Empathy

The Nature of Empathic Sharing

The meanings of the idea of empathy are complex, indicating that various systems of the brain and body are involved in being empathic toward others. Practicing empathy concerns a complex of nonverbal systems. The empathic system is mainly nonverbal in that empathy is mainly an emotional rather than a rational or logical kind of human processing. Sometimes one sensory or nonverbal system is dominant, and at another time several of the senses are involved, depending on levels of friendship and intimacy.

The initiation or avoidance of touching is very important to empathy. How someone touches, the placement of the touch, the length of the touch, the intensity of the touch, can influence empathy acquired and/or intended. The manner of looking, too, can be very important as there are warm stares and glances, warm and avoiding eye contacts, cold looks, and many other characteristics of visual contacts. One's hearing and auditory acuity are extremely important in the practice of empathy because how someone speaks carries much of the emotional meanings involved. The rate of speech, the loudness, the length of vowels, intonation patterns, pitch, and many other factors involved in vocal variety concern empathic processing of the other. The lengthening and shortening of vowels are especially important, as they carry attitudinal and emotional information from the right hemisphere of the brain into words spoken. The paralinguistics, or qualities of voice, are main factors in detecting and deciphering emotions in another person. Also, the kinesics, or movements, of a person are very important. There are micro kinesics, blinks, facial expressions, twitches, finger movements, and many other small movements that indicate emotional presence. There are macrokinesics, or large movements that can also reveal a person's emotional states. It is in recognizing and processing nonverbal communication characteristics, then, that much of empathic information can be collected.

Most people think of empathy as putting yourself into someone else's shoes or walking a mile in those shoes. This is a simple but important definition. What it means is that one should try to see the world from others' perspectives, from their point of view, from their emotions and problem situations, and circumstances in their lives, and not one's own. Stereotyping, mistrustful relationships, and misunderstandings arise when caring and empathic regard are not practiced. Some people are very adept at empathy and are very telepathic. Telepathy means feeling across, a direct contact by one person and the very accurate description of what another is thinking about or feeling. Most people have some telepathic abilities at certain times.

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