Those who care for others can be burdened by the suffering they hear about. They may develop secondary traumatic stress disorder, which has symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder: nightmares, emotional numbness, loss of sense of security, cynicism, alienation from loved ones. Because the most empathetic and sensitive people feel the pain of their fellow human beings most deeply, they are at greater risk of overwhelm and burnout.

For those who, as professionals or as caregivers, are called upon to alleviate the suffering of others, the traditional advice to avoid overwhelming and burnout is twofold: to remain emotionally detached from their fellow human being's suffering ("don't get on the other person's emotional roller coaster"), and to actively care for their own well-being.

The problem with the first advice is that if we draw boundaries between ourselves and those we help, then if we are helping professionals, our emotional sensitivity and therefore the effectiveness of our work is reduced; if we are relatives, emotional boundaries damage the relationship.

The second advice can be very helpful, because it is indeed necessary to meet our own needs in order to be available to others in the long term, but in situations of assistance we cannot leave the person we are helping and say that we need to do something quickly because we are overwhelmed by their suffering. Here and now, in moments of encountering suffering, we need a way to protect ourselves from being overwhelmed by experiencing the suffering of others.

This method is the practice of self-compassion. Research has shown that helping professionals who have learned self-compassion are less likely to suffer from secondary traumatic stress because they have the skills to prevent burnout or overwhelming stress during interactions with their clients.

Self-compassion allows us to feel the pain of others without becoming overwhelmed. When we recognise how difficult it is to be there for those who are suffering, we can turn to our own suffering with compassion, comforting ourselves.

There is an important distinction between empathy and compassion. 

Empathy is the quality that helps us to perceive another person's world as if it were our own. But if we resonate with the emotions of others without having the emotional resources of our own to sustain suffering, we can easily become exhausted. Compassion includes the tenderness to embrace the suffering of others without having to struggle with it ourselves. Where empathy says "I feel you", compassion says "I hold you". Different brain centres are activated for the two attitudes. Compared to empathy, compassion has a pleasant emotion component, compassion activates neural networks associated with pleasant emotions in addition to activating the pain-sensing brain centres.

Someone with only empathic skills will feel the pain of their fellow human being in their own body when they encounter the others suffering. But if he stops there and does not relate first to himself and then to the other person with tender loving care, he will be overwhelmed by the emotions he has received.

In people who practice self-compassion, in addition to feeling the suffering of others, a second reflex emerges: they will feel happiness, gratitude, hope, enthusiasm when they encounter the suffering of others, because they will (recognise in the suffering of others a great opportunity to do something good in the world. 

In this way, the practice of self-compassion becomes an altruistic act, because it creates the mental and emotional conditions for helping others in the long term.

Can we pay attention to our instinctive reaction when we encounter the suffering of others? Do we try to distance ourselves, by escaping into our interpretations, by giving advices to the other person as an outside observer or by humouring the other person? If we dare to empathise with their suffering, what methods do we have to help prevent overwhelm?