🔼: [[☀️ Compassion]] # Empathy[^1] A kind of [[⭐️ Emotions|emotional]] resonance in which [[💡 Parts|Parts]] of us can feel the emotions of another person by way of past experience. This is a subset of [[☀️ Compassion|compassion]] that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and reflect back that understanding. Empathy is the knowing that your pain is my pain; that when you’re free I’m free, and if you aren’t then I’m not — when you hurt I hurt and I get it. Not because I’ve been through exactly what you’re going through, but because I’m listening to you and we are all capable of hurting and being hurt and I’ve been there. **Empathy is not about changing how someone feels, but being with them so they aren’t alone with it**. It is *very easy* to confuse empathy with [[💡 Enmeshment]]. Empathy requires distance and [[🕯️ Boundaries]]. Staying in Empathy and out of enmeshment **takes practice**. We can’t read a how-to and immediately be great at empathy any more than we can read about and be great at juggling. - [[🔑 We need both Compassion and Empathy]] ###### Cognitive Empathy Cognitive Empathy is when someone tells us a story and we’re doing our best to understand what they’re trying to tell us. We’re listening, staying curious, staying with. *ASK* what someone needs or wants in that moment. “What does support look like right now?” It’s an intellectual understanding. Cognitive Empathy is what allows us to "read" people, to tell people what they want to hear, to virtue signal. It's a disconnected version of Embodied Empathy. ###### Embodied Empathy Affective Empathy is when we feel and share the emotional experiences of others. We can understand and resonate with another person's emotional experience. It isn't necessarily taking on the other person's emotions as one's own but deeply understanding and responding to them. This is usually considered a crucial component of healthy [[⭐️ Relationships]]. It allows for [[☀️ Connection]], [[☀️ Compassion]], and [[⭐️ Community Care]]. - [[💡 Sympathetic Joy|Mudita]] ###### Empathy Fatigue When people talk about “Compassion Fatigue,” they’re really talking about Empathy Fatigue. It’s a kind of emotional burnout from being hyper-empathetic, empathic to a degree that it negatively impacts our own well-being. ###### Theresa Wiseman’s Attributes of Empathy 1. Perspective taking - Not putting yourself in their shoes, but **believing** people. Listening, staying curious. 2. Staying out of Judgment - We judge people in areas where we struggle with shame. - Then we pick people who are doing worse than we are. - Parenting. We judge because we’re worried. 3. Recognizing Emotions 4. Communicating Our Emotion - Checking in. Asking “Does this resonate? Is this the emotion?” 5. Practicing [[🕯️ Mindfulness]] ([[👤 Kristin Neff]]) - AKA Paying attention. [^1]: [[📖 ✅ Atlas of the Heart (Show)]] Episode 5