A Publication of Lighthouse Consulting Services

Empathy is essential to how we relate to others and to ourselves. How we respond to the feelings and needs of others as well as to our own. Yet for many people, empathy is frequently forgotten in the busyness of daily life. Many search far and wide for answers to their troubled relationships and troubled lives when the answer lies within them. Empathy is at the core of what we know as love and without empathy, love is empty and lifeless. What is passion, friendship, or romance without empathy? It would be just a shell, a shallow expression without the depth of compassion. To understand this great treasure, we need to delve into what empathy is all about and what it means for you and me.

Defining Empathy

The dictionary defines empathy as, “...the capacity for experiencing as one’s own, the feelings of another”. In other words, empathy is a deep connection of heart to heart where one experiences another’s existence and reality in life. Empathy is the glue that bonds us together. There is an old saying that you cannot truly understand a person until you have “walked a mile in their moccasins” - until you can see what they see, hear what they hear, feel what they feel. This is not at all easy. We’d all like to think that empathy comes to us automatically, but it is a skill that needs to be practiced again and again. And in a world, where pain and anger is repressed and buried; where loving one’s self is for many a difficult or impossible task; where wounds and scars from the past seem to never heal - it can be very hard to have empathy not only for others, but even more for ourselves.

Two Sides of Empathy
You may wonder what empathy has to do with relating to one’s self. Empathy cannot exist without both sides of the coin: how you relate to others and how you relate to yourself. Not only is it important to have empathy for others, but empathy for one’s self is even more vital. For self-empathy supports and activates empathy for others. There’s another old saying, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. I used to hear that statement and think I could love my neighbor, but loving myself was impossible. I just couldn’t see anything worthy to love about myself. Yet, the problem is that if you can’t love yourself then it is very hard to truly love another. Why? How can you offer something to others, that you cannot give to yourself? Oh yes, we can care about others without loving ourselves, but this caring, this love, would be missing something. It would lack the depth, the sparkle, the realness of a great treasure - empathy. When one is unable to love one’s self then it is difficult to venture outside of our fragile world into someone else’s or extend compassion that we have not for ourselves.