Empathy: A prerequisite to compassion
Except I am moved with compassion, How dwellest thy Spirit in me?
Empathy, the process of “understanding a person’s subjective experience while vicariously sharing that experience,” is a prerequisite to compassion. We share their feelings, their problems, their needs, and then, spontaneously, we are moved to help. As one person genuinely feels with the emotional experience triggered by another, empathy occurs.
To be committed to humanity requires a commitment to being empathic. Empathy links people. It allows us to focus fully on others. It connects with others through a gateway of feeling.
Empathy occurs when our bodies sense and match the feelings of another. It’s automatic—even in infants. Unfortunately, we tend to ignore these feelings so much we lose sensitivity to them. It’s essential that we empathize and sense our own feeling, interpret it cognitively, name it, and communicate it to the sender. Then, that person will know that we are fully present with them.
Excerpts from story originally published on caringmagazine.org by Bob Docter