Model: 6 aspects of empathy
November 16th, 2019
1 Emotion Contagion
Feeling what others feel
2 Empathic Accuracy
Knowing what you feel
Being able to name the emotion.
Having specific words for different nuances of each emotion.
You can develop this in interactions.
When you <body language>, it seems to me that you're feeling <emotion>.
Is that what's going on?
3 Emotion Regulation
Making emotion less powerful, so they don't overwhelm you.
This allows you to do the next aspect
(2)Naming them helps with this.
4 Perspective Taking
What would I do
is different from
What would they do
Or like, or feel, or ...
Like I described earlier in How to treat people
Not
treat people like you wish to be treated
but instead
treat people like they want to be treated
5 Concern for Others
People sometimes seem to not be concerned for others.
But this can have 2 very different causes
don't care for others
care so much, but can't act, helplessness causing emphatic burnout
6 Perceptive Engagement
This is the final goal.
Treating people in a way that helps them.
Sometimes this means acting, doing something for someone.
Sometimes this means ignoring someone.
Example:
When you see someone clumsily falling, what they want most of all could be that nobody saw them.
You can be
kind
, and go help them up.
You can be
kind
, and ask them and be okay.
But maybe the
emphatic
thing to do, would be to ignore them and act like nothing happened.
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