One of the key ways we connect to people is through empathy. Empathy comes from the ability to understand, to some degree, how another person feels and why. The why is incredibly important to having empathy, and obviously, many people lack that ability. The reason I say it is obvious is because criticism is far more present than empathy. Fights, riots, wars, trashy magazines and television shows thrive on criticism and a lack of empathy, because the parties involved are having a difficult time understanding the perspective, backstory and feelings of the other.
One of the difficulties in developing great empathy is we realistically cannot get to know and understand everybody’s backstory. We all have reasons for living and acting certain ways. Sometimes it’s just culture, other times it comes from trauma, and many times it’s a lack of information or education. People have an easier time feeling empathy for people they can easily relate to. Drug addicts have great compassion and empathy for other addicts, but people who have never tried a drug in their life have a more difficult time understanding why someone would try drugs much less abuse them regularly. War vets relate well with other war vets, and urban people understand the urban life whereas farmers relate to farmers.
Those who possess the ability to have empathy are much happier with their own lives because they don’t feel like victims to life. Even when others actions affect them negatively they feel a sense of understanding and compassion for the other party. It doesn’t mean you don’t stand up for yourself or appreciate justice, rather you don’t take things personally when others treat you poorly or make mistakes. You don’t feel negative emotions towards someone going through difficult times. Rather you have empathy and understanding, a desire to help or at least sincerely hope for things to change for the better on their behalf.
One of the my favorite examples of those who lack empathy is how quick people are to judge a coworker who misses work because of an illness, they act like the individual who stayed home is a wimp for missing work for such a weak little illness. They talk like it would take a death sentence for them to miss work, that is until they get the same sickness, and upon their return from missing work they talk as if their illness really was a death sentence, far worse than their counterpart’s. They had a temperature of 111 degrees Celsius and probably should have died but instead they didn’t even go to the doctor.
Those who lack empathy compare themselves to other people while ignoring all other circumstances. They act as if they could do better than others given the same emotion, crisis or trial, and the individual in need or in despair should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and change their own circumstances. Which at times may be necessary but to invalidate another person’s emotions and trials doesn’t help anybody. Empathy on the other hand, helps both parties recognize the situation, label the emotions and trials correctly and then move forward and upward.
As Brene Brown, and expert on Empathy and shame, puts it. "Empathy is the essences of the human experience. Empathy is how we connect to one another while shame is on the other end of the connection continuum, with vulnerability acting as the nob that slides along the continuum between the two. Shame is the feeling or belief that being vulnerable about a specific story or topic will bring disconnection or unravel the relationship. Empathy is the ability to be vulnerable and enter into a common place with another person without blame, judgement and other negative feelings."
There are two branches of Empathy. The first is Cognitive Empathy. Simply stated, Cognitive Empathy is the ability to recognize emotion in another person. Some people have a difficult time recognizing other people's emotion. Some people have a difficult time recognizing and labeling their own emotion which leads us closer to Affective Empathy. Affective Empathy is the ability to respond appropriately to another person’s emotion. Another way to think about it is the ability to share that emotion or space with a vulnerable person without judgement.
Luckily, empathy is a trait we can develop. It does require great self-awareness, so if you want to develop your empathy you must first get to know yourself. Self-awareness is a very difficult topic for many to understand because at first you would think, of course I know myself I am myself, however, you came from a culture and learned habits and behaviors to navigate that culture. Your family or community culture may not provide self-discovery and self-awareness training. Understanding yourself requires external feedback because just like a lite bulb shines lite on everything around it but not on the inner works of the bulb, we work to understand and navigate the external world, the obvious, and have very little insight and understanding about ourselves.