empathy

empathy and compassion

• at the heart of empathy is
  • an identification of yourself with the other
  • the perception of others as part of your group
  • the ability to see beyond facades and defenses into the heart and truth of another
  • accepting what others say about themself because it is true for them
• compassionate listening
  • looking for hurt and pain behind anger and attempts to control
  • looking for re-enactments of a childhood drama

impediments to empathy

• empathy = the ability to see yourself in others, to identify with others
• to have empathy you must be willing to admit that anything could happen to you, that the other could be you
• empathy = the ability to imagine what someone in pain feels like
• but to imagine what someone in pain feels like
  • you must be able to remember what it felt like to be in pain
    • in particular, the kind of pain the other now finds herself in
  • you must be able to tolerate remembering pain
• watching someone in pain threatens to bring up memories of your own pain
• if you have not dealt with these memories you may find yourself trying to get the other to stop talking about their pain, by
  • giving them advice
  • excusing yourself or changing the subject
  • starting a fight with them

people without empathy

• some people severely abused as children cannot tolerate remembering their own childhood pain
  • they coped with their own abuse by
    • dissociating from their own pain
    • and, in some cases, identifying with their abuser
  • (some therapists who work with rapists try to help them get in touch with how they felt when they were abused as children)
  • so they cannot allow themselves to empathize with people in situations that remind them of events from their childhood