Empathy and Compassion: A Translational Workshop to Promote Sustainable Practice 

Clergy and religious educators engage with painful emotions and distressing narratives on a regular basis. While empathy is foundational to that work, sustained or intense empathic engagement can increase religious educators’ vulnerability to empathic distress, emotional exhaustion, and secondary traumatic stress. Research in affective neuroscience has elucidated that empathy activates the same neural networks in the brain that control direct experience of pain—we emotionally participate in the pain of others, leading us to experience pain, distress, and the urge to withdraw. In contrast, compassion recruits affiliative and caregiving systems linked to warmth, care, and prosocial action, exactly how we want to show up for our communities. Shifting from empathy alone to compassion-based responding may promote resilience and sustainability for clergy and religious educators. In this translational workshop, participants will learn skills to regulate their own emotional responses, enhance sustainability, and maintain effectiveness when working with high levels of suffering.

Presenter Bio: Noga Zerubavel, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and co-founder of Arise Psychological Wellness and Consulting. She is also Medical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center, where she is involved in clinical education and research. She specializes in treatment of trauma survivors using empirically supported treatments and is author of various journal articles, chapters, and a recent book, Integrating Mindfulness into Psychotherapy for Trauma. Dr. Zerubavel regularly provides trainings for mental health providers, physicians and other health care providers, and other organizations on topics related to trauma, mindfulness, clinical supervision, wounded healers, and clinician burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and sustainable practice.