If You Don’t Feel It, Don’t Fake It
Have you ever wondered how empathy would work for someone who didn’t know how to truly have it? I read a post a while back that, to my mind, expressed this well. In it, the author suggested it was a matter of how you looked and what you said. For instance, adopting what you believe is a kind look on your face, and saying things that acknowledge how hard what that person is going through is.
That isn’t empathy. Empathy can’t be learned like that. Either you feel it or you don’t. Either you can relate it in some meaningful way to your own life or not. For instance, if someone just lost their partner, I need to go inward to times I’ve lost someone important to me to truly be able to empathize with the person. If I don’t have any personal experience, then I can acknowledge to myself that we all have really painful moments, admit that I haven’t experienced what they have experienced, and sit with them for as long as they need.
Learning facial and verbal queues won’t help the person in front of you because there is no real emotion behind it.
If you really aren’t empathizing with the person you’re with, don’t fake it. The person you’re with will know it’s fake, and it will only make things worse for them.
Quote of the Week
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
― Henri Nouwen
The difference between false empathy and true support
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Maryanne Nicholls is a Registered Psychotherapist. To find out more, gain access to her weekly newsletter, meditations and programs, sign up at www.thejoyofliving.co .
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