Transcription
So what is empathy and why is it very different than sympathy?
Empathy fuels connection; sympathy drives disconnection.
Empathy—it's a very interesting concept. Teresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar who studied diverse professions where empathy is relevant and came up with four qualities of empathy:
1. Perspective-taking: the ability to take the perspective of another person or recognize their perspective as their truth.
2. Staying out of judgment: not easy when you enjoy it as much as most of us do.
3. Recognizing emotion in other people.
4. Communicating that emotion.
Empathy is feeling with people, and to me, I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space. When someone's kind of in a deep hole, and they shout up from the bottom and say, “I'm stuck, it's dark, I'm overwhelmed,” we look and say, “Hey, calm down. I know what it's like down here and you're not alone.”
Sympathy is, “Oh, it's bad, uh-huh. No, you want a sandwich?”
Empathy is a choice, and it's a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling. Rarely, if ever, does an empathic response begin with “At least I had it.” Yeah, and we do it all the time. Because, you know, when someone just shared something with us that's incredibly painful, we're trying to silver-lining it. I don't think that's a verb, but I'm using it as one.
We're trying to put this little lining around it, so John’s getting kicked out of school; at least Sarah is an A student. But one of the things we do sometimes in the face of very difficult conversations is we try to make things better.
If I share something with you that's very difficult, whether you say, “I don't even know what to say right now. I'm just so glad you told me,” because the truth is rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.
[Music]