Three Principles of Empathy
Summary
- First principle: Empathy is an ability. You are born with the hardware to develop empathy (in our brains) and develop it your life time.
- Second principle: Empathy is not about relating to someone’s circumstances (gender, race, roles, status, experiences).
- We associate relatedness to a set of circumstances but the facts of our lives don’t determine if we can relate to each other’s humaness (our emotions).
- Experiences are facts. It’s the emotion of that experience we can connect to.
- Third principle: Empathy is not being responsable for how someone feels.
- We think we cause someone’s feelings often because of how we’re raised.
- We can take responsibility for how we feel and behave and let the other person take responsibility for how they feel and behave.
- Giving someone else space for their own emotional experience is practising empathy.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Tara Rama 