Spend a few minutes online and you’ll find no shortage of warnings about the dangers of being “too empathic.” Headlines like “Are You an Empath? 5 Ways to Avoid Emotional Burnout” and “Why Empaths Experience Burnout Like No Other” paint a picture of empathy as a psychological liability—something that leaves caring people overwhelmed, depleted, and at special risk of exhaustion. Some articles offer nuance buried in the fine print, but many do not.
But this popular belief doesn’t match the scientific evidence. In fact, after more than a decade of research on physicians, nurses, teachers, and other human-service professionals, a striking consensus has emerged: most types of empathy actually protect against burnout, rather than cause it.
In my own meta-analysis on this topic, published this week in Psychology, Health & Medicine, we examined more than 72 studies representing over 20,000 people, and found that individuals high in empathic concern (feeling compassion for others) and perspective taking (understanding others’ views) reported fewer burnout symptoms. This was true across ages, genders, occupations, and countries.
So why does the myth persist? One reason is that “empathy” is an umbrella term that covers multiple processes that do not all relate to well-being in the same way. Our research discovered that unlike empathic concern or perspective taking, emotional resonance (automatically absorbing other people’s emotions) can increase vulnerability to burnout. So there is a small kernel of truth to the idea that empathic people may be at risk of burning out, but it’s constrained to just this one kind of empathy: emotional resonance. And even then, the impact depends on which emotions are being reflected: taking on others’ joy can be protective, while catching others’ anger or distress can increase burnout risk.
This distinction between this risky kind of empathy (mirroring the distress of others) and protective types of empathy (all the others) rarely appear in headlines, but it matters. If people believe that all kinds of empathy are dangerous, they may try to pull back from caring interactions altogether. And that would be bad not just for their friends and colleagues, but for them as well.
Although self-help advice often encourages intense self-focus such as setting boundaries and prioritizing “me time,” chronic inward focus is not the best way to feel better. In fact, the reverse is true. Research shows that directing attention toward others can reduce anxiety and physiological stress responses, and helping others is associated with greater wellbeing. In other words, if we avoid empathizing, we may deprive ourselves of the exact psychological resources that support resilience.
To prevent burnout, we need to attack its root causes. Systemic and organizational factors such as workload, staffing, bureaucracy, time pressure, and lack of support are the primary drivers. Empathy is not the culprit.
In short, the vast majority of things we call empathy do not cause burnout, they actually help protect against it. So for those feeling at risk, the best advice I can give you is to cultivate the right kind of empathy, not to avoid empathy altogether.
