In a small study of my own, I examined how empathy contributes to stress. To do so, I created 2 research propositions.
My first proposition is, “having too much empathy causes stress.”
In the case where you have too much empathy with your environment, your fellow human beings, you start worrying about anything and everything that you may not have direct influence over. Not being able to solve the problems, but feeling that you are involved gives you tremendous internal stress. Feeling of failure.
My second proposition is, “not receiving enough empathy is a major reason for stress.”
If no one cares about you and won’t listen to you anymore about the problems you have. No one knows how to connect to your feelings in any way. We feel alone. And since humans are group animals, you experience this as being ignored and left out of the group. This produces a primary very old stress response.
My conclusion about empathy is: If we want to do something about the stress of ourselves and our employees, it is important to give and receive the right amount of empathy.
Does anyone know research and tools about this topic that we could use within companies? I think this is an important topic to prevent employees leaving the company.
Article about stress : Forbes