Empathic Quotes

If parents can remember what it was like to be a child, they are going to be much more empathic with their own children. ~ Amy Hollingsworth

The time has come for women and men to band together to jointly create gender harmony. We must gather in mixed group to plumb new depths of relational awareness, courageous truth-telling, compassionate listening, empathic sensitivity, and mutual healing. ~ William Keepin

The evolution of culture is ultimately determined by the amount of love, understanding and freedom experienced by its children ... Every abandonment, every betrayal, every hateful act towards children returns tenfold a few decades later upon the historical stage, while every empathic act that helps a child become what he or she wants to become, every expression of love toward children heals society and moves it in unexpected, wondrous new directions. ~ Lloyd DeMause

True love is not a wish list but a "wish feeling." And the number one feeling - even before the feeling of love - is the feeling of safety. Without feeling safe, you will never feel true love. You must have trust in your partner's character and prioritize finding a partner who is honest, communicative, and empathic - someone who values growing - so you can feel safe to vulnerably be your truest core self with him - and then together the two of you can support one another to grow into your best possible selves. ~ Karen Salmansohn

I think there's some evidence that we're empathic by nature. There is some evidence from studies of babies and young children that they resonate with the pain of others, and there's some work by Frans de Waal that other primates also resonate with the pain of others. ~ Paul Bloom

Your abusive partner's cycles of moving in and out of periods of cruelty can cause you to feel very close to him during those times when he is finally kind and loving. You can end up feeling that the nightmare of his abusiveness is an experience the two of you have shared and are escaping from together, a dangerous illusion that trauma can cause. I commonly hear an abused woman say about her partner, "He really knows me," or "No one understands me the way he does." This may be true, but the reason he seems to understand you well is that he has studied ways to manipulate your emotions and control your reactions. At times he may seem to grasp how badly he has hurt you, which can make you feel close to him, but it's another illusion; if he could really be empathic about the pain he has caused, he would stop abusing you for good. ~ Lundy Bancroft

According to studies, empathic children are more susceptible to developing problems such as anxiety and depression in later life, especially if they experience emotionally turbulent upbringings. ~ Mateo Sol

Obviously, oxytocin and vasopressin are the grooviest hormones in the universe. Pour them into the water supply, and people will be more charitable, trusting, and empathic. We'd be better parents and would make love, not war (mostly platonic love, though, since people in relationships would give wide berths to everyone else). Best of all, we'd buy all sorts of useless crap, trusting the promotional banners in stores once oxytocin starts spraying out of the ventilation system. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

we can never really experience what other people are experiencing. We always remain on the outside looking in, and this is the cause of so many misunderstandings and conflicts. But the primal source of human intelligence comes from the development of mirror neurons (see here), which gives us the ability to place ourselves in the skin of another and imagine their experience. Through continual exposure to people and by attempting to think inside them we can gain an increasing sense of their perspective, but this requires effort on our part. Our natural tendency is to project onto other people our own beliefs and value systems, in ways in which we are not even aware. When it comes to studying another culture, it is only through the use of our empathic powers and by participating in their lives that we can begin to overcome these natural projections and arrive at the reality of their experience. ~ Robert Greene

A person can use personal meditation to awaken the mind, eliminate the wildings of the ego, and find bliss by living in accord with cherished ideas. I hope to forge a deep spiritual connection with family, friends, neighbors, and community and effectively and honestly to communicate and interact with other people. I aspire to discover empathic feeling of being "at one with the universe" including acting in harmony with all the people and wildlife that inhabit the world. I also aspire to be comfortable in aloneness, peaceful with only the eternal silence to accompany my heart song. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

For no reason at all, I thought of New Year's Eve, when all those people crowd into Times Square and scream like jackals as the lighted ball slides down the pole, ready to shed its thin party glare on three hundred and sixty-five new days in this best of all possible worlds. I have always wondered what it would be like to be caught in one of those crowds, screaming and not able to hear your own voice, your individuality momentarily wiped out and replaced with the blind empathic overslop of the crowd's lurching, angry anticipation, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with no one in particular. ~ Richard Bachman

...rewilding is all about being nice, kind, compassionate, empathic, and harnessing our inborn goodness and optimism. We must all work together at this. It's about time we focus on the good side of human and animal nature. ... nature offers many lessons for kinder society. Blood shouldn't sell. ~ Marc Bekoff

As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Mindsight is a teachable skill at the heart of being empathic and insightful, moral and compassionate. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

I think you're asking too much. You know what I have? Toward this Pris android?"
"Empathy," he said.
"Something like that. Identification; there goes I. My god; maybe that's what'll happen. In the confusion you'll retire me, not her. And she can go back to Seattle and live my life. I never felt this way before. We are machines, stamped out like bottle caps. It's an illusion that I - I personally - really exist; I'm just representative of a type."
He could not help being amused; Rachael had become so mawkishly morose. "Ants don't feel like that," he said, "and they're physically identical."
"Ants. They don't feel period."
"Identical human twins. They don't - "
"But they identify with each other; I understand they have an empathic, special bond. ~ Philip K. Dick

What phones do to in-person conversation is a problem. Studies show that the mere presence of a phone on the table (even a phone turned off) changes what people talk about. If we think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence. And conversations with phones on the landscape block empathic connection. If two people are speaking and there is a phone on a nearby desk, each feels less connected to the other than when there is no phone present. Even a silent phone disconnects us. ~ Sherry Turkle

This problem," Rick said, "stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr. Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where - "
"We produced what the colonists wanted," Eldon Rosen said. "We followed the time-honored principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn't made these progressively more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human - but that's not what happened." His voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. "Your police department - others as well - may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr. Deckard, is extremely bad morally. Ours isn't. ~ Philip K. Dick

Empathic listening takes time, but it doesn't take anywhere near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you're already miles down the road; to redo; to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems; to deal with the results of not giving people psychological air. ~ Stephen Covey

The argument has long been made that we humans are by nature compassionate and empathic despite the occasional streak of meanness, but torrents of bad news throughout history have contradicted that claim, and little sound science has backed it. But try this thought experiment. Imagine the number of opportunities people around the world today might have to commit an antisocial act, from rape or murder to simple rudeness and dishonesty. Make that number the bottom of a fraction. Now for the top value you put the number of such antisocial acts that will actually occur today.

That ratio of potential to enacted meanness holds at close to zero any day of the year. And if for the top value you put the number of benevolent acts performed in a given day, the ratio of kindness to cruelty will always be positive. (The news, however, comes to us as though that ratio was reversed.)

Harvard's Jerome Kagan proposes this mental exercise to make a simple point about human nature: the sum total of goodness vastly outweighs that of meanness. 'Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent,' Kagan notes, 'they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture – especially toward those in need.' This inbuilt ethical sense, he adds, 'is a biological feature of our species. ~ Daniel Goleman

The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I'd say that compassion begins with attention. ~ Daniel Goleman

Today's consumers are eager to become loyal fans of companies that respect purposeful capitalism. They are not opposed to companies making a profit; indeed, they may even be investors in these companies - but at the core, they want more empathic, enlightened corporations that seek a balance between profit and purpose. ~ Simon Mainwaring

I've also learned that the more we diminish our own pain, or rank it compared to what others have survived, the less empathic we are to everyone. That when we surrender our own joy to make those in pain feel less alone or to make ourselves feel less guilty or seem more committed, we deplete ourselves of what it takes to feel fully alive and fueled by purpose. ~ Brene Brown

The extension of the empathic bond is the social glue to establishing a global network of millions of human beings. It's probably not surprising that in the most technologically advanced countries, where self-expression is high, the older theological consciousness, with its emphasis on strict external codes, the communal bond, and a hierarchically organized command and control, is losing its hold. Religious hierarchies make less and less sense in a fl at, networked world. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

Allowing yourself to become empathic to the point of being traumatized by another's experience is unnecessary and ineffective. ~ Deborah Sandella

Cordial or commercial, that may be the question. How pleasant is it not, to experience the instantaneity and the radiance of a sunny smile or to scent unsuspectingly an air of friendly willingness. In contrast, however, how smashingly disheartening is it not when everything appears to be merely contrived or profit driven and anything but cordial or empathic. The magic of genuine feelings is a precious value and has to be cherished and remain uncorrupted. We mustn't consent to feelings being faked or deteriorated. ("A Thousand times touched." ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

The Empathic Civilization is emerging. A younger generation is fast extending its empathic embrace beyond religious affiliations and national identification to include the whole of humanity and the vast project of life that envelops the Earth. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

Creative people come often at a stark difference between the kind and the mean spirited. Be they an artist or not in life their personal ingenuity is often a marvel to behold. They create opportunities where none were just seconds prior in existence. Creative souls without flexibility are
an easy hallmark for a tyrant in behavior. The opposite is also true those creative types open to flexibility are usually more often than not easy going in demeanor. When such subcategories of personalities are highly intuitive they also
shift their behavior to match the presence of their peers. Very much like an empathic chameleon able to change its colors so as to fit in out of habit or necessity. ~ Ivan Alexander Pozo-Illas

'In empathic listening you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with you eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behaviour. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.' ... 'You have to open yourself up to be influenced'. ~ Stephen Covey

She stands behind the reception desk, dwarfed and age speckled as a winter starling, perhaps ninety years old, and chattering, chattering away, as if a cure for his inability to speak Japanese were the application of more Japanese (a hair-of-the-dog sensibility). And yet some how, from his months of travel and pantomime, his pathetic journey into empathic and telepathic, he feels he does understand. ~ Andrew Sean Greer

When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening. ~ Carl R. Rogers

One of the few times I'm hit emotionally is when I listen to the tapes sadists make of torturing their victims. There the person is currently suffering, you can hear them suffer, and that calls out for an empathic response. But when they're dead, when they're no longer suffering, when it's over, it's hard to feel empathetic for the corpse. ~ Park Dietz

Bowlby's conviction that attachment needs continue throughout life and are not outgrown has important implications for psychotherapy. It means that the therapist inevitably becomes an important attachment figure for the patient, and that this is not necessarily best seen as a 'regression' to infantile dependence (the developmental 'train' going into reverse), but rather the activation of attachment needs that have been previously suppressed. Heinz Kohut (1977) has based his 'self psychology' on a similar perspective. He describes 'selfobject needs' that continue from infancy throughout life and comprise an individual's need for empathic responsiveness from parents, friends, lovers, spouses (and therapists). This responsiveness brings a sense of aliveness and meaning, security and self-esteem to a person's existence. Its lack leads to narcissistic disturbances of personality characterised by the desperate search for selfobjects - for example, idealisation of the therapist or the development of an erotic transference. When, as they inevitably will, these prove inadequate (as did the original environment), the person responds with 'narcissistic rage' and disappointment, which, in the absence of an adequate 'selfobject' cannot be dealt with in a productive way. ~ Jeremy Holmes

We work better with authoritative, empathic leaders, and empathic teachers like ourselves, that fit our morals, values, ethics, and principles. ~ Alexandria Ruffian

Children are constantly focused on their parents and will mirror them. Therefore, what they experience in the home will be crucial for their empathy development.
Parents have a big responsibility because they are the primary example of empathy and must practice being empathic themselves. ~ Iben Dissing Sandahl

We learn to become more empathic when we slow down, become present, and are fully committed to understanding another person's uniqueness. ~ Arthur P. Ciaramicoli

Thus wuwei manifests itself in the adaptive integration of the interacting parts of units of a complex system. The tendency of wuwei is to lead a system toward a state of fractal congruence, a close fitting together, a coalescing, of its significant components. The cooperation of those components facilitates the functioning of the system on its new holistic level. At the highest levels of complexity, wuwei integrates human beings into the systems of the world. This process of integration represents a synergistic enhancement of Dao by empathic human participants in cooperation with nature and with the outgrowths of human nature that have emerged from our evolutionary history and constitute culture. Thus, a fractal self is such a human being who is a participant with others, open to various worlds within nature and culture, and this person becomes a potential facilitator of emergence. ~ David Jones

Alice Miller writes that the child who suppresses his own feelings in order to accomodate a parent has been, in a sense, abandoned.

'Later, when these feelings of being deserted begin to emerge in the analysis of the adult, they are accompanied by such intensity of pain and despair that it is quite clear that these people could not have survived so much pain. That would only have been possible in an empathic, attentive environment, and this they lacked. [as quoted by Alice Miller]'

She also says that the mother who requires accommodation from her child is just trying to get what her own mother refused her. ~ Alison Bechdel

I'm very empathic to the construction of masculinity within our culture and how we build these identities up. ~ Catherine Opie

I think a beautiful quality that's a biological, hormonal imperative for women, whether they have children or not, is that we're built to be empathic. For me, it was finally being maternal in an appropriate way instead of trying to mommy ex-boyfriends. ~ Alanis Morissette

People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be-both in their youth and in adulthood-intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience. ~ Alice Miller

they feel ignored, unappreciated, and unloved. That's because their context-blind Aspie family members are so poor at empathic reciprocity. As we have learned, we come to know ourselves in relation to others. This doesn't just apply when children are developing self-esteem. Throughout our lifespan, we continue to weave and re-weave the context of our lives, based on the interactions we have with our friends, coworkers, neighbors and loved ones. This is why it is so important for an NT parent/partner to get feedback from their spouse. A smile, a hug, a kind word, a note of encouragement: These are messages that reinforce the NT's self-esteem and contribute to a healthy reciprocity in the relationship. Without these daily reminders from their loved ones, NTs can develop some odd defense mechanisms. One is to become psychologically invisible to others and even to themselves. ~ Kathy J. Marshack

Therapy really did prepare me to become an empathic songwriter. As far as advice goes, it's a matter of self understanding first. ~ William Fitzsimmons

The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person. ~ Carl Rogers

Approaching the trail, he broke through the thicket a short distance ahead of the Empath. Causing the Empaths horse to startle as the surprised rider jerked on the reins. Cap was equally surprised to find a young girl before him instead of an older, experienced male Empath. Cap brought his horse to a quick halt. The young girl pulled a small knife from her boot and cautioned him. "I don't know where you came from, but I'm not easy prey." Her voice shook slightly with fear as she raised the knife.
Not sure how to proceed, they stared silently at each other. Cap had always believed that Empaths didn't carry weapons. This pretty, chestnut haired girl couldn't be more than 18 years old. Her long straight tresses covered the spot on her jacket where the Empathic Emblem was usually worn, causing Cap to doubt she was the one he sought. Not wanting to frighten her any more than he already had, Cap tried to explain. "I'm Commander Caplin Taylor. I'm looking for an Empath that is headed for the Western Hunting Lodge."
"My name is Kendra; I am the Empath you seek." She answered cautiously, still holding the blade. A noise from the brush drew her attention as a small rodent pounced out, trying to evade an unseen predator. Cap was just close enough to lurch forward and snatch the dirk from her hand. Her head jerked back in alarm.
"Bosen May has been mauled by a Sraeb, his shoulder is a mass of pulp." Cap spoke quickly not wanting to hesitate any longer.
That was all Ke ~ Alaina Stanford

Daniel Siegel, a neuroscientist who has extensively studied interpersonal bonds, emotion, and self-regulation, writes of attunement (Siegel 2007, 290): "[S]uch resonant states feel good as we feel 'felt' by another, no longer alone but in connection. This is the heart of empathic relationship, as we sense a clear image of our mind in the mind of another. ~ Carolyn Daitch

What made me empathic was my depressions. ~ Alice Weaver Flaherty

Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretation, you're dealing with the reality inside another person's head and heart. You're listening to understand. You're focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul. ~ Stephen Covey

On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain. ~ Jim Butcher

The work of a psychotherapist involves being empathic and insightful with one's patients without getting too lost in their painful stories to be helpful. ~ Pamela Stephenson

I think the key divide between the interactive media and the narrative media is the difficulty in opening up an empathic pathway between the gamer and the character, as differentiated from the audience and the characters in a movie or a television show. ~ Steven Spielberg

Catching others' feelings is why some people think that they have too much empathy; they are overly sensitive to others' feelings and as a result can feel taken over, manipulated, conned, and so on. Sufficient boundary strength permits you to be empathic without experiencing the negative effects. Until ~ Nina W. Brown

The theory of positivity teaches us to, "always look on the bright side" and to, "point out the bright side to others". However, any highly empathic individual will know, that this mindset alienates us from other people. What connects us with other people is the ability to identify with what they are feeling and thinking, regardless of whether or not we've actually been in their place before. If you want to point someone out to the light, first you need to get into their dark cave with them, light a candle, and say, "Hey, I'm here with you and look, remember what the light feels like?" That's the kind of positivity that actually bears real change in people, in the world. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Empathic, emotionally intelligent work environments have a good track record of increasing creativity, improving problem solving and raising productivity. ~ Daniel Goleman

Every empathic human heart seeks meaning. ~ Jeffrey A. White

This is a perfect picture of what you want to develop in the soul of your child: a desire to do the right things and to avoid the wrong ones because of empathic concern for others and because of a healthy respect for the demands of God's reality. ~ Henry Cloud

To me, relationship is sacred because the spirit of God is manifest in empathic connection. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt

The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ. ~ Karen Armstrong

The other thing Aron found about sensitive people is that sometimes they're highly empathic. It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world. They tend to have unusually strong consciences ... they're acutely aware of the consequences of a lapse in their own behavior. ~ Susan Cain

I never wanted to be an actor. My dad was an actor, and he never brought joy home, so I didn't view it as something that I would want to do. But I got fired as a secretary, and then I started studying, I started doing it just to earn money. And it took me a long time to learn to love it. And what I loved was telling a story. I tried to avoid making plays or films that weren't telling a story that I felt was important. I discovered in the process that it makes you more empathic because you have to enter someone else's reality and learn to see through many other people's eyes. ~ Jane Fonda

We are beginning to learn that an empathic moment requires both intimate engagement and a measure of detachment. If our feelings completely spill over into another's feelings or their feelings overwhelm our psyche, we lose a sense of self and the ability to imagine the other as if they were us. Empathy is a difficult balancing act. One has to be open to experiencing another's plight as if it were one's own but not be engulfed by it, at the expense of drowning out the self's ability to be a unique and separate being. Empathy requires a porous boundary between I and thou that allows the identity of two beings to mingle in a shared mental space.
- The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis ~ Jeremy Rifkin

People who are empathic definitely will have some difficulties distinguishing their own feelings from other people's feelings and they tend to take on other people's energies quite easily. ~ Doreen Virtue

If you are hurting because they hurt then they are the ONE. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Individuals differ in how empathic they are. Some people would really flinch if they watched me hitting my hand with a hammer, and other people would just not care. ~ Paul Bloom

Reading a book carves brand-new neural pathways into the ancient cortical bedrock of our brains. It transforms the way we see the world. Makes us, as Nicholas Carr puts it in his recent essay 'The Dreams of Readers', 'more alert to the inner lives of others'.
We become vampires without being bitten. In other words, more empathic. Books make us see in a way that casual immersion in the Internet, and the quickfire virtual world it offers, doesn't. ~ Kevin Dutton

He had wondered, as had most people at one time or another, precisely why an android bounced helplessly about when confronted by an empathy-measuring test. Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida. For one thing, the empathic faculty probably required an unimpaired group instinct; a solitary organism, such as a spider, would have no use for it; in fact it would tend to abort a spider's ability to survive. It would make him conscious of the desire to live on the part of his prey. Hence all predators, even highly developed mammals such as cats, would starve.

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated. As in the fusion with Mercer, everyone ascended together or, when the cycle had come to an end, fell together into the trough of the tomb world. Oddly, it resembled a sort of biological insurance, but double-edged. As long as some creature experienced joy, then the condition for all other creatures included a fragment of joy. However, if any living being suffered, then for all the rest the shadow could not be entirely cast off. A herd animal such as man would acquire a higher survival factor through this; an owl or a cobra would be destroyed.
Philip K. Dick

When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance ... provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another. ~ Carl R. Rogers

The empathic understanding of the experience of other human beings is as basic an endowment of man as his vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell ~ Heinz Kohut

Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for. ~ Frans De Waal

The goal is not just to create joy for ourselves but, as the Archbishop poetically phrased it, "to be a reservoir of joy, an oasis of peace, a pool of serenity that can ripple out to all those around you." As we will see, joy is in fact quite contagious. As is love, compassion, and generosity. So being more joyful is not just about having more fun. We're talking about a more empathic, more empowered, even more spiritual state of mind that is totally engaged with the world. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

It's not that empathy itself automatically leads to kindness. Rather, empathy has to connect to kindness that already exists. Empathy makes good people better, then, because kind people don't like suffering, and empathy makes this suffering salient. If you made a sadist more empathic, it would just lead to a happier sadist, ~ Paul Bloom

Personally, I think humility is a prerequisite to being a truly empathic person. ~ Christopher Stanley

The third facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or she can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive, active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know. ~ Carl R. Rogers

To be with another in this [empathic] way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another's world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish.
Perhaps this description makes clear that being empathic is a complex, demanding, and strong - yet subtle and gentle - way of being. ~ Carl R. Rogers

Empathy is the door to wisdom. ~ Suzy Kassem

It was psychological trick called empathic listening. You say what the person is feeling so they feel understood. ~ John Green

Of these latter, desolating states, she comments: 'Loneliness, in its quintessential form, is of a nature that is incommunicable by the one who suffers it. Nor, unlike other non-communicable emotional experiences, can it be shared via empathy. It may well be that the second person's empathic abilities are obstructed by the anxiety-arousing quality of the mere emanations of the first person's loneliness. ~ Olivia Laing

Empathy is a creative act. It is the act of imagining ourselves not only in another's shoes, but perhaps inhabiting their very heart and soul. ~ Michele Jennae

Any empathic person who knows how valuable time is will think twice before wasting another person's time, because losing time is losing a part of your life. ~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a hand and saying, I've been there, too. ~ Dani Shapiro

Separate between confident, detached, and forceful correspondence styles, and practice self-assured and empathic interrelating." Every ~ Scott Mercer