Empathy is understanding the feelings of others and being willing to provide them with emotional support. Empathy implies the ability to put oneself in the place of another person, the ability to empathize, the ability to perceive the inner world of another accurately with the preservation of emotional and semantic nuances.
As if you become this other, but you are not completely involved in his state, but remaining yourself as well: this is what makes it possible to maintain reasonableness in empathy.
This or that level of empathy is a professionally necessary quality for all specialists whose work is directly related to people (teachers, psychologists, psychotherapists, managers, salespeople, personnel managers, etc.).
Empathy is not directly related to emotionality: there are people with developed empathy, but not at all emotional. At the same time, the development of empathy has the usual consequence of the development of emotionality. Empathy gives more reasons for feelings and emotions — hence the greater emotionality. In addition, a sensitive, empathic person is more often awarded the title «emotional», although in fact he is just sensitive and responsive, and not emotional.
If you want to better understand the feelings of others, it is helpful to practice the following exercises to develop empathy. These are all exercises for the Ostrich: “Memorizing faces”, “What is he”, “How does he laugh”, “I am through the eyes of others”, “Empathy”, “Reincarnation”, as well as any fortune-telling and games in the “Association” . In addition, the development of empathy contributes to the general development of emotionality.
Appealing to feelings is more often a female strategy. Standard options are an appeal to empathy (“Look how your sister is crying because of you!” or “Please don’t make mom angry”).
How does it work?
Much to the surprise of adults, and especially mothers, the appeal to small children is “Look how your little sister is crying because of you!” usually doesn’t work at all. However, if children get angry for a long time in such situations, they sooner or later understand what adults want from them, and begin to portray remorse. However, children love to copy adults, and if the mother is often upset, the children begin to repeat this after her. It’s hard to call it genuine empathy, but the road is being paved. Real empathy occurs in children no earlier than the age of seven, and here everything is very individual. If the children are very disposed to this, but there are not disposed to this in any way.
The situation is similar with the “Please don’t make mom angry!” reception. When the child does not obey, the mother begins to upset herself and show how bad she is from such behavior of the child. This model is very common, and is usually practiced among women. Her results? In young children, especially in girls, guilt, affection and obedience are successfully formed. Older children, and especially boys, are worse at this, they become irritated or indifferent to their mother’s feelings.
For other ways of influencing a child, see Child Management Technologies