Trauma, empathy and the human spirit
by Sheila Foster
Witnesses of traumatic events can be moved as deeply as those who were victims

World Trade Center towers collapse. The images hit hard. Many people reacted as if the televised events were happening to them. "The human ability to empathize," says David Spiegel, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, "is perhaps our greatest strength, but it is also the source of our greatest weakness."

Empathy strengthens us, he says, by serving as the glue for our social structure. Our ability to crawl into another’s shoes is what causes us to rally with others in times of need and on many occasions restrains us from causing harm. But empathy extends our vulnerability when we suffer from the trauma of others as if it were happening to ourselves, he says.

Spiegel, who has long studied empathy and its relation to trauma and post-traumatic stress, is surveying reactions to the Sept. 11 tragedies. His past research has shown that strong feelings of empathy cause those who witness the trauma of others to be almost as much at risk of post-traumatic stress as the trauma victims themselves.

"Empathy involves letting down our defenses and experiencing life from another person’s perspective," says Spiegel. For a moment we are completely focused on another and captured in a vortex of our own memories triggered by the other person’s experience. For our minds and bodies, the other’s traumatic experience comes to seem like our own.

In the case of the Sept. 11 attacks, the emotional reaction was enough to elicit more than 7,000 responses to an online survey that will help Spiegel analyze the events’ psychological impact. He is examining the data to assess the degree of post-traumatic stress experienced by the respondents, as well as the methods people use to cope with the trauma. A follow-up survey in March will complete the study.

What Spiegel has found so far is that while empathy may have made the tragedies of Sept. 11 so traumatic for so many, empathy also helps people to heal.

"There is a re-evaluation of life that seems to occur," Spiegel says. Empathy causes people to reach out to each other, to reassess their priorities, to value relationships more, and to begin to shape their lives accordingly, and this, Spiegel says, is perhaps where empathy plays its greatest role, serving as the driving force behind the collective human spirit.

SM

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