Empathy as a tool helps us in our personal and work relationships. To develop it, the keys are knowing how to listen and observe, understanding the "mental maps" of the other, knowing the internal filters and knowing how to give feedback, with an adequate use of language.
What is empathy?
A definition of empathy says, which is the ability to recognize or feel emotions and feelings of your own or of others, and react to understand them and help others and ourselves.
Other definitions say, what is the ability of the human being to put himself in the situation of the other or the ability to treat people according to their emotional reactions.
How can we develop empathy?
1. Know how to listen and observe
Listen carefully, not simply hear but listen with the five senses, with the ears, with the sight, with the touch, with the smell, with the taste and with the feelings. Be fully present when we listen carefully.
2. Understand the "mind maps"
To explain what a mind map is, we must first describe the circuit that the information we perceive performs in our mind.
Initially in a first step we perceive external information through our sensory channels, which are the visual (what we see and imagine), the auditory (sounds, words that we say and that they tell us, also what we say internally is included) and the way people say those words to us), kinesthetic (touch and internal and external feelings, which includes contact with something or someone, pressure, temperature and texture), olfactory (the smells we appreciate) and gustatory (the flavors that we distinguish).
Then in a second step to the information we have left, after it has passed through our sensory channels we apply the following three internal filters:
• Omissions: We selectively pay attention to certain aspects of our experience and not others. We ignore or suppress certain sensory information, due to the fact that omissions are necessary, since we are not prepared to handle so much information in our conscious mind.
• Distortions: they occur when we make changes in our experience.
• Generalization: refers to when we draw global conclusions based on one, two or more experiences to understand or interpret reality. For this, we usually use the words "always", "never",…
These filters answer the question , When do two people have the same stimuli, because they have different perceptions of reality? The answer is, because they omit, distort, and generalize information in different ways.
The third step is that to the information that we have left after passing through the sensory channels and through the three internal filters we apply other filters of a cultural, social and family type, which the ancient Greeks said were the beliefs, values and expectations. That is why it is said that " what is important in an event is not what happens but how the people who participate in it interpret it."
To finalize the result of the circuit that the information that we perceive performs in our mind, it is represented with a different system that is language, through which we describe in words the experiences and our mental map.
Each person has their own map that is their REPRESENTATION OR MODEL OF REALITY and the TERRITORY we can say that it is the WORLD, so each person creates their reality. "What a piece of bread represents depends on whether we are hungry or not." These mind maps are based on two basic principles that are:
• No map is truer than another's map.
• We all function in the best possible way.
There is an anecdote about Picasso, when a stranger comes up to him and asks him why he did not paint things as they really were, Picasso was a little confused and replied:
- I just don't understand what you mean.
The man took out a photograph of his wife.
Look, "he said," like this, that's my real wife.
Picasso seemed incredulous and said to him:
- It's very small, isn't it? And a little flat isn't it?
Understanding the “mind maps” provides the keys to communicate and modify, if necessary, the representation map of oneself or others and have more effective communication.
"Communication is to relationship, what breathing is to life" (Virginia Satir)
3. Know how to give feedback
"Practical" suggestions:
Just by asking the following questions, one will begin to develop this competence:
• Why do I feel like this?
• What does this emotion tell me?
• How can I channel this emotion in a way that is most beneficial to me?
• What emotions can help me achieve my goal? How can I rescue them?
• How does that person feel?
• What does the person want?
• How can I adapt to this situation?
Recommended movie: "Chain of Favors" (Directed by: Mimi Leder).
