Empathy, a part of emotional intelligence, is one of the most important skills you’ll ever develop as a human being. It's your way to genuinely connect with the people around you and strengthen your relationships with them. However, in some cases like serious illness or loss, your imagination and life experience aren’t always enough to truly put you in someone else’s shoes. At least, according to some internet users.
The members of the r/AskReddit community recently shared their thoughts on all of the things that people don’t fully understand until they happen to them. Scroll down to read their thoughts.
Empathy forms the foundation for kindness and understanding. At its core, it’s your ability to imagine someone else’s experiences as if they were your own. Unlike sympathy (responding or reacting to another person’s experiences), empathy is all about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.
Most of us are hardwired for kindness, but it’s not exactly clear how. WebMD explained that human beings have specialized ‘mirror neurons’ in their brains. They activate when we see and feel emotions. Researchers believe that it’s these neurons that create empathy. However, other scientists think that empathy is purely a construct of our intelligence.
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There are two main types of empathy. The first is emotional empathy where we might feel the same things as someone else, feel distressed at what they went through, or feel compassion for them.
Its counterpart is cognitive empathy, wherein we can intellectually understand how someone is feeling. Unlike emotional empathy, cognitive empathy can take time to cultivate and is more of a skill. It centers around learning how to identify emotions and behaviors.
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Practice makes perfect. Though many of us are born with a varying capacity for empathy, we can strengthen and hone it like any other skill. If you find yourself less kind, caring, or understanding than you’d ideally like to be, it only makes sense to spend some time working on yourself to improve.
One part of being empathetic is staying curious about the people and world around you. Asking questions, getting to know folks, deepening your relationships with them despite superficial differences—that’s how you gradually improve your empathy.
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You can also try doing small acts of kindness for your family, friends, coworkers, and even strangers more frequently. Meanwhile, try to actively put yourself in other people’s shoes in order to connect with their life experiences better. It might be difficult at first, but you’ll eventually turn it into a habit!
What are your thoughts on the topic, dear Pandas? Do you think it’s possible to be empathetic about all possible things even without having experienced them? Or do you think that some events are so fundamentally deep and incomprehensible that even the kindest people in the world might not fully ‘get’ them? Do you consider yourselves empathetic people? Feel free to share your opinions in the comments section, at the bottom of this post.
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ADVERTISEMENT Being a persecuted minority.
It’s f*****g terrible. AndreasDerpin How easy it is for medical costs to completely ruin you (in the USA, obviously).
I was diagnosed with leukemia when I was 13. My initial stay in the hospital (so from diagnosis to the first time I was able to go back home) was 50 days. The bill for that alone was $1.5M.
I was very lucky. We were upper middle class. My dad had very good health insurance through his employer, so it did not ruin us. But it doesn’t take a genius to imagine what would happen if that hadn’t been the case.
Think about that next time you want to call anyone in favor of healthcare reform a socialist/marxist/etc. Imagine busting your a*s for decades, being responsible, and saving as much money as you can. Then you’re told you will have to go broke to save your child’s life. Now imagine that the sick child is not your only child. You have three others. Not only are you and your spouse going broke, but those children now have parents unable to support them so that they can live their lives to the fullest.
People’s ability to just ignore how f****d up that is will never cease to amaze me. I was 13 f*****g years old, and I was able to empathize with people who were not as lucky as me. It’s not that f*****g difficult. And if you think it’s acceptable that a family in the richest nation in the world could go broke just because a child gets sick, you’re a heartless, cynical a*****e. Sh*tfacedGrizzlyBear ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT Receiving CPR and AED after a heart attack. I will never forget the overwhelming sense of doom. DistributionWise6612 Sexual Assault. It's a different whole beast that you have to experience it before you just spout off on what you think, and you have to really understand what's going on and what to do to deal with the aftermath.
And the trauma and recovery of regaining your identity as a person and not as a victim and the fact that we still don't think about it or work with it with any gender is appalling. GhostPantherAssualt Narcissistic abuse. sadisticallyoptimist War. Seeing exactly what evil a human being is capable of inflicting on another. CromulentWunderpus ADVERTISEMENT Abusive relationship. It’s so easy to ask “why didn’t you just leave if he was hitting you?” It’s not an easy question to answer. The abuse doesn’t start with a knock out punch on the first date. Abuse starts with arguments usually after the honeymoon stage. Maybe he pushed you, snatched your phone out of your hand, or slammed the door in your face.
By the time you’re getting your a*s whooped- walking away with black eyes and broken ribs, that’s when you start to realize it’s abuse. It’s not just a fight that went too far like you’ve conditioned yourself to believe. At that point you probably live together, share bills together, own things together and you start to question would it be easier if I just stay? What will he do to me if I leave? Is it really my fault like he says? WavyTexan Disabilities.
Nerve damage.
Homelessness.
Poverty.
Abuse (any form).
S.A.
Depression.
Life-altering injuries.
Suddenly no-longer having a stepchild. Suspicious-Clock-292 ADVERTISEMENT Being alone. Like not having any family.
The entire Western civilization is centered around generational wealth. So often I hear people complain about how x is getting y and no one had ever helped them out ever when in really they eat dinner at their parents house 2-3 times a week and their mom watches their kids for free and their dad fixes their car for them or cuts their grass for free or they do laundry at their sister's house. RUaVulcanorVulcant13 Panic attack. Lordserbon Psychosis. Xqqs Having Parosmia. I had covid late last year and developed Parosmia soon after. Nothing tastes or smells pleasant at all. Everywhere I go, I'm reminded of it. I barely eat anything. My soap, shampoo and perfume all smell revolting. Food tastes like garbage. It's truly an awful experience. inceptionispossible ADVERTISEMENT Someone put debilitating disease-but for me, to specify, dementia/alzheimers of a family member. Seeing someone who raised you (in my case a grandparent, right as I got out of high-school) in that condition is devastating. There's the things you know you'll have to deal with, them not knowing the date, forgetting what your name is. Not recognizing someone.
It's when they can't remember/put something together and they know they can't. That fear in their eyes, the realization of just not knowing something they knew. The fear, and helplessness on their face. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It's a terrible thing.
Then the anger and fights when they dont know who you are and why youre there. Worst years of my life was seeing her mind just vanish. You can see it in movies, hear stories about it, but until it's in front of you, you just don't know. I applaud anyone who cares for the elderly with those issues. Knight_wolf03 The pain from a kidney stone. huskers1111111111 ADVERTISEMENT Damned near everything. I mean, what *do* we understand before we live it? Nintendo1964 Grieving the death of somebody really really close. BagPuzzleheaded2840 PTSD. Responsible-Area-102 Ego death. BlueHALo97 Being Poor. Any_Sun3430 Losing your hair. Benana ADVERTISEMENT Ic_puzzle