Empathy and compassion are separable, including in the brain. In the Klimecki training study, empathy training increased negative affect and activity in the anterior insula and anterior midcingulate cortex. Subsequent compassion training reversed the negative affect, raised positive affect, and recruited a different network — medial orbitofrontal cortex, ventral striatum, pregenual anterior cingulate. The authors propose compassion as a route out of empathic distress.