Congratulations! Your support has been successfully sent to the author
Empathy Is An Emotional Muscle You Can Grow

Empathy Is An Emotional Muscle You Can Grow

Published Oct 7, 2020 Updated Oct 7, 2020 Wellness
time 4 min
0
Love
0
Solidarity
0
Wow
thumb 0 comment
lecture 174 readss
3
reactions

On Panodyssey, you can read up to 30 publications per month without being logged in. Enjoy29 articles to discover this month.

To gain unlimited access, log in or create an account by clicking below. It's free! Log in

Empathy Is An Emotional Muscle You Can Grow

Skills psychotherapy teaches use to improve connections with others

Margaret, a friend of the family, visited us this past week. While her presence started off as an annoying house guest, she became one of my greatest lessons on how to build empathy for others.
When you think of a loud, raspy-voiced woman, this is Margaret. Decades of heavy nicotine and liquor use and abuse have left their battle scars. Margaret ends each sentence with a high-pitched intonation at a frequency that hurt my ears. She also has a way of cutting off people’s sentences to ensure her voice gets heard. Margaret’s in her late sixties, yet, her partner Scott is my age; in his early forties. The couple moved into our home for a week to help my step-dad reinforce cement walls in his workshop. While it wasn’t my intent to be rude to Margaret, I chose to keep our interactions to the bare minimum and wore a poker face to hide my genuine emotions rather than show a perpetual irritable state. When Margaret arrived, I didn’t know much about her, except that her dishevelled appearance and constant sneezing provided me with the belief she’d lived a hard life and wasn’t physically well. Despite this knowledge, at the onset of Margaret’s time with us, I felt little compassion. And this bothered me. I became curious:

  • Will I make a terrible psychotherapist?
  • What will it take for me to feel empathy towards Margaret?

The I/Thou Relationship

Coincidence — or not, during the same time of our house guest’s stay, I attended the Gestalt Psychotherapy year two of five retreat for four full consecutive days via Zoom (this year, we met remote due to Covid-19). The objective of the online retreat was to conclude the valuable inner personal work of years one and two and prepare ourselves to initiate working with others from years three to five onward. Gestalt calls the relationship between oneself and another as ‘I/Thou’. Martin Buber, (1878–1965), a German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian, heavily influenced the founders of Gestalt, Laura and Fritz Perls, and was the originator of the:

Such a healing relationship develops when two people, each with his separate existence and personal needs, contact each other recognizing and allowing the differences between them. This is more than a combination of two monologues between two people in meaningful exchange.

The I/Thou concept in practice

First, I recognized our differences, real and imagined. We possessed different ages, habits, social-economic status etc. Creating a mental walk-through of the list felt easy, although ensured a distance remained between us.

The gift of suffering

Does my initial interaction and judgement of Margaret mean I’ll make a terrible psychotherapist? No. I will have countless opportunities to establish contact with a hundred Margaret’s using the I/Thou concept before entering the world with an established private practice. But she was important because my experience with Margaret proved valuable; we both endured pain in our lives.

Developing your empathetic muscle

Next time you’re confronted with your own personal Margaret, take a few moments and consider what you have in common. If this is too difficult, seek a fragment of sameness. I recognize this is not an easy task given our current hyper-politicized environment. Maybe it means starting with the basics, your humanness, or of possessing the same range of emotions. Hang onto these thoughts and see if you can sit slightly longer with the other in patience and understanding. When you work through the pattern of holding, you will build the emotional connection of empathy.

lecture 174 readings
thumb 0 comment
3
reactions

Comments (0)

You can support your favorite independent writers by donating to them

Prolong your journey in this universe Wellness
Flirt
Flirt

Un mot d'un dictionnaire, ma définition, vôtre sourire, ma joie.

Bernard Ducosson
1 min
Tétée
Tétée

Un mot d'un dictionnaire, ma définition, vôtre sourire, ma joie. Miracle de l'effet-m&...

Bernard Ducosson
1 min
Caravane
Caravane

Un mot d'un dictionnaire, ma définition, vôtre sourire, ma joie. Pour un temps, la ten...

Bernard Ducosson
1 min
Promise
Promise

Un mot d'un dictionnaire, ma définition, vôtre sourire, ma joie. Selon un compromis n&...

Bernard Ducosson
1 min
Viens !
Viens !

Un mot d'un dictionnaire, ma définition, vôtre sourire, ma joie. Un exquis mot qui mal...

Bernard Ducosson
1 min

donate You can support your favorite writers