Ecpati – A Very Important Complement To Empathy
Ecpathy is a new term that should complement empathy. It is an aspect that allows a person to properly deal with infectious and induced emotions. Physician and psychiatrist JL Gonzales coined the term to define the voluntary process of excluding emotions, attitudes, thoughts, and motivations induced by others.
However, ecpathy is not the same as the indifference or emotional harshness that characterizes people who lack empathy. On the contrary , it is a maneuver or positive mental act that assists empathy.
It is thus not a lack of empathy, but a complementary mental action that protects us from emotional floods and prevents the feelings of others from dragging us deep, which is a risk to which overly empathetic people are exposed.
From this point of view , one should not confuse “putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes” with installing ourselves more permanently in someone else’s place. This empathic journey is in some ways necessary to understand, but can, as I said, become dangerous if we get stuck in the other person’s place.
Although we believe that there are people who specialize in inducing and transmitting emotions, the truth is that we are not defenseless. We possess or can acquire tools so that this emotional “kidnapping” does not take place.
With this approach, it is an emotional kidnapping where it is only the kidnapper’s special sensitivity that keeps him in the state, even though that is not what the kidnapper intended. So we should not confuse an infectious feeling with empathy.
Empathy has to do with valuable information that we receive from others. If we only take into account the opinions, desires and feelings of others, coexistence will be catastrophic. This is because empathy is incomplete without the ability to deal with infectious emotions and compensate for them with a different mental skill.
Empathy means “putting oneself in someone else’s shoes”, but ecpathy is “putting oneself in one’s own shoes”. Both properties are necessary. The latter is a mental act that protects us from manipulation and emotional floods, and prevents the emotions of others from sweeping us away.
Daniel Goleman, author of the book Emotional Intelligence, says that empathy is basically the ability to understand the feelings of others in their circumstances. However, he also points out that on a deeper level it is about defining, understanding and reacting to worries and needs that lie behind other people’s emotional reactions.
Ecpathy is the opposite, but at the same time a complement to empathy. This voluntary process helps us to stop the overdose of infectious emotions in situations such as the treatment of sick people or humanitarian crises, so that we do not end up blocking the pain.
It also helps us to avoid mental manipulation or even mass hysteria.
Therefore , not all contagious emotions are good. With regard to our emotional health, it is best to regulate our empathic capacity. Not only to improve our ability to understand, but also to prevent or limit the extent of this experience when it may be negative for the empathetic person.
