Many professionals and volunteers regularly listen to people describing trauma, abuse, loss and deeply painful experiences.
We may be counsellors, support workers, advocates, healthcare professionals, safeguarding leads, emergency responders, helpline volunteers—or simply the person others trust enough to speak to.
We are often taught how to listen.
We are not always taught how to listen without taking another person’s pain home with us.
That matters, because repeated exposure to traumatic material can affect our emotional and physical wellbeing. Without sufficient boundaries, supervision, rest and support, we may become vulnerable to burnout, empathic distress or vicarious trauma.
Empathy remains essential
As a person-centred counsellor, empathic understanding is one of the core conditions of the therapeutic relationship.
Empathy helps another person feel heard, understood and less alone. It enables us to listen beyond the words and begin to understand the experience from that person’s frame of reference.
The difficulty is not that we care too much.
The difficulty can arise when understanding someone’s experience becomes absorbing their experience.
There is a subtle but important difference between imagining ourselves in another person’s shoes and trying to understand what it feels like for that person to be in their own shoes.
The first might sound like:
“If that happened to me, how would I feel?”
We may begin generating our own fear, grief, anger or helplessness in response to their story. Alongside recognising their emotions, we are now experiencing our own imagined version of the event.
The second asks:
“What might this experience feel like for them, with their history, circumstances, needs and understanding of the world?”
We remain ourselves while being genuinely curious about the other person.
What Dr Dan Siegel taught me about the difference
I first heard this distinction explained by psychiatrist and interpersonal neurobiology educator Dr Dan Siegel.
Dr Siegel describes empathy as allowing another person’s internal experience to resonate within us. However, he also emphasises the importance of differentiation: we can be changed by what we hear without becoming the other person.
Using the example of witnessing someone involved in an accident, he distinguishes between imagining that it is happening to us and considering what it may feel like for the person actually experiencing it. The first can lead to over-identification and personal distress. The second preserves a sense of self while allowing care, understanding and a wish to help.
His explanation helped me understand that compassion is not emotional distance. It is an integrated way of caring—remaining connected to the other person while also remaining grounded within ourselves.
Dr Siegel has spoken about compassion as an important part of a healthy, integrated mind and draws upon research distinguishing empathic distress from compassion. Watch Dr Dan Siegel discuss compassion.
Research by Olga Klimecki, Tania Singer and colleagues also found that training in empathic resonance increased participants’ negative feelings when witnessing suffering, whereas subsequent compassion training increased positive feelings and engaged a different pattern of brain activity. The researchers suggested that cultivating compassion may offer a way of responding to empathic distress and strengthening resilience. Read the published study.
This does not mean that empathy is harmful or that compassion replaces it.
Empathy provides understanding and connection. Compassion adds warmth, care and an orientation towards what may help. Both matter.
Compassionate understanding
Compassionate understanding might sound like:
“I am here with you.”
“I want to understand what this has been like for you.”
“I care about what has happened to you.”
“I will help where I appropriately can.”
“And I recognise that this experience belongs to you—I do not have to carry it as though it happened to me.”
This is not coldness.
It is not detachment.
It is not switching off our emotions or becoming clinical and distant.
It is staying close enough to understand, while maintaining the internal boundary that allows us to remain calm, thoughtful and useful.
When we emotionally merge with another person, our own nervous system may begin responding as though the danger is happening to us. We can become overwhelmed, lose perspective and have less capacity to remain fully present.
Compassion allows us to care without abandoning ourselves.
Practical ways to remain present without carrying
Before a difficult conversation, take a moment to notice your body. Feel your feet against the floor and the support of the chair beneath you. Remind yourself that you are here, in the present, and currently safe.
While listening, keep part of your awareness connected to your breathing and body. If you notice yourself becoming overwhelmed, gently lengthen your exhale and return your attention to the room around you.
Ask yourself:
“Am I alongside this person, or have I stepped inside their experience?”
“Am I trying to understand what this feels like for them—or imagining it happening to me?”
“What belongs to this person, and what belongs to me?”
Afterwards, create a deliberate transition. This might be a short walk, stretching, stepping outside, listening to music, washing your hands mindfully or taking several slow breaths before moving into the next part of your day.
Supervision and reflective practice are also essential. They give us somewhere appropriate to process what we have heard, notice what has affected us and recognise when our capacity is becoming depleted.
Healthy boundaries, manageable workloads, sufficient breaks and supportive organisations matter too. Burnout is not always an individual failure to practise self-care. Sometimes it is a reasonable response to unreasonable demands.
Notice the early signs
The signs that we are carrying too much may include:
- Thinking repeatedly about someone’s story outside our role
- Feeling responsible for rescuing or fixing them
- Becoming unusually tearful, irritable, anxious or numb
- Struggling to sleep after hearing traumatic material
- Losing patience or emotional availability
- Dreading conversations we would previously have managed
- Feeling guilty when we rest or say no
- Experiencing changes in how safe we believe the world to be
These signs are not evidence that we are weak or unsuitable for the work.
They are information.
They tell us that our system may need rest, support, supervision, stronger boundaries or a reduction in exposure.
We can care deeply without carrying everything
Our humanity is not measured by how much pain we can absorb.
We do not serve another person by becoming overwhelmed alongside them. We are often most helpful when we can remain warm, regulated, compassionate and able to think clearly.
The aim is not to feel less.
It is to care in a way that remains safe and sustainable.
We can listen without taking ownership.
We can understand without over-identifying.
We can stand beside someone in their pain without carrying it as our own.
Compassion is not distance.
It is care with a boundary.