Empathy / Acceptance

I've been mulling over a conversation in this group about empathy. 
According to my Webster's Dictionary, empathy is the intellectual or
emotional identification with another.  While I know from my own
experience that where I can empathize with another, it helps to make
contact, it is one tool I consider using carefully and mindfully.  I'm
interested in other's thoughts on this.

For example, while I can identify to some extent with everyone in the
universe -- sometimes there are people who are having reactions to
situations that come from experiences that I can neither
intellectually nor emotionally identify with -- nor do I want to.  I
had a wonderful family life growing up -- with the usual dysfunctions.
 When I hear of another's difficult family environment, I can accept
it, I can sometimes understand that this had a huge effect on their
world view.  I cannot identify with it.  

I've worked with this -- and tested the limits of empathy for myself
in my own consulting practice.  It can be too easy, and sometimes
toxic, to identify with a client's situation -- or perhaps the
differentiator is  over-identification.  There is a dance I've danced
between identification, over-identification.  And I've settled, in the
most part (not always, in every case) on acceptance instead.

If I can accept the other person as they are, that person's take on
their situation as being every bit as real for them as my perspective
is for me, and accept myself as I am (foibles and all), I'm in a more
centered place from which to make contact.  And I don't have to
identify with the other person -- unless, of course, I sincerely do
identify with them.  

It seems like acceptance sets the stage for a stand-up-tall
relationship.  Where others can talk about their feelings and
experience and know that it will be accepted (without judgement),
which sets the stage for me to do the same.  In dealing with
resistance, this seems like a fine place from which to begin.  If I
accept your experience (which I experience as resistance -- for
whatever reason), it allows us to talk about it productively and
generously.  We may indeed have common experiences, thoughts, and/or
feelings that take us to a different level that would include empathy.
 But it wouldn't need to be so.

Jean McLendon quotes, I think, Virginia Satir as saying "Change rests
on the full, albeit temporary, acceptance of the status quo."  

Amy

Amy Schwab
True North pgs, Inc.
http://www.projectcommunity.com


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get A Free Psychic Reading! Your Online Answer To Life's Important Questions.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/Lj3uPC/Me7FAA/ySSFAA/X1EolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]

 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/