negative emotions so much.It also increases activations in brain areas that are responsible for shared pain, for empathy, for pain, right?
And we can also train the reverse.We can train our compassionate response, our response of.Care and benevolence and then that increases other activations in other brain areas which are important for love, affection, care, action, motivation, reward.
The system is very malleable even in the adult age.And this was.This was quite an amazing finding at the time, because it was the first finding for neural plasticity in the emotional domain, in adults in the functional neural domain, so and.
I was amazed because our trainings were so short, so people just trained for one day and then several evenings and then we tested them so it was less than a week and less than a week could make the difference.So to me it says that it really matters what I do.
So whether I engage in commiseration and I really take on the pain of others or whether I cultivate these feelings of may you be well and may I be well and.But coming from a more resourceful and caring perspective, right?
I want to pause on those what you mentioned about the different brain areas as a scientist and I think as a bunch of scientists listening to this, those fMRI studies that are part of your work that I don't know, made me less skeptical.Otherwise, some of this stuff can sound a little bit woo woo almost.
Can you talk us through what you guys found on those fMRI studies on the, as you said, the different parts of the brain to make it because it makes it much more.Oh, there it is.I can see that.It's not just you saying I feel this way.I can see what your brain's doing.Yeah.And that was important for me to also see the changes in the fMRI, not only in the self-reports, right.
So what we did in that experiment is we scanned participants before and after the training with the task where they saw other people suffering.So they saw small.Excerpts from the television.So I took a lot of that from raw material for the television that would otherwise be shown on the news, like people crying after being wounded in an earthquake, or people limping because their foot was wounded, or people in distress.
Some people were just crying and you didn't know exactly why.So I took some of that footage and then I also took some films showing people in everyday situations just.Talking or walking or like in in really everyday situations not visibly distressed or or visibly happy as controls because in F MRI we always need controls and then what we did.
So we tested participants brain activations in response to seeing other people suffering minus seeing everyday situations.Because otherwise if we just took other people suffering and we tested the brain activations, the whole brain would be active.And so, and in your imaging, we have to subtract the thing we're interested in.
So we do one thing minus another.And so we subtract the activation we're not interested in.So we I subtracted the everyday social situations, right.And so then participants were trained either in compassion, so training benevolence and care for themselves for others or in empathizing with suffering.
So really feeding the suffering of others as if it was their own.Or they were trained in memory, and some of the trainings were quite complex.First they were trained in empathy for suffering and then in compassion.But that was the only more complex training.And then we scanned them afterwards.
So we scanned them before and afterwards, and afterwards we scanned them with the same kind of task but with different videos, so that they wouldn't see the same videos again and again we measured the brain activation, and then we tested how the brain activation changed in the groups that trained.
Compassion or empathy for pain compared to the memory control group.So we also had this active control group training their memory skills.And what we found is that after the empathy for pain training, participants had higher activations in brain regions that are known to be implicated in empathy for pain.
And these are the interior insular which is.Above our ears, small or less but in the brain, and it's a part of the brain that's called the interreceptive cortex.And intrareceptive cortex means so cortex is like the outer part of the brain that processes events and interceptive means this is the part of the cortex that processes events that.
Are related to the feelings in our body.So do I feel well?Do I feel unwell?Do I feel hot?Do I feel cold?Do I like a taste?Don't I like a taste?Do I feel pain?Don't I feel pain?So it's really about the feelings in the body.And so this area is really key for feeling in what happens in our body, but also for feeling with others, right?
So it's a key area for empathy because we simulate what others feel through reactivating similar neural regions.That would represent the same kind of feeling in us.So the interior insula was more active in that group and the interior singlet cortex, which is also implicated in many things but also part of these regions for empathy, for pain, and also for self experience.
Pain and negative emotions went up in that group.So after that training, people had more negative feelings when they saw others suffering, but also more negative feelings when they saw others in everyday situations.So that's with the empathy training, right?That was the empathy for pain training or empathy training?
Yeah, exactly.And then after the compassion training and different studies.So I did a bunch of studies with compassion training.And after the compassion training, we saw a very different change in the brain activation.And the brain areas that had more activation after the compassion training were the striatum.
So it's a part very deep in the brain, which is important for reward, for motivation.It's a part of the brain that's active in.Romantic relationships in when parents see their children or photos of their children and also in the media.
Orbital frontal cortex which is behind our temple and this media orbital frontal cortex is a very important region when it comes to integrating emotions into decision making and also in controlling emotions, thoughts, behaviors.So these two parts of the brain where.
More active after compassion training and in a consistent way across different studies.And also what we saw after the compassion training is that it increased positive feelings.It increased feelings of benevolence and care towards the suffering of others while maintaining the same level of negative feelings as before the training.
So there was an interesting finding.And that it it's a different strategy to regulate emotions and usually emotion regulation strategies where you're sometimes told like just build a barrier between yourself and your client or the patient or try to detach yourself from that situation to or try to down regulate the negative feelings.
So compassion is different in that still in compassion you feel the negative feelings of the other you share them and on top of that comes this carrying impulse like.Like a parent caring for their children or nurturing their children, right?
So this this makes compassion a different emotion, regulation, strategy and and maybe one that is more sustainable.So if compassion is a sounds like a positive thing because I when you describe it I can imagine that feeling.
It's a it's a feel good thing to go yes I've if I if I bring it back to my work I see something come in.It's really sick or really injured and I get that first empathy feeling of almost cringe for them.You say badly broken leg or something like that and then something switches and go I can fix this and that gets you excited to do that and then you fix it and it's a it's a feel good thing and the same with the human interactions.
But if compassion is good and positive then where does the word where does compassion fatigue that you hear about and read about fit into the whole scenario?We actually wrote an entire chapter arguing back then when I started this work, arguing that compassion fatigue is the wrong term, but maybe it's it is the right term.
I mean, it depends, But the idea of compassion fatigue is is feeling drained and so on, right?And maybe the compassion ends at some point and empathic distress takes over, but I think it should really be called maybe empty fatigue or something.
Because at least the idea is that compassion is more of a resourceful response.And even if you can't fix it because of that caring impulse and we know that caring feelings, they have a whole, they set up a whole neurobiological set of activations, right.
So when you're with your partner or with your children and you feel close to them, that's really beneficial for for the immune system, it's beneficial for the inflammatory system, it down regulates inflammations in the body, so.This this caring aspect that we have in compassion is feeling close to and and feeling caring for others might be a completely different axis and and a complementary axis to to other positive feelings.
So my inkling, my feeling or suspicion way back then, that if we switch from an antagonistic or an irritated attitude or something towards your clients.And try and switch to 1st, empathy, then compassion, to try and understand well, why did you not do the sensible thing?
Why did you let your animal get to this point?Or if we switch to that, that's not to benefit the client, it is to benefit myself.Because then suddenly you go from work as a fight every day to work as a pleasure, because I'm interacting with people in that I'm getting all those good physical and emotional responses.
Is that is it?Was.I think it's both.I think it's both.I am.You can improve your own feelings and you can feel better.And then in the mid and long run, I think the clients also profit, right?Of course.And it's not whether or not you can fix the leg of an animal.
It's more like this, this feeling of care.Oh, I care for you.I care for this animal and I might be able to fix this broken leg.I might not be able to fix this leg, but I really care for this animal and and I have this feeling of kindness.Care for the animal, but also care for you as a client.
And care for oneself as a practitioner as well, right?So compassion also includes a self caring aspect when you sometimes you might realize, gosh, this is too much for me and I I need to take a pause.So there I have this theory that I'd love to run by you because the reading all that stuff has made me.
I spend a lot of time thinking, well, so where does compassion fatigue fit into this?So my theory, so you can mark me on this is either that it is.Either empathy, fatigue, so you're highly empathic and you but you don't have that next step so it becomes that draining thing where I actually don't think I can cope with more suffering or trauma or more problems.
Or the second scenario is that it is I am compassionate, but that drives me to do more and help more and do more and help more, but I'm not self compassionate.So then I don't have self-care.So then it just becomes fatigue.
Take the compassion out.I'm just physically and emotionally not.I can't do anymore.And it's that savior syndrome where I've got to fix everybody and every animal that's sick in the world is my problem.And then it becomes a yeah, it's just not sustainable.
Does that make any sense?Both makes sense.Both makes sense, right?And I think there's this third option that that I mentioned maybe at some point.This feeling of benevolence and care is fatigued, right?And maybe that was something that that was there in the beginning, but with time it wore off and then the distress takes over and then people need to take care of themselves first.
So it might be related to your second point as well.So too much of a good thing is that so compassion's good.It's not the compassion causing fatigue.But yeah, I don't try to put it into into good way.The compassion causing the fatigue, I think.
You're just fatigued, yeah.Now you're just the.Tea.So talk to me about the.Training.I want to make this practical.If somebody's listening to this and they're going, yeah, I think I might struggle with the empathy component too.Too much empathy.I take it all on board.I make it my own because I've seen that I've worked.
I've never had that.Luckily, I've some of this comes fairly naturally to me.But I've certainly seen people who they seem sad all the time at work just because of everything that they're dealing with.If somebody's listening to this and going, yeah, that's me.And you say with a week of training, what does that training look like?
How do we shift it more towards the compassion side?And I could say I certainly speak from experience because I I know how too much empathy and empathic distress feels like.And I think it depends.I mean, and there is a general training and sometimes there's a special there are special ways into the training depending on where people are.
So I'll start with the general training, in general, the training.I mean, there are also 10,000 ways of training this, But in general, the training starts, It's a meditation training, right?So people sit quietly or they walk in silence.And the first part of the training is people think of someone, it's called a benefactor, someone they like.
It can be a friend, it can be a parent, it can be a mentor, it can be a spiritual figure.It doesn't really matter who that person is.It can also be an animal.Many people actually use animals in the trainings, and also in these past trainings we did, a lot of people use animals and then they think of that animal or that person they like, and that usually already makes them feel good, but in a different way than a funny movie would make them feel good.
It makes them feel good because they feel connected, right?And that's this caring system that's activated by thinking of that.Benefactor, either person or benefactor animal.So we invite people to sit silently and think of that benefactor first, and then in the second step it's about oneself and in the training it's about cultivating wishes of well-being towards oneself.
So may I be happy, may I be safe, may I be healthy and people repeat that and it might feel mechanical at times.And at times not.And the idea is really to also pay attention to the inner feelings like what happens when I when I wish myself well.
What happens when I internally say may.May I be well, may I be healthy, May I be happy, May I be safe?Right.How does it feel?How does it land?Can I receive that and and then the third step we practice in general is to.
Expand this, this kind of feeling to everyone.So may everyone in the city, in in this country, on this planet be well, including animals and so on.And in some trainings we had some other steps in between, like we had a friend, an unknown, a kind of neutral.
It's called neutral person, but it's a kind of less known person.So it might be the.Postman or post woman.Or it might be someone driving the bus we see regularly.Or it might be a person in our favorite coffee shop serving as coffee almost every day, but we don't even know their name.
And so we might think of a person like that.We might think of a difficult person as well and wish them well.So it depends.The trainings are different and in some trainings what I also like doing is adding gestures, like putting both hands on the heart, or putting a hand on the heart and one hand on the belly or other gestures.
Of care and then feeling like, how does it feel when I do that?How does it feel to receive that benevolent touch from myself, right.And so exploring that.And then I think it's good to do that training with the teacher, especially in the beginning, because for instance, when I started with that kind of training, so I started researching it and training and meditation at the same time.
And so in my first retreat, I basically did a deep dive and I did a one week silent retreat to start with meditation.And when our teachers told us to to cultivate these feelings of benevolence and care, I couldn't do it.I was going through difficult separation at the time that 16 years ago, and at the time I just couldn't have these feelings of care and benevolence fathers.
And so my teacher told me, well, try to have compassion.Try.To work with a sentence, may I have compassion for my own suffering?And so I thought, well, that's interesting.I don't think it will change much.You know, I try.I tried to to feel care and benevolence for others for a whole day.
It didn't work, but I'll try.You know, I was very skeptical, but I tried.So I walked out of that room and I I thought to myself, like, may I have compassion with my own suffering and suddenly something broke open.And I could feel that compassion for my own suffering.
And then I could also feel compassion care for others.So there are many different routes to this kind of compassion feeling sometimes depending on where a person is.So This is why it's usually beneficial to, at least when you start training in compassion to do it with a teacher.
Because experienced teachers know different obstacles and they know how to work around them.Because it sounds super simple.So again, reading your work led me to look into what the it's it's it's meta meditation or loving kindness.
Is that the right term for it?And I did.I tried it with a couple of meditation apps.It sounds so simple.Okay.Picture somebody that you feel positively towards or somebody somebody that it's easy to feel good feelings towards.And even that it's so funny that you talk about animals because the default for me is like, I love to think about my wife.
And then I was shocked to find that there's this little voice in your head that goes, may you be well, but also may you.It wouldn't be that bad if you did this and this and this or if you stopped doing that.I was like, OK, that's more complicated than I imagined.And then they say, yeah, then it's not going well.
The kids are going to be easy.All I want for my kids are good things.And then even that you go, yes, but yes, but so I ended up with my dog, and that was really easy.I have two dogs.One of the dogs worked really well, the other one's a pain in the ass dog, so that didn't have.
But for my white dog it was very easy.But it's not.It's not This point of that is that even though it sounds super simple, where do you find when you're meditation training you're teaching?What is the hardest part of that for people?
Where do people get stuck or does it vary?It varies.It varies on where they are in their lives, what they're struggling with.But what is interesting about this kind of meta meditation is it always brings up difficulties, right?So I did, I did a meta retreat, SO11, silent retreat, only focusing on meta, right?
Nothing else.And so the first day it was really it was going well and everything was smooth and rosy, and the second day I only had obstacles like.When I was like, and it was only meta for myself, so we only practiced benevolence for ourselves.That was the only thing we practiced.
I was like, God, I really should lose weight here.I should do this there.And I noticed all these thoughts and I was like, Oh my God, I mean, how do I think?Like, I was really shocked and it was a horrible day from him noticing all these kind of judgmental thoughts that come in.
And I mentioned that at the end of the retreat.And I thought I was the only one.I thought everyone else had just experienced pure bliss, right?And then the teacher, it was a big room with maybe 50 or 60 people.And then the teacher asked, can I see a hand raise?
Who of you had this, had similar problems and noticed a lot of self judgment and all the hands went up, all the hands went up.So a lot of the problems are common, but they occur in different orders or in the different at different times of the practice.
So this is, I think, why many people take animals because at least with some animals we we don't have this.Oh and may you clean up the dishes in the evening or.May you.Tidy up your room over the weekend or put put down the music at night so that we can sleep or whatever, right?
And and it's it's just and it's part of the training.Part of the training is to see these obstacles.To see these obstacles.And to also turn towards these obstacles with care, to notice the judgment, to notice these wishes.
And may you clean up the dishes and say, ah, that's a judgment.It's interesting.Yeah.And receive it like a friend of mine who's Australian, by the way, as well, receive it with a welcome mat.Put out the welcome mat for all the judgments.
So that's the practice and it's, it's a practice.It takes a while.Yeah, that judgment aspect is hard because then so you notice it, so you go, oh wow, let's talk about self compassion.
To go, may you be well.And then hey, as a scientist, I don't know, I I'd struggle with skepticism when I start with this.I go.This is.So stupid and what's this going to do?This is, you know, putting your hand in your hearts and and physically or emotionally trying to wish yourself well.
Sometimes feels feels kind of dumb, which is why I really liked your studies to go, All right, well, there's there's a reason behind it.And and then when you notice those judgments of yourself or of others, then I judge myself for judging me to go stop judging you, stupid idiot.
So if you say, put out the welcome ad, what does that what do you mean?What does that look like?How do you notice the judgment and not judge the judgment?So you can even judge the judgment.You know, if if if you have a judgment like, oh, they would, that first you had skepticism, right?
And then you had the judgment and and then you had the judgment about the judgment.But you you put out the welcome mat for everything, say, Oh yeah, judgment about the judgment.Yeah, that's how it feels like.OK, that that's how it looks like.And try not to go any further.
So the point is, the point is just the noticing.It's not.Just the same, yeah, Okay.And noticing it in a benevolent way.Because I think many of us, probably most of us, have been raised with a lot of judgment, with a lot of judgment.
And probably these voices come from our caregivers, our teachers at school, whoever we interacted with in our youth.Because I don't think children are born with these judgments.They come up because we interact with others and then we internalize them.
And that's interesting to see, right?So it's not our fault to have these judgments.It's just interesting to notice it.And I think just by noticing it, not suppressing them, but saying, wow, I have these judgments, that already weakens them.So I do that a lot.I have a lot of biases, right?
So for instance, I have biases against women.I I sometimes notice myself thinking that, oh, gosh, this talk is by a man, probably.He's very smart.And I think, but this is just a woman.And I go like, gosh, why do I think that?And then I go like, oh, yeah, probably That's just how I've been raised, right.
And I noticed that, gosh, that was a bias against women and that's it, right.So trying to just notice.Yeah, that that works.So hey, quick.I was going to mention something about back at vet work again but that noticing of the biases of all those things is that much more.
Does that happen much more for you since starting meditating many So is the is the point of the the training or the working on this is that mostly we don't notice and I'll bring it back to the veteran clinic where I find you could be at work and feel all these feelings or frustrations or anger at clients or.
All these emotions and not actually notice it and just be in this cloud of.And.Actually just go through life like that and not realize that I'm really pissed off at this client and actually that noticing helps a lot and it's that where meditation comes in.
Yeah, exactly.So probably for a vet that they could look like.I open the door.I feel really sorry for the animal and gosh, I feel so pissed off with that owner and noticing that, right?Yeah, I feel pissed off.That's how it feels.And then maybe being judgmental because I feel pissed off and go like, yeah, I'm judgmental and you know, it's kind of a it becomes a background noticing it.
It's not that I'm not able to talk to others but every now and then I just notice, yeah, and I feel tight here and.Yeah, Okay, I have a tightness here and maybe I'm sweating.Oh yeah, I'm sweating, you know, and just noticing what what happens.
And what this gives us is that there is this saying is between a stimulus and a response, There is always a space, and in that space is our freedom, right.So the basic idea is that if there is a stimulus like a client we find annoying and before we respond to that there is a space and if in in that space we notice gosh we feel annoyed with that client, we may modify our response.
And what also we know from research more and more.For instance I did some research on on the impact of stress and we know that stress can carry over.So maybe if I had one difficult client in the morning and then someone else comes in, I might still be quite stressed.And I may act differently towards that second person than I would have had I not met the first person who annoyed me or who stressed me, right.
So we know that emotions also carry over.So it's good to to every now and then check in, check in how we feel and knowing that our emotions shape our reactions about that, we have that we have the choice.
We have the choice.Yeah, that choice aspect I'm.Curious about so when we talk about empathy and emotions and that that's almost reflex, right?There's the stimulus, there's a response.But then the choice part is that a cognitive process.
So let's say that I do the training, I become naturally more compassionate hopefully, but throughout the day do you need to pause and decide reset and say OK, wait, wait, I decided I want to be more compassionate.
I think it's both.I think it's both.Sometimes responses become automated and what I've noticed with me, I'm maybe I'm a very slow learner, but maybe I'm just very representative for everyone.I noticed I I realized my mistakes and I tried to repair them, right?
Sometimes I say something stupid to my son and I'm I go like, did I really say that that was not very skillful.And then I just go back to him and I say I'm really sorry.I mean that was horrible what I just told you.It's just complete nonsense and I'm, I'm sorry and I should have said this and that and I think it gives me the freedom and the opportunity to correct things.
So it's both aspects.So hopefully I will not say some of the stupid things in the 1st place, but if I do, I I might want to correct what I said, right?So for instance, one of the one of my bad memories with.But that is 1 morning.
I brought my son to kindergarten and he was really upset.And I had, I said that I really have to leave very fast and no, no, no.And I was like, if if you hadn't taken so much time and we would have, we would have more time to say goodbye.And he was in tears and I was, I was so sorry because that was so unskillful of me.
And then I told him, oh gosh, that was something horrible.I shouldn't have said that.And it's not your fault, right?I I could have woken us up earlier and we could have had more time, right so.I think I was glad I caught it because if I hadn't caught it, I wouldn't have been able to apologize, right?
So these are the things we can maybe notice and then try to put in place little by little.It's it's a lifetime of learning.At least I find it that to be the case for me, I.Was going to ask?Surely as a neuroscientist and meditation trainer, surely your life's really easy and everything goes really well for you all the time.
Is that right?That's not right.Well life's lifetime learning this is so good.I found that really valuable.So so my theory I I could talk about it because I I I'm literally doing a talk about this tomorrow night about the concepts of empathy versus compassion and shifting towards trying to be more compassionate is self protective again it's not about being just about being even though the.
The after effect is that it'll be better for your clients as well, but trying to take that attitude and working on it is going to be beneficial.And hopefully more compassion is going to mean less compassion fatigue hopefully if we did it right.Exactly.OK.
Thank you so, so much for spending the time out of a very, very, very busy schedule.Thank you for your interest.I think that's going to be really useful for a lot of people.That was really cool.Thanks.I hope so.Before you disappear, I wanted to tell you about our new weekly newsletter.
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Dr Olga Klimecki