Sally Kohn: Having too much empathy can debilitate us psychologically and prevent us from doing our jobs. She says there is a shift in mindset we can have around the kind of empathy we feel. Kohn: We don't want to rid ourselves of the empathy altogether because certain types of empathy can actually be protective against burnout. The first step towards decreasing burnout is building a just system for the people who work within it, she says.
For a long time, scientists believed our capacity for empathy remains more or less fixed throughout our lives. But research by Jamil Zaki, a psychology professor at Stanford, shows that empathy is actually a skill we can cultivate. Jamil explains that there are different types of empathy — three, to be exact! — and we can learn to be more discerning about when we apply them. Maya and Jamil also discuss the dangers of caring too much, and how we can show compassion for others while avoiding burnout.
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