In his sefer Alei Shor (volume one, page 252) Rav Wolbe explains that anytime a person is suffering, whether from disease, financial matter or any type of challenge, he's struggles alone with his challenge in a way that's almost impossible to bear.
As the dictum says, a prisoner can’t release himself from his own jail cell. But more than the pain of his suffering is the pain of his loneliness. Before challenge struck, he felt equal to his friends, and had a certain love of life, because people enjoy company. But once he has this challenge, he's now ripped out of his group and now he’s different. It can be a boy sitting in a wheelchair, or a man suffering with losing his hair… whatever it may be. Rav Wolbe quotes a pasuk in Yirmiyah 15,17 that says,
מִפְּנֵ֤י יָֽדְךָ֙ בָּדָ֣ד יָשַׁ֔בְתִּי
Because of Your hand (which means I was struck by a challenge), I sat alone.
And even the opening line of the Galut is that we’re sitting alone.
Every challenge comes with level of loneliness, even in something as small as feeling that you're not doing as well as other people are in learning, and therefore, you are alone. You can't share it. There are millions of levels of loneliness until a person reaches a state he calls of almost ice, which is totally alone.
He quotes from David Hamelech’s psalm
(Tehilim 142) which he wrote when he was in a cave,
“I look to the right and I look to the left and nobody recognizes me. No one cares about me.” He says to Hashem, “Take me out of the shackles of my soul to praise You.”
David Hamelech was alone in a cave, underground. No one knew him. No one recognized him No one cared about him. He was locked in his problem.
So what is Noseh B’Ol/empathy?
Someone who pushes themelves into the jail cell of his friend, to feel the pain with him, to someone who puts his heart into contemplating his friend’s pain. That’s breaking through those shackles. That's what Noseh B’Ol is all about- to make the person feel he is not alone, to make the person feel comfortable enough to share. And it's not just for physical ailments. It could be a spiritual ailment, and allow the person to share what it feels like to be anxious or depressed; to share what it feels like to be hopeless.
Rabbi Friedlander makes a similar point in his sefer Sivtei Chaim He says that sometimes people wonder how talking to somebody can help. They think- “I’m just going to talk and he's going to empty out his heart? I can’t do anything for him. I have no money to add to the pot. I have no advice for his health challenge. I’m not doing anything for him.”
But Rabbi Friedlander says this is wrong. Since a large chunk of his suffering is due to the loneliness, by sitting there and talking to him and allowing him to share with you, you have broken his loneliness. That's the reason there are support groups for all different types of challenges.
When you have a support group, you have multiple people sharing the pain together, and that, in itself, removes the problem.
I want share something that's a little heavy, that was told to me by Rabbi Babad, from Relief. He knows somebody who has two children. One of them is suffering with, Lo Alenu V’Lo Alechem, a physical terminal illness. There are all kinds of organizations, like Chai Lifeline and others, to help them pull them out of their struggle to whatever abilities possible. But they have another child who’s suffering with mental illness. And the one that's suffering with mental illness says,”No one is coming to visit me. There are no singers coming to sing for me.” The stigma of mental illness causes the person to feel even lonelier.
They hear,
“What's wrong with you? Just get out of bed..What are you depressed about? What are you getting so nervous about? What are you so anxious about? Just go on with life…So what? So someone did something to you when you were six years old? Get over it…
That lack of understanding, that stigma, that feeling of loneliness that no one understands me, that's the most painful part. And if you're able to take a person out of that, to sit and talk to them in a nonjudgmental way, to validate them, and create what we call a safe space for them to share, that is tremendously valuable.
As we said, this takes a lot. You have to take yourself out of it, because if you're going to start putting yourself into it, you end up judging or comparing, and the person ends up feeling like he’s not good enough or less than.
But if you can do it right, you'll have done so much, without really doing anything. You’ll have created that safe place to share.
And that's what we can do to help people, with this the great technique of breaking the loneliness.
Have a wonderful day.