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Empathy

We Need Real Empathy

Do not mistake compassion or sympathy for empathy. They are not the same.

E. A. Segal
Empathy can help us repair the world
Source: E. A. Segal

Last month, I wrote about too much empathy. Now more than ever, it is important to consider the problem of not having enough empathy. But the key is to have real empathy.

Empathy is not sympathy, compassion, pity, or a host of other words that often get mistaken for empathy. Real empathy is the full expression of both feeling what others are feeling and understanding what those feelings mean.

It is difficult, it is complicated, and unfortunately, we often skip over all the steps to fully engage in empathy, yet we call it that anyway. When I first started writing this blog, I spelled out what exactly empathy is. Now I think it would be helpful to apply all those pieces to current events that call for empathy in the most pressing ways.

We Need Both Interpersonal Empathy and Social Empathy

The full array of empathy requires us to engage in both interpersonal and social empathy. The current events of today call on us to use that full array to gain socially empathic insight.

Interpersonal empathy requires us to become aware and acknowledge the physical feelings we are having when watching others or hearing the stories of others. Those physical reactions are typically unconscious, our bodies mimicking or mirroring others. We need to ask ourselves: What do these feelings mean? Then we need to ask: What do those feelings mean to others? This is the moment of walking in another’s shoes.

To gain social empathy, we need to expand that walk and step into the lived realities of other groups. Ask what feelings you would have if you were a member of that other racial, ethnic, economic class, religious, sexual orientation, and ability group? What would those physical reactions mean? Why am I feeling them? Social empathy requires us to take that walk with knowledge of the historical experiences of those other groups.

To fully engage empathically, we must call on our interpersonal and social empathy skills while maintaining our emotional harmony, our balance. We need to stay with the emotions of others and not get overwhelmed.

Social Empathy for Today

The events of this week reflect historical traumas that should evoke empathy. In fact, to really understand, we need to be as socially empathic as we can. This is imperative, while also extremely difficult.

How do we watch the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of video as a man’s life, George Floyd’s, is stolen from him? We hear George say he cannot breathe. We see four police officers ignore his plea, ignore his pain. Imagine you are under that knee. Your neck feels the pressure. Your breathing becomes more difficult. These are the physical reactions, the mirroring.

Go further and engage in social empathy. What if you were under that knee? Would you be under that knee? Or your father or brother or friend? What is the historical context of the images before you? Seeing a white police officer with his knee on the throat of a black man: What does that mean viewed through the eyes of history? How do we know about race in this country? Is it all too often the white man in power over the black man begging to be allowed to breathe? We must face the fact that this image is not new, is not an aberration.

This moment is what makes social empathy so hard. First, it is to imagine yourself in that place or why you would not be there, and second is to come to understand that this is a much deeper and long-standing problem.

The death of George Floyd should evoke social empathy. It needs to evoke social empathy. We need to see this tragedy in light of hundreds of years of racism, of oppression, and discrimination. Social empathy can lead us to confront the racism in our country, to examine the double-standard of how people are treated because of the color of their skin.

The Difficult Path of Empathy

Empathy does not always take us to places we want to go, but empathy can take us to places we need to go. Today, we need the full array of interpersonal and social empathy more than ever. Only when we take that difficult walk and step into the lives of others and then work to understand all the forces that feed into that experience will we be able to move forward.

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More from Elizabeth A. Segal, Ph.D.
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