Empathy: the art of connecting with other hearts

We could define empathy as the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to understand their vision of reality, their position and their opinions free of prejudices. Empathy can not only help others, but ourselves.

What is empathy and what is it for?

Empathy is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, to be able to understand it, of trying to understand what’s going on in your mind, how and why you feel that way. But it is a vision not from our perspective, but trying to think how the other thinks, with their beliefs, their values…

Empathy starts from validationto understand that a person’s feelings are possible in the situation in which they find themselves, even if we had others in the same situation.

In simpler words and with an example, for us it may not be very important not to have siblings, but for someone else it may be. In this situation, The empathic person would set aside his “scale of importance” to understand the suffering of the other from “his scale of importance.”.

The degree of empathy

There are people who have a natural facility to do what we have previously described but there are others who are incapable of doing it. However, be careful! Sometimes we confuse empathy with another concept that, although not the same, is a fundamental part for empathy to occur. We talk about the recognition of emotions.

We mean recognizing sadness, joy, fear, anger. There are people who are able to quickly identify the emotional state in which another person is. and there are others who cannot identify it, being a bit exaggerated, even though they write it on their forehead.

Logically, Many variables influence this step prior to the more cognitive part of empathy.: the familiarity we have with the person who has the emotion, our degree of fatigue, their communicative predisposition, etc.

Empathy has many positive aspects: it facilitates communication, comfort, problem solving, etc. But there is also a negative aspect: Continuously living in shoes that are not ours can cause us to create an emotional disconnection with ourselves that can take a very important toll on us.

When do we show empathy?

We can be very empathetic people, but if we do not demonstrate it, if we do not put it into practice it is of no use. Having said that We are going to list some occasions in which we can use it:

When we know how to listen and understand the feelings of others without being so aware of ourselves and our words.When we don’t just use words to console. Also a hug, a pat on the shoulder, a kiss or a caress makes us more empathetic. When we are with someone who has a problem and we help them with a sense of humor, for example.When we express ourselves with delicacy and courtesyWhen we do not show gestures of boredom towards what others tell us. When we do not make a comment that we know will bother the other. When we make an elderly person or a child understand, for example, that we understand them, that we understand them.When we help solve problems and are able to calm others.

When do we not show empathy?

On the contrary, also There may be times and situations in which we do not show empathy.:

When we believe that our problems are the only ones in the world.When we don’t listen to others.When we judge and make hurtful comments.When we never offer a smilea kind gesture or a caress to othersWhen whenever we do something for others we expect something in return.

Empathy is a good skill to practice, as it allows us to understand others. But We must be careful about practicing empathy excessively so as not to disconnect from ourselves.

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