Let It Be Clear That There Is No Suggestion That Observing

Carl Rogers describes empathy as the ability to sense the client’s world as if it were your own. Sanders (1999)

People in society have been through some kind of distress and suffering once in their lives and it allows for the creation of the drive to help others in their time of difficulty. Hardships are experienced by many in society and cause people to relate to others who encountered similar misfortunes. These understandings bring forth a sense of unity that allows people to produce a sense of compassion to assist others in desperate

Riley (2017 pg 8) continues to say that, empathy is a dangerous notion if it’s thought to be a mindless, experimental, existential connectedness….whereas some patient encounter may require empathy; some will just be theory or experience. Contextualising empathy is therefore is difficult.

• empathy is created as we grow fond of the protagonist who shares a story of hardship

Ask Haley Jo Hyde, 19, what makes her empathetic, and she 'll mention her childhood on Wisconsin 's Red Cliff Indian Reservation or her struggles leaving an abusive relationship. Talk to Nick Thompson, 37, and he 'll refer to the challenges he overcame to enroll in college as a nontraditional student. A Moving Target Say the word "empathy" around social workers and most will recognize it as a professional "must-have," even if they can 't tell you exactly what it means. Scholars also disagree about the definition of empathy and what it looks like in social work practice. According to some, empathy occurs when a person takes on the feelings of another—the sadness of losing a loved one or the joy of landing a job—as if sharing that experience. Indeed, the Social Work Dictionary defines empathy as "the act of perceiving, understanding, experiencing, and responding to the emotional state and ideas of another person" (Barker, 2003). Others separate empathy into its cognitive and affective forms, that is, a rational understanding of a person 's situation vs. a feeling of shared emotions. According to V. Suthakaran, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, this dichotomy mirrors the one found in cognitive experiential self theory. That theory claims that humans rely on two systems to process information: one tapping into logical thought and one relying on personal experience or intuition (Epstein, 1994). Still others say that empathy

The importance of empathy in any helping profession, medical or social, cannot be overstated. The workers that exemplified it in their practice did the best that they could with their limited resources.

Indifference to the suffering of others keeps humanity divided. As Elie Wiesel said in “The Perils of Indifference”, “[Indifference] benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten” (2). When one sees a victim suffering, one may be indifferent to the victim’s sufferings. This diminishes the hope that the victim once saw and had, because without anyone showing concern for their sufferings, victims can believe that even their own humanity has betrayed them. This in turn creates a lack of trust among

Suggests that someone who needs help will have an increased amount of empathic emotion which leads to long-term helpful behaviours.

Moreover, he reminds readers that if we continue to stand idly by and neglect helping others rather than showing mercy and understanding for others, as the author himself puts it, “We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others” (18). This ultimately brings fear and anger to a community towards the very same individuals that have sworn an oath to protect them, but instead are the cause of pain and suffering. By continuing to suffer from the absence of mercy, we are blinded by hate for those who wronged us and desperate our search for retribution in hope that it will bring us comfort. This results in the unfair convictions of many innocent and helpless individuals, as well as our remorse that will haunt us forever.

Society is built upon a foundation of norms, but not all individuals adhere to said norms, some are outliers. If the actions of an individual causes pain onto another, society defines that the normal reaction for that individual would be to exhibit a state of empathy, but this is not always the case, as there are those who do not feel or exhibit the normal psychological reactions to differing scenarios (sociopaths). As individuals’ progress and experience obstacles in their lives, they become familiar with the different aspects of their mind, such as their persona, shadow, and self, ultimately achieving individuation. In

Often in today’s society people become “invisible” due to their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or social class. They are often shunned away or discriminated against because of these factors. The spirit of this book is defined by the will to overcome personal tragedy and social injustices.

In this documentary, I saw people being beaten, shot and killed. As a social worker, this is important to me because a social worker’s goal is to focus on helping individuals

The overall purpose of this article is to show how empathy and emotional experiences are linked. This article also gives various theories and ideas by world renowned psychologists. The theme of this article is how much empathy we have toward others in social experiences. A few new ideas and purposes of this article were when they talked about all the different Theories based on appraisal and empathy in certain situations. It’s really important to publicize these ideas because for one this stuff is very interesting, it could help others discover new approaches to situations, and it would very well help people themselves deal with empathy.

Empathy is the ability to notice different emotions in others and then to be able to feel or respond to that person in a similar way (cite book). It is important that parents prepare and teach their children for future experiences that may be hard so that they can develop strong emotional self-regulation. A child with strong emotional self-regulation will have better control over the way they react to certain situations that may involve something stressful. They will also have a better chance of empathizing with other people and their emotions if they can fully understand their own. This often goes with perspective taking, which allows the child to imagine how it would feel if they were in another person’s position (cite here).

“Empathy is the ability to understand the situation and experiences of another person” (p.76). “social empathy calls for us to use insight gained about people’s lives to develop public policies that are sensitive to people’s needs based on the realities of their living situations” (p..76). For example, a person born into a middle class family, raised in a middle class neighborhood with two supportive parents free of substance abuse and the opportunity to attend school and higher education may not be able to understand the circumstances of someone that did not have this same opportunity and therefor has developed maladaptive behaviors for society.