Human beings express different feelings and emotions in the situations of daily life. However, when we become excessively involved in the suffering of others, to the point of feeling that emotional suffering as our own, we can fall into a mode of personal interaction that is not healthy at all.
The detail is to achieve the right balance to support those around you, but without this translating into a negative influence emotionally speaking. In this sense, the Spanish psychiatrist José Luis González de Rivera proposed ecpathy as a regulatory mechanism to promote healthier empathy. In this Psychology-online article, we will explain What is ecpathy and what is it for?since this mental process can help you self-regulate excess compassion towards other people’s pain.
What is ecpathy
Ecpathy is an emotional strategy that allows you to separate your own feelings from those generated by other people’s circumstances. It is a relatively recent term, which was proposed by psychiatrist José Luis González as a mechanism, or conscious and voluntary process, that serves to exclude those feelings that are induced by other people.
The etymology of the word describes its meaning very well, since it is a term that comes from the Greek “ek-patheia”, which translates as “feel outside” or “take outside”. Therefore, it is a process opposed to , which translates as “feeling inside.”
It should be emphasized that ecpathy has nothing to do with coldness, antipathy or indifference. Rather, it is a complementary mechanism of empathy to balance it at the correct levels. The purpose of this strategy is prevent a flood of emotions arising from other people’s circumstanceswhich in no way favors internal balance.
What is ecpathy for?
Ecpathy as a mental process is fundamental to valuing other people, but without letting them become “” of our energy. Let us remember that emotions are usually contagious, both negative and positive, and even produce projective identifications that are not always beneficial.
For example, some psychopaths are capable of penetrating the emotions of other individuals until they dominate them in a surprising way. In fact, they manipulate through their apparent charm. In these circumstances, it is necessary to activate the ecpathy mechanism as a regulatory and protective process that stops emotional contagion and consciously avoid mental manipulation.
Another case in which you may need to develop ecpathy is in the entertainment industry, such as film and television, as they seek to infect viewers emotionally. There are even those who experience the suffering of those who participate in these programs as their own. Consequently, ecpathy helps balance the emotional impactwhen you become aware of the inner action caused by the experiences of others.
Furthermore, excess empathy can lead to an emotional disorder, an overprotective tendency or a psychological deterioration that can lead to other more worrying pathologies. Undoubtedly, ecpathy compensates for these excesses because encourages us to focus on our own well-beingwithout leaving aside solidarity and the need to connect with others.
Differences between empathy and ecpathy
Basically, the difference between both concepts is that empathy places us on the same axis or position that other people are in to understand their emotions. For its part, ecpathy serves to focus on ourselves and to put our emotional tranquility above that of others.
The Royal Spanish Academy explains the difference between empathy and ecpathy as follows:
- Empathy: ability to identify with something or someone. It connects us with others.
- ecpathy: makes us voluntarily exclude the feelings that come to us from other people and that are not beneficial to our well-being. Activate the conscious mind to know up to what limit it is good to be empathetic without falling into antipathy.
Although they are antagonistic or opposite terms, they complement each other so that pain, fear or mental manipulation do not take over us and produce a negative and counterproductive effect.
In short, balanced empathy is one that allows us share feelings or emotions of others, without transferring them to our own psychethat is, sharing the other’s fear without becoming afraid or recognizing their anger without getting angry, among other examples.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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References
- Royal Spanish Academy (2002). Definition of empathy. https://dle.rae.es/empat%C3%ADa
Bibliography
- González, J. (2004). Empathy and ecpathy. Psyche: Journal of psychiatry, medical psychology and psychosomatics, ISSN 0210-8348, Vol. 25, No. 6, 2004, pp. 5-7
- González de Rivera, J (2004). Empathy and Ecpathy. https://luisderivera.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ecpatia.pdf