The Relationship Of Empathy To Forgiveness
Counselors are consistently trained throughout their course work and then in their internships to empathize with the client. Indeed, it is essential for a counselor to develop this skill if he or she desires to connect with the client at a therapeutic level. But empathy is not limited just to those who are counselors. The truth is we all need to be able to empathize because all of us are going to be offended at one time or another. We will need to empathize in order to forgive the offender.
Most of us understand empathy as being able to emotionally connect or “feel with” another person. However, we need to be sure we don’t settle for too small a dose of empathy. A very slight amount of empathy may come up short when we are called upon to forgive a deep hurt. This begs the question, “Is empathy something you get all at once? Can empathy be divided?” In reality, empathy can be experienced at different levels or stages and those levels are contingent upon several factors. Sometimes when we understand how another person feels we declare “mission accomplished”. However empathy is something that can grow over time. Time, information, insight, and context can allow us to increase in empathy.
It seems to me that the depth of empathy may also have a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral component. We may experience empathy at the level of understanding, that is cognitively, but can we go on to feel with the other person, that is, to share the emotions? If we can indeed feel with an individual, rather than simply understand where he is coming from, we have achieved emotional empathy. Then if we can go deeply enough into empathy that we recall an experience that allows us to relate to the other person on a similar fashion we may actually experience compassion in empathy. This is empathy at a behavioral level which reminds us of a similar experience. We don’t have to experience an identical experience, just one that is similar in intensity. If we are trying to empathize with someone who has sinned, broken the law or misbehaved we do not, at this point, condone a misbehavior but we can feel compassion for the sinner because we too have sinned. Thoughts, emotions, behaviors are all called into play in the experience of empathy.
Empathy can also be affected by the degree to we which relate in time. Older adults can empathize with younger adults. As younger adults age they find themselves being able to empathize and thus forgive the older adult with whom they were totally unable to relate to at an earlier stage of life.