Help Others to Help Yourself
Dr. Laurie Santos discusses how college student Liam Elkind created Invisible Hands to help vulnerable neighbors during COVID-19. Compassion expert David DeSteno explains how helping others boosts well-being and prevents burnout. Dr. Santos also guides a loving-kindness meditation to cultivate compassion.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
Impact of Coronavirus on Collective Well-being
Finding Hope by 'Looking for the Helpers'
Liam Elkind's Invisible Hands Initiative
Rapid Growth and Community Connections of Invisible Hands
Personal Benefits and Mutual Aid from Helping Others
Scientific Basis: Helping Boosts Personal Well-being
Understanding Compassion and Its Distinction from Empathy
Compassion as a Shield Against Burnout and Fatigue
Cultivating Compassion for Easier Self-Sacrifice and Cooperation
The 'Win-Win-Win' of Giving and Upward Spirals
Building Community Trust for Resilience in Crises
Compassion: A Necessity for Human Survival
Guided Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation Practice
7 Key Concepts
Invisible Hands
A volunteer group co-founded by Liam Elkind and Simone Policano during the COVID-19 crisis to provide free grocery and necessity deliveries for elderly, disabled, immunocompromised, and sick individuals. It also prioritizes social connection and offers financial subsidies to those economically impacted.
Mutual Aid
A concept that describes how communities come together to help one another, emphasizing that the act of giving is not just a service but a reciprocal process. It benefits both the recipients and the givers, fostering stronger community bonds and well-being.
Compassion
The emotion felt when one wants to give care to someone else who is in distress or pain, motivating a desire to relieve that suffering. It is distinct from empathy in that it focuses on the drive to help rather than solely experiencing another's feelings.
Empathy (neuroscientific sense)
The ability to feel what another person is feeling, such as their happiness or sadness. While a natural human response, constantly feeling others' distress through empathy can lead to emotional overwhelm and burnout if not channeled into active compassion.
Compassion Fatigue / Burnout
A state of emotional exhaustion and overwhelm that can occur when individuals are constantly exposed to the suffering of others. Research suggests that cultivating compassion, rather than just empathy, can protect against this burnout by motivating caregiving without requiring one to continually feel the pain.
Loving-Kindness Meditation (Metta)
A form of meditation practice that involves sending good wishes to oneself, loved ones, and broader communities. Scientific studies indicate that regular practice of loving-kindness meditation can increase levels of compassion and help reduce negative emotions, protecting against burnout.
Community Resilience
The capacity of neighborhoods or communities to recover and bounce back after experiencing a crisis or disaster. Studies, such as one after Superstorm Sandy, show that the strongest predictor of resilience is the extent to which people trust and can count on their neighbors.
7 Questions Answered
While staying home is crucial, people can actively help by joining or creating initiatives like Invisible Hands, which connect healthy volunteers with vulnerable individuals for grocery deliveries and social connection, providing a sense of agency and purpose.
Helping others boosts the helper's own well-being, fosters new friendships and social connections, and contributes to a sense of mutual aid within communities, counteracting feelings of isolation and fear.
Empathy is feeling what another person feels (e.g., their sadness), whereas compassion is the emotion of wanting to give care to someone in distress and being motivated to relieve their pain, without necessarily experiencing their pain oneself.
Compassion protects against compassion fatigue or burnout by motivating a desire to help without requiring one to continually feel the pain of others. Practices like loving-kindness meditation can boost compassion and reduce negative emotions when exposed to distressing situations.
Yes, cultivating compassion can make people more willing to make sacrifices, such as social isolating, because it reframes these actions as helping others. This aligns internal impulses with the desired behavior, reducing internal conflict and frustration.
The first win is for the recipient of help, the second for the giver (who experiences increased happiness and well-being), and the third is an upward spiral of gratitude and compassion that spreads through the community, fostering trust and resilience.
The best predictor for a community's resilience and ability to bounce back after a disaster is the extent to which its members feel they can trust and count on their neighbors, which is built through connections and mutual aid.
17 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Compassion for Survival
Recognize and prioritize compassion not as a luxury, but as a fundamental necessity for human survival, as it drives the cooperative behaviors needed to overcome crises together.
2. Cultivate Compassion, Not Just Empathy
To avoid burnout when others are suffering, cultivate compassion—the desire to relieve distress—rather than solely relying on empathy, which can lead to feeling overwhelmed by others’ pain.
3. Perform Loving-Kindness Meditation
Practice loving-kindness meditation by first focusing on your breath, then mentally sending good wishes (‘May you be happy, healthy, care for yourself joyfully, and be safe’) to a loved one, then to another close person, then to yourself, and finally to your entire community, monitoring your ‘heart space’ throughout.
4. Cultivate Compassion for Sacrifice
Cultivating compassion, even within your family, will make you more willing to make necessary sacrifices, such as social isolating or helping vulnerable neighbors, by aligning your impulses with altruistic actions.
5. Align Desires with Compassion
By cultivating an emotion of compassion, you can align your internal impulses to genuinely want to sacrifice for others, making it easier to do hard things without fighting against conflicting desires.
6. Boost Well-being by Helping
Actively helping other people is something that can significantly boost your personal well-being, especially during times of crisis and widespread difficulty.
7. Help Others, Be Happier
Engaging in acts of helping others is a scientifically proven way to make yourself happier and improve your overall well-being.
8. Become a Hero Yourself
While it’s beneficial to look for heroes, it is even more rewarding and impactful to actively become a ‘hero’ yourself by engaging in acts of help and service for others.
9. Actively Help Vulnerable People
If you feel useless when told to ‘do nothing’ during a crisis, actively seek ways to help vulnerable populations, such as coordinating free grocery deliveries for the elderly and immunocompromised.
10. Prioritize Social Connection in Aid
When providing aid, prioritize social connection by calling recipients ahead of time to engage them in conversation, as isolation can be a major difficulty for those receiving help.
11. Offer Financial Subsidies
In times of crisis, consider offering financial subsidies to individuals who are economically impacted, such as those laid off or freelancers unable to find work.
12. Embrace Mutual Aid
Reframe community support as ‘mutual aid,’ recognizing that it’s a reciprocal process where communities come together to help one another, not just a one-way service.
13. Initiate Gratitude’s Upward Spiral
By helping others, you can initiate an ‘upward spiral’ where recipients feel grateful and are then motivated to ‘pay it forward,’ spreading kindness and expanding the network of support.
14. Expand Compassion Through Giving
When you engage in giving and experience compassion, it evokes a continuous desire to help even wider circles of people, extending your support to strangers you might not know.
15. Build Community Trust & Connection
Engage in or support community programs that facilitate interaction and mutual aid among neighbors, as building trust and connection is a key predictor of a community’s resilience during crises.
16. Look for the Helpers
In tragic or fearful times, actively seek out ’the helpers’ in your community, as seeing their actions can instill a sense of hope.
17. Seek Evidence-Based Science
When feeling confused or fearful, remember that looking for answers in evidence-based science is always the best way to go to find solutions.
5 Key Quotes
You know, my mother used to say, always look for the helpers. Because if you look for the helpers, you'll know that there's hope.
Mr. Rogers (quoted by Dr. Laurie Santos)
What compassion is, is it's the emotion we feel when we want to give care to someone else. It's often mixed up with empathy.
David DeSteno
If you're always feeling empathy, you can get overwhelmed and feel burned out if you're trying to feel everyone's distress. What you have to do is say, I recognize you're in distress. Let me get into the state of compassion where it motivates me to want to help you, to sacrifice for you in a way that doesn't require me to continually feel your pain and therefore get burned out by it.
David DeSteno
Compassion is not a luxury. It's a necessity for human survival.
Dalai Lama (quoted by David DeSteno)
Mr. Rogers was right. It does pay to look for the heroes. But what he didn't say is that it pays even more to become a hero yourself.
Dr. Laurie Santos
1 Protocols
Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation
Dr. Laurie Santos- Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and pay attention to your breath, noticing how you feel.
- Bring to mind someone who is really easy to care about (e.g., a partner, child, or pet) and feel what it's like to think about them in your 'heart space' (around your chest).
- Send this individual good wishes by thinking: 'May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you care for yourself joyfully. And may you be safe.' Repeat these phrases.
- Bring to mind another person you are close with and repeat the same good wishes, observing your heart space.
- Apply compassion to yourself by thinking: 'May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I care for myself joyfully. And may I be safe.' Notice what this feels like for you.
- Broaden your compassion to your entire community, especially those affected by the crisis, and send them good wishes: 'May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you care for yourselves joyfully. And may you be safe.' Repeat these statements.
- Take one more deep breath in through the nose, sigh it out through the mouth, and then open your eyes.