Day 39 – Q 1.Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another. Elucidate.

1. Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another. Elucidate. 

सहानुभूति का अर्थ है दूसरे की आँखों से देख पाना, दूसरे के कानों से सुन पाना और दूसरे के दिल को महसूस कर पाना। स्पष्ट करें।

Introduction:

Empathy is the ability to be aware of, understand, and appreciate the feelings and thoughts of others. It is “tuning in” (being sensitive) to what, how, and why people feel and think the way they do. Being empathic means being able to “emotionally read” other people. The ability to empathize is directly dependent on one’s ability to feel one’s own feelings and identify them.

Body

• Empathy involves essentially putting yourself in someone else’s position and feeling what they must be feeling. When you see another person suffering, you might be able to instantly envision yourself in the other person’s place and feel sympathy for what they are going through.
• Empathetic people care about others and show interest in and concern for them. It is the ability to non-judgmentally put into words your understanding of the other person’s perspective on the world, even if you do not agree with it, or even if you find that perspective ridiculous.
• Empathy facilitates prosocial or helping behaviors that come from within, rather than being forced, so that people behave in a more compassionate manner. 
• Empathy stands in contrast to sympathy which is the ability to cognitively understand a person’s point of view or experience, without the emotional overlay. It should also be distinguished from compassion, even though the terms are often used interchangeably. Compassion is an empathic understanding of a person’s feelings plus a desire to act on that person’s behalf. 
• There are individual differences in empathy between individuals, and there are certain conditions in which empathy is blunted or altogether absent.  Psychopaths are capable of empathic accuracy, or correctly inferring thoughts and feelings, but they have no experiential referent: a true psychopath does not feel empathy.
• There are also different types of empathy that a person may experience:

1. Affective empathy involves the ability to understand another person’s emotions and respond appropriately. Such emotional understanding may lead to someone feeling concerned for another person’s well-being, or it may lead to feelings of personal distress.
2. Somatic empathy involves having a sort of physical reaction in response to what someone else is experiencing. People sometimes physically experience what another person is feeling. When you see someone else feeling embarrassed, for example, you might start to blush or have an upset stomach.
3. Cognitive empathy involves being able to understand another person’s mental state and what they might be thinking in response to the situation. 

There are a number of benefits of being able to experience empathy. Some of these include:

• Empathy allows people to build social connections with others. By understanding what people are thinking and feeling, people are able to respond appropriately in social situations.
• Empathizing with others helps you learn to regulate your own emotions. Emotional regulation is important in that it allows you to manage what you are feeling, even in times of great stress, without becoming overwhelmed.
• Empathy promotes helping behaviors. Not only are you more likely to engage in helpful behaviors when you feel empathy for other people; other people are also more likely to help you when they experience empathy.
• Despite claims that empathy comes naturally, it takes arduous mental effort to get into another person’s mind and then to respond with compassion rather than indifference. 

A few reasons why people sometimes lack empathy:

• They fall victim to cognitive biases. 
• People tend to dehumanize victims. 
• People tend to blame victims.

Conclusion

While empathy might fail sometimes, most people are able to empathize with others in a variety of situations. This ability to see things from another person’s perspective and sympathize with another’s emotions plays an important role in our social lives. Empathy allows us to understand others and, quite often, compels us to take action to relieve another person’s suffering.