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Compassion and empathy sound like synonyms, but they're two different skill sets. Here's how and why to hone both qualities, according to psychologists.
Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another person's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. [1] [2] [3] There are more (sometimes conflicting) definitions of empathy that include but are not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others.
Social psychology research focuses on how empathic accuracy affects interpersonal relationships, and how people differ in empathic accuracy ability. Closeness improves empathic accuracy; in a study of friends, for example, men were better at reading their friends' emotional states than those of strangers. [13]
These skills find their real-life applications in their efficiency. For example, paraphrasing clarifies possible miscommunications by summarizing the speaker's words and verifying the accuracy. Emotion reflection helps to establish empathy with a speaker so that he/she feels appreciated and understood.
Mirroring helps to facilitate empathy, as individuals more readily experience other people's emotions through mimicking posture and gestures. Mirroring also allows individuals to subjectively feel the pain of others when viewing injuries. [15] This empathy may help individuals create lasting relationships and thus excel in social situations ...
Empathy: adept at modulating the emotional responses of others and helping them to express their emotions; Social skills: excellent communication skills; Personal Competence; Self-Awareness – Know one's internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions. The competencies in this category include:
Proactivity is about taking responsibility for one's reaction to one's own experiences, taking the initiative to respond positively and improve the situation. Covey postulates, in a discussion of the work of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, that between stimulus and response lies a person's ability to choose how to react, and that nothing can hurt a person without the person's consent.
Self-empathy involves compassionately connecting with what is going on inside us. This may involve, without blame, noticing the thoughts and judgments we are having, noticing our feelings, and most critically, connecting to the needs that are affecting us.