In your opinion– and in your own words– what is empathy? (Another way to think of this is– What are we doing when we are empathizing with someone OR What are the components of empathy OR What is the process?) Explore what needs to be taking place when we attempt to empathize with someone. Why is it difficult for so many of us to empathize? If you were to teach empathy to a group of college students, what would you do and what would you say? You may use materials in this unit to help build your “lesson plan,” but feel free to look further into quality online resources. Remember, though, your audience is college students and you want your work to be original with only minor support from online materials. Be creative! Gather your thoughts and ideas and upload them here in no fewer than 15 sentences per prompt. Then review what your classmates are sharing. What are some of their thoughts and ideas? How successful do you think they might be with their “lesson plan?” Finally, respond to at least 3 of them by giving quality insight and perspective. Take your time. Remember, this is the heart of this class… your communication with others. Leroy Piper said: Empathy is the hardest skill to develop and maintain. As a young adult, the more days you spend on earth you will naturally learn more things. As a learn more things, you will naturally want to display that knowledge in an attempt to display/prove your worth to society at large. Imagine, your best friend gets the news from their boyfriend that “they no longer want to be together and that they need to see other people.” Naturally your friend is emotionally destroyed. What is your next move? Do you say “I’ve been there before, you should do X, to get even? Do you say “F them, lets go out and get some new people to chill with? The answers given above are examples of sympathy. Sympathy is not to be confused with empathy. Feeling sorry for a person is not helpful. It only makes us feel good and does nothing for the hurt individual. Or do you say nothing and just sit in silence and hug your friend? This would be more of an example of empathy. Empathy is the ability to share emotions with a person who has experienced a difficult moment. That does not mean sharing your experience or what you would do. It means making yourself vulnerable to channel emotions that so feel what that person is feeling and sharing in a moment that does not feel good. The ability to listen empathically, is very difficult. The ability to not try and solve the problem of the person and tell from our own experience is skill that requires maturity. Tonight, your homework assignment will be to call a friend and listen to their day and or the worst part of their day. You will not display sympathy but work on empathy. Good luck Ernest Harvey said: People tend to confuse sympathy with empathy or they just don’t know the difference between the two at all. The best way I could describe empathy is knowing or having a understanding of the emotions someone is having about a certain situation, based off of previous experiences you have had with the situation at hand or putting yourself in that persons shoes. For example, say one of your friends gets laid off from their job, you would easily be able to empathize with them if you had been laid off from a job before. It would be more sympathetic if you had never been laid off of a job before and rather than understanding what they are feeling you feel sorry for them instead. When we empathize with someone we may use active listening. Active listening is when we pay attention to what the other is saying. As we listen to what they are saying we should refrain from judging. What I mean by this is no matter how we may feel about the situation ourselves, we don’t project those feelings onto them. If we did that it could cause the person to have a negative reaction towards us. In certain cases it’s also best not to try to counsel the one who’s sharing. When I say the word counsel I mean trying to give them a solution or peace of mind, although this may be our first instinct at times we shouldn’t always do it. It’s also great to display good mannerisms when having a moment of empathy, such as having good posture and making eye contact to show you really are paying close attention to what is being said. The reason why people may struggle with empathy is the fact that they don’t care. Most of us have our own problems to deal with and sometimes feel like we are too busy focusing on our own well being to be worried about someone else’s. The best way to teach empathy is to bring up real life sceneries that most people would be able to relate to good or bad such as promotions or death of a loved one, something that the average everyday person would find relatable. Brandon Jones said: I would define empathy as the act of trying to see someone else’s problem through their eyes. Trying to understand what steps had led up to this feeling and trying to be nonjudgmental. This is difficult for most people to comprehend because you must try to see the problem from someone else’s perspective. Therefore, it is easy to define the act of empathy but the actual act of empathizing with someone is hard to perform. If I were trying to teach a class about empathy, I would begin by taking a controversial topic. Then have the class to step back from the way they feel about the issue and try to see the topic from their fellow classmate’s point of view. Only after trying to understand something from an unfamiliar perspective than their own could they attempt to empathize with someone in a non-bias view. I believe this would be the best way to teach a class about empathy, because they need to be able to successfully see a topic from an unfamiliar perspective than their own before trying to empathize with someone on an issue that a person is struggling with on an emotional level. If the teacher would begin with the problem, I believe most people would automatically draw their own conclusion and then try and tell them how to fix the issue instead of listening to the problem and then trying to comfort them. Purchase answer to see full attachment Explanation & Answer: 3 Questions 3 Peer Responses Tags: Empathy Compassion persons emotions User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following our company’shonor code & terms of service.