Empathy, the one emotion all psychologists, therapists, and neuroscientists can agree upon is the greatest of our human emotional responses. The subject of artists, authors, scientists, moralists, the religious, and humanists alike.
What is empathy: It is defined as the act of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another either the past or present without our feelings, thoughts or experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
We can get angry, feel guilty, frustrated, or anxious. We can grieve or feel sadness, regret, or resentment, but none of these emotions make a statement about who we are as a person, unlike empathy. Empathy is the glue that unites families and communities. The bond that helps two people resolve a conflict; is a salve for pain while being an essential ingredient of romantic love.
Empathy is a motivator supreme, igniting a person’s need to help another, go outside of their protective area and invest themselves in another’s pain or situation. Empathy brings the family together, motivating a son to care for his elderly mother, and a sister to listen to a brother’s situational needs.
Empathy can become weaponized by another, taking the best part of the human spirit and turning it against others.
1. Feeling someone’s emotions so deeply that you are blinded by them
Too much empathy is a problem that can allow unhealthy or damaging behaviors to continue when they really should not. One can sympathize with someone’s uncontrolled alcohol abuse, since they were victims of personal loss or an incident, and you know you should tell them to stop this abuse and deal with it.
2. Empathizing with the emotions of someone who does not deserve it.
Misdirected empathy makes the empathizer vulnerable to exploitation by the recipient. For example, a person now an adult, is unable to hold his father accountable for the damage he is doing to himself and his siblings. The son is giving his dad a pass on the dad’s bad behavior because of his empathy for him. His empathy is misplaced, placing his own happiness and health (and that of his younger siblings) behind that of his dads.
3. Being too indiscriminate with your empathy.
Know someone who offers empathy freely? When your empathy is too easily given, you end up giving too much to many people. Ever seen someone always on the go, always giving of themselves, never finding the time to recover? Empathy is like any other emotion, and it can drain your mind, spirit, and soul over time.
How can we keep our empathy pure and healthy and make it work for the better good of all?
a. Be aware of when you’re feeling empathetic and to whom. Make sure they deserve to receive it.
b. Keep your empathy in check. Make sure it does not prevent you from holding a loved one
accountable for his or her actions.
c. Prioritize your needs. Taking care of yourself before caring for others. That way empathy will build you up, and not tear you down.
Know stores about the elderly lady who could not feed herself, yet she feeds dozens of stray cats or dogs? A nation that does not care for its people fully yet donates billions to other nations across the world has misdirected its empathy. Look out for yourself, and in time your empathy for others will surface.
” When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather share our pain and touch our wounds with a loving heart. Who can stay with us in an hour of grief, and who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, but helping us to face our powerlessness? That is an empathetic friend”
(Thank you for those words, Henri Nouwen).
Steven Kaszab
Bradford, Ontario
[email protected]
