Empathy has been on my radar as long as I can remember.
I have asked many questions of myself about empathy after listening to Brene Brown.
I have always been told I was an empath.
I walk into a room and immediately assess everyone’s emotions, I have done that as long as I remember.
Someone told me that was empathy.
As a child I would cry when others cried.
Someone else told me that was empathy.
I would listen to someone elses opinion about something, and drop my whole opinion after listening to their side of the story because I could imagine what it was like to be in their shoes and that seemed worse to me than being in my shoes.
They told me that was empathy.
I think these are all empathetic responses to others, but now I don’t believe that this is practicing empathy.
I assumed I knew how to be empathic and I was almost arrogant about it (arrogance and empathy don’t go so well together, thank goodness we do better once we know better).
There is nothing easy about empathy.
Fast forward to 5 years ago.
I began to follow Brene Brown. She teaches empathy and the more I dug into what she was saying, the more I realized I didn’t know how to practice empathy.
I feel like I am a life student of empathy now.
Being an empath was about me. It was how I reacted to the world.
Practicing empathy is different. It’s taking it one step further, it’s about how I interact with the world. It’s a way to help, heal, and honour another person.
It is not the same as sympathy.
Sympathy says I feel sorry for you. Empathy says I’m there with you.
Sympathy looks down on someone. Empathy doesn’t look, it feels it with someone… it says “me too”.
Empathy heals people, connects people, and lets them know they are not alone. Sympathy exacerbates the feelings that are already rich and brewing.
Empathy is a mirror, it mirrors our feelings to theirs, and that is what connects us.
Brene says we don’t have to have been through what someone else has been through in order to empathisize, but we do have to connect the same emotions they are feeling to emotions within ourselves.
Their shame = when we did something and felt shame
Their guilt = something we did and felt guilt
Their anger = something that made us feel that level of anger
Their fear = something that brought that same fear up in us.
Empathy is all about feeling what the other guy is feeling.
You get there by connecting the inside of you to the inside of them.
Sometimes its awful.
If the other person is bringing up emotions in me with a situation I haven’t healed, I have some work to do before I can help them. I think that is many times why I am brought into situations.
But most of the time it’s beautiful because almost in an instant it heals pain, and frustration, and feelings of isolation.
Empathy is a deep form of understanding.
Understanding is not about superficial wants. Its about the deepest feelings around fear, disconnection, isolation, frustration, inadequacies. It’s about all of the things we feel bad for feeling.
Understanding their dreams they are too afraid to speak out loud. The dreams that make their knees weak and their hearts skip a beat, the dreams they don’t believe they are worthy of.
This is what gets their attention. This is how they feel heard.
And once they feel heard, we will also feel heard because thats how the mirror works.
If you want to help someone, serve someone, sell someone, persuade someone, motivate someone, inspire someone, teach someone, lead someone, empower someone, build trust with someone, or engage someone…
It all begins with empathy.