It’s hard to feel feelings.
Emotions take us on a ride that can be wonderful and unpleasant.
Some humans totally love a scary A.F. rollercoaster or skydiving experience.
Many other humans feel like living without their phone for a day is about as much anxiety and stressful fomo emotion as they can handle.
Every one of us has a threshold. A boundary, if you will, of what we can and cannot deal with emotionally.
I, for example, am emotionally intense by nature. Meaning, that Big emotions often don’t freak me out.
Not all the time.
There are days, truth be told, when if I even see a hint of a sad puppy situation, I will lose it!
Empathy is our basic human ability to perceive and feel what others feel and think.
Yeah, emotions!
But it comes in a few distinct flavors:
Cognitive Empathy
The experience of knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking.
Emotional/Affective Empathy
When you feel physically along with the other person,
as though their emotions were contagious.
Compassionate Empathy
The understanding of a persons' predicament and feel with them,
as well as be spontaneously moved to help if needed.
Motor Empathy
An automatic empathetic response in the form of unconsciously
mirroring the facial expressions of another, or copying
body language, speech, or yawn contagion.
A lot of times, it's a mixture of all four types of Empathy
Why should we care about developing Empathy?
Humans are an incredibly social species. The evolutionary selection and development of Empathy in humans led us down the pathway of cooperation. This is one reason why there are almost 8 billion of us. If the whole “Survival of the Fittest” misquote of Darwin was honestly like Fight Club or Mad Max, there wouldn’t be so many of us.
Empathy builds better relationships. Better relationships not only enhance our lives but extend our lives. We actually live longer and healthier lives when we are connected robustly to ourselves and others.
Empathy is tricky because it can also foster over-identification with our own tribe kind of thinking. BUT, and this is a big juicy butt, Empathy also has the ability through perspective-taking to help us move beyond differences to understand that we are one big messy human family!
How to be more Empathetic?
Dare you go down the path of cultivating Empathy more consciously?
YES! We need more Empathy, not less!
Increase Empathy by:
Slowing down - It’s hard to be Empathetic when we’re in a lightning-quick reactive mode. Or when talking none stop. Empathy has a lot to do with listening. That doesn’t mean to be silent, but it does point to being thoughtful and asking if our input is wanted.
If possible, take care of all the H.A.L.T. stuff. Hunger/Anger/Loneliness/Tired.
If we are experiencing any of these, our ability to feel and demonstrate Empathy will be negatively impacted. Does this mean we have to be in a perfect state? Hell, no! Just be aware of what’s going on.
Get Curious about what the other human is saying and experiencing.
Watch for non-verbal clues that might give a bunch of information. Facial expressions, body language, tone of voice often convey something about what the other humans are experiencing.
Be willing to feel some discomfort. Empathy can be painful if the contagion aspect of mirror neuron parts is highly activated. In those situations, we might want to run for the hills instead of plopping down to feel with the being who's in distress. That’s real. To help with that…
Boundaries!!! They are our best friends! Empathy requires boundaries, and boundaries need work. Learning about boundaries will take me a Lifetime because I grew up in a bit of a, how shall I put it, Wild Wild West environment where all emotions were being felt and expressed ALL OF THE TIME! Learning about my boundaries has increased my ability to be Empathetic and decrease stressed states of feeling overwhelmed because of experiencing other humans' feelings.
Humans are naturally Empathetic creatures. The world we’ve co-created focused on the individual, on isolation, competition, and extraction and consumption makes it much harder to access and trust our ability to be present, witness, and offer Empathy to others.
Empathy is some of the best and most vital medicines we need on this fantastic journey of being alive. Wonderfully, Empathy is a quality we can nurture and grow. More Empathy, in my opinion, will lead to less callousness, judgment, and enacting of power over strategies. Empathy is one of the human superpowers that will support us in getting through this challenging stage of our development as a species. It will help us unite our brilliant heads to our compassionate hearts.
We need this.
We need Empathy.
We do this thing together.
We do this thing together.
Amazing music by: Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.au The song is called "Wanderlust." Thank you, Scott, for making such beautiful art that you share so freely!