The Art of Empathy by Karla McLaren

Author:Karla McLaren
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781622030675
Publisher: Sounds True

CHAPTER 7

Empathic Friendships, Empathic Love

Relationship as an Empathic Art Form

DEEP INTERACTION IS food for empaths, and no matter where their empathic interests take them, full-bodied interaction is a part of an empath’s basic life functioning, and interaction has a central role in the maintenance of an empath’s health. Although many hyperempaths (such as our autistic friends) may seem antisocial—in that they primarily interact with animals, nature, art, music, movement practices, science, ideas, computers, or other nonhuman entities—intense Einfühlung interaction is one way that you can tell when you’re in the presence of an intensely empathic person.

For those whose intense empathy is focused on human interactions, relationships can be an essential feature of health and well-being or a central contributor to discomfort and empathic exhaustion. As we explore the current condition of your relationships with your friends, your mate, and your family (children are in Chapter 9, and work relationships are in Chapter 10), we’ll focus specifically on my six aspects of empathy. We’ll also revisit Richard Davidson’s six dimensions of emotional style to discover whether you and your loved ones match up well in terms of your current emotional approaches and empathic abilities.

Healthy interactional abilities are essential for healthy relationships and the development of empathy. However, healthy interactions are based on emotional and social awareness and as we’ve seen, many people have not yet developed strong skills in those areas. As such, many empathic people find themselves doing a lot of heavy emotional lifting in their relationships in order to make those relationships function. This is wonderful in one sense, because it gives empathic people a place to deepen their skills, but it’s problematic in another sense because it can lead directly to burnout. If your close relationships ask a lot from you emotionally and empathically—if you’re performing continual emotion translation, emotional regulation, and conflict mediation for your loved ones—you may not be able to carve out any empathic downtime for yourself. You may not have the peace and quiet (or the privacy) you need to nurture yourself if you’re performing basic emotional and empathic functions for your loved ones. We’ll look more deeply at this situation later in this chapter, when we explore the concept of emotion work.

Many empaths ignore their needs, their preferences, and their own comfort in their close relationships. They’re really good at Perspective Taking, Concern for Others, and Perceptive Engagement, but they’re not as good at choosing people who will love, honor, cherish, protect, empathize with, and take good care of them in return. In this chapter, we’ll focus on the current empathic condition of your relationships so you can create a social support system for your unique empathic organism.

HOW EMPATHIC ARE YOUR LOVED ONES?

As you develop your own emotional and empathic skills, it’s vital for you to have empathic support from your loved ones (or from beloved animals, if people aren’t your empathic cup of tea). As we continue to move outward from your intrapersonal awareness to your interpersonal skills, let’s observe your friends,

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