There are some abilities that people often think they can’t change, that they are born that way or that they had inherited that style of living but science is here to prove us wrong and to test your convictions about your possibility to change. One of those abilities is empathy - can you be more empathetic? Let’s see if the impossible is nothing!
Empathy is an ability to understand the emotions of another person, so to say the ability to put oneself in other people’s shoes.
Although empathy helps us connect with others and create strong social bonds, it is also more likely that you will be more empathetic with people similar to you (your race, ethnicity, interests, or origin). Empathy is complex, it has three dimensions: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate.
So you can know how the other person feels, you can feel it or you can try to relate to it, although you don’t actually know the feeling in question. In real empathy, there is not much distance from the emotions you receive from the other end.
Our brain is hard-wired for empathy (small children crying when they see or hear someone cry next to them) because of the strong social connections we have to create to survive, but empathy doesn't stop in childhood.
If we consider empathy to be an ability, not just the genetic predisposition, then Empathy can be perceived as a habit that we can cultivate and invest in throughout our whole lives. We believe that someone is more or less empathetic and is born that way, but the good news is that our beliefs are not always true.
How to expand the emphatic potential?
I am going to address all the aspects of empathic potential to grow so you can choose your own way of investment. There is no good or bad way to invest in someone’s abilities because with every attempt, you improve your skills for change.
Cognitive: talk to the people, try to understand their point of view. Do that by using a paraphrasing method from communication science. It basically means that you have to sum up the content of someone’s words you just heard in an attempt to understand better the conversation. It is also common to most people that they have beliefs about understanding other people and that they are great at listening. Try and use this technique just to check that out. You will be surprised how often we missed the point and steered our conversation in the wrong direction just because we didn’t check if we understood someone correctly. You can do it easily by using sentences such as “if I understood correctly, you sad that…” and then just insert exact words you heard. The formula is easy but your usage of the formula is going to be hard at the beginning. The trick is that you keep on using it until it becomes natural and a part of your listening technique.
To improve an emotional aspect of empathy means that you have to experience the life of the other person, you have to try to walk in their shoes for a moment but literally. How can we do that: for example, we can try to reenact some of the situations we are trying to relate to like: going to a different church, carrying extra 150 pounds, try covering your eyes, and walking using a stick like a person with vision-impaired, you can also try stepping out on a field before a full crowd like a Bundesliga soccer player.
If you don’t have the opportunity to do that, you can always talk to someone with genuine interest and try to understand various aspects of the situation they are in so you can be more empathic towards their condition.
The compassionate aspect of empathy helps in situations where there is no way to know how the other people are feeling: The power of silence sometimes is immense and not knowing what the other person is experiencing is enough. Sometimes you just have to be present and listen to the other saying “I can’t imagine how you are feeling right now” and that is going to be the best support you can offer. Also, being there for someone, offering support, and not pressing that person to be fine is sometimes the best we can do.
I hope that empathy just got a bit nearer to you and your self-image. Now try to practice it.