Have you ever felt how the feelings or circumstances of others affect you as if you were experiencing it first person? This can denote an excess of empathy. Or what is the same, the absence of ecpathy. This term was coined for the first time in 2005 by the doctor in psychiatry, José Luis González, and means the ability to establish boundaries between one's own feelings and those of others. This is not a psychological phenomenon contrary to empathy, but rather a complementary one, which we must apply to preserve healthy bonds and offer efficient support to people who are going through a difficult time.
While empathy allows us to recognize and understand the emotions and feelings of others, ecpathy helps us see the suffering of others in perspective to prevent us from assuming it as our own. Far from this being a characteristic of cold or unfriendly people, ecpathy is a guarantee to maintain the serenity and balance necessary to console people with pain, fear or suffering that does not belong to us.
True empathy does not exist without ecpathy. The balance between both is necessary to counteract excessive empathy that not only fails to relieve others, but also burdens us with their pain and suffering. Ecpathy is a voluntary mechanism with several functions that the doctor Valentín Elorza summarizes in two in an article for the specialized blog Psychology and Mind.
On the one hand, ecpathy protects us from possible manipulations by narcissistic people. The generation of guilt and victimization are their main weapons when it comes to subduing others for their own benefit. Ecpathy helps us in these cases to detect this type of toxic attitudes and, ultimately, see reality with a certain objectivity to avoid identifying with the blame that is unfairly attributed to us. Separating our own experiences from those of others also allows us to avoid some of the strategies of marketing, cinema, reality television or even politics, which call for impulsive or emotionally motivated decision-making on matters that require the use of reason.
On the other hand, as has been advanced, ecpathy works as an antidote to the risks that excess empathy entails. A person who, beyond understanding other people's feelings, identifies too much with them, cannot provide adequate attention or comfort to the people who need it. That is why the tranquility, security and distance that ecpathy provides allows us to offer a healthy support response.
Empathy is as necessary as ecpathy. It is as important to understand and validate other people's emotions as it is to have the ability to ensure that these emotions do not 'contaminate' us or take over us. Ecpathy is a guarantee to express and share feelings in a balanced and healthy way. Otherwise, the suffering and pain of others would simply be transferred to ourselves and would supplant our own feelings and emotions.
Ecpathy saves us from identifying or getting stuck in the feelings of others, of which we are not the protagonists. What's more, this capacity should help us respect the emotional reality of others and understand our own limits and vulnerabilities. Separate ourselves to offer a truly empathetic response while protecting our own feelings. Because excessive empathy makes us more dependent and can lead us to forget our own needs.
