Love in the Blizzard of Life – Day 26 – EMPATHY
EMPATHY seems to be so much like sensitivity and understanding, yet it is a slightly different quality. When we are sensitive, we are aware of our own emotions, bodily sensations and how we are interpreting a given event or response from someone else. When we are sensitive we also recognize that someone else’s response may be different from our own. When we understand how we and the other person are thinking and feelings, we can more easily choose how we want to respond. But without empathy, it can become an intellectual process. Without empathy, we may feel bothered, annoyed or even indifferent to someone else’s needs and desires.
You may have a strong INCENTIVE, INTENTION, PRESENT MOMENT awareness, DRIVE, inner ARCHITECT, PATIENCE, ability to SURRENDER, COMMITMENT, TRUST, DISCERNMENT, PASSION, DESIRE, CREATIVITY, SENSUALITY, SEXUAL EXPRESSION, COMPASSION, and COMMUNICATION. You PRACTICE relationships skills, you balance TOGETHERNESS and AUTONOMY, your SENSITIVITY. UNDERSTANDING, RECEPTIVITY, FORGIVENESS and ACCEPTANCE may be apparent. But do you have EMPATHY for yourself in your own struggles and for another person whose struggles may be different from your own?
Today’s question is: How much EMPATHY are you able to feel for others when they express emotions that make you uncomfortable or that you feel are exaggerated and unnecessary?
- Are you able to actually imagine and visualize what it must feel like to be another person, to live with their mindset and values?
- Can you identify with another person, tune in and actually feel similar emotions, without losing your own sense of self?
- Can you freely respond with compassion, interest, and understanding when you do not live up to your own expectations or when someone you are close to disappoints, hurts or even betrays you?
Ask yourself NOW: How easily and readily can I share EMPATHY with myself and others when life throws a curve ball and I am not feeling strong and centered?
Research about what qualities are essential in a therapeutic relationship has indicated time and again that the most essential quality is EMPATHY. It is not the specific method or even the level of expertise and skill that can help to uplift and transform another person’s mindset. The one quality that helps a person to change is EMPATHY. Everybody wants to be loved and accepted and acknowledged for being exactly the way we are. Nobody wants to be expected to change to please another person. If we feel pressured and expected to change, the most natural thing to do is to adamantly resist. But when someone seems to know us at a really deep level, when someone seems to really “get who we are,” and when we feel understood, accepted, cared for and acknowledged, then we may be willing to let down our guard and make those small changes that are needed.
Relationships are built upon the complexity and interactions among all the different possible qualities, both positive and negative, that we can bring. Every quality is important, to some degree. It is really the balance among all the different possibilities that can lead to joy and happiness or sadness and emotional devastation.
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Warmly,
Dr. Erica
February 9th, 2013 at 6:58 pm
Hi Dr. Erica,
yes, empathy and compassion are so important in regards to relationships.
I realized lately that when I don’t find it easy to be compassionate with someone’s behavior it usually points to somewhere where I am not compassionate and accepting of a shadow part of myself.
Then it is time for looking inward and relating to myself via my journal.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights!
Love and Light
Yorinda
Yorinda recently posted..Making Changes and the Limbic Lag
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Dr. Erica Goodstone Reply:
February 9th, 2013 at 9:22 pm
Yorinda,
You are so right. When we cannot accept what someone else is doing or being, it is often because we have not accepted our own potential for that same type of attitude and behavior. Life becomes a set of choices when we are aware. When we are not aware that we have choices, we react unconsciously. If I am the person with greater awareness, I need to have empathy and compassion for those who have not yet acquired the awareness.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..Love in the Blizzard of Life – Day 30 – FLOW
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April 25th, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Hello Dr Erica,
I was attracted to the word empathy in your post!
En-pathos comes from Greek which means to be in the passion.
When working with clients we cannot reach results if we are not in this state, listen with their ears, feel with their hearts and see with their eyes.
At the same time it is important to keep boundaries.
As a healer, a friend I remind myself to be “loyal” to who I am , in other words “present”first and then to allow to enter in this state of empathy.
Relationships can be very complicated sometimes empathy is the “oil” that makes the dynamics of the relationships flow more easily and in peace.
Thanks for this wonderful share, a great reminder for me too!
Patricia Gozlan recently posted..3 Success Mindset Secrets That Catapult Your Results
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Dr. Erica Goodstone Reply:
April 25th, 2013 at 8:51 pm
Patricia,
I love that en-pathos, to be in the passion. When we are feeling empathic we ARE in the passion, we are feeling similar emotions to the other person – and that leads to a sense of passion. It is certainly not dull and boring. And the other person is more easily able to relax and let go of the intensity of the emotion because there is a true sense of not being alone.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..Who’s Bullying You?
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