By Psychology Today
Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person, animal, or fictional character. Developing empathy is crucial for establishing relationships and behaving compassionately.
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More and more, we live in bubbles. Most of us are surrounded by people who look like us, vote like us, earn like us, spend money like us, have educations like us and worship like us. The result is an empathy deficit, and it’s at the root of many of our biggest problems.
It’s a spiritual truism that trading places with the less fortunate, psychologically if not literally, can be a powerful motive for doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you.
You always knew demonstrating empathy is positive for people, but new research demonstrates its importance for everything from innovation to retention.
Have you ever been told you’re too sensitive? Or advised to toughen up and develop a thicker skin? Maybe you’ve always felt you know what’s going to happen before it occurs, or you know how others are feeling without them having to tell you. If so, you could be an intuitive empath.
There’s a dark side to feeling the emotions of other people. In some cases, it can even lead to cruelty, aggression, and distress.
Be kind, show understanding, do good—but, some scientists say, don’t try to feel others’ pain.
Empathy is divided into cognitive, emotional and applied empathy, all of which are valuable. For empathy to truly be useful to the human condition, our kids must have applied empathy, or compassion.
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Considering how to make the children in our lives better people helps us reflect on how we ourselves can be more compassionate.
Raising an empathetic and kind kid is a beautiful thing, but it’s also important to prepare kids for the real world.
Children are hard-wired for empathy, but it needs to be gently brought to life. Adults are in a prime position to nurture and develop empathy and emotional wisdom in their children.