Category Archives: Empathy

Empathy Is Walking the Path of Another; Even Our Enemies 8

Empathy, Famous Quotes, Gratitude, Life Lessons • Tags: , , ,

Twists of the Heart

At the point when anger and lust are generated, reality has become obscured; instead, we see extreme badness or extreme goodness, evoking twisted, unrealistic actions. — His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

In Aspire: Discovering Your Purpose Through the Power of Words, Professor Arthur Watkins told author, Kevin Hall that the word empathy “springs from the soil.” He explained, “Pathy comes from path, and em is in. Empathy is walking the path of another.”

Professor Watkins went on to say that communication is a close cousin of empathy. “Communication comes from the Latin communicare, which means to share in common.”

Hearts filled with holes.

If you don’t get on another’s path, if you don’t go where he or she has gone, you can’t truly understand what that person is experiencing. — Kevin Hall

A year and a half ago, I completely changed my focus on this blog. I needed to focus on positives after a person who previously did a TED Talk on empathy became defensive and angry instead of showing empathy to my family. He did not walk our path so he did not see the holes in our hearts. Therefore, I totally understand the statement in Hall’s book:

It’s remarkable just how much can go wrong when the all-important ingredients of empathy and common ground aren’t firmly established.

I’m far from achieving the spiritual level of the Dalai Lama, but I did manage to stay calm during my conversation with the above mentioned individual. Still, I understand that it would be easy to let my response to the situation be anger too, and at times I have been angry. That is why I’ve focused on inner peace and supporting my loved ones privately instead.

I know that like the morning glories in my first picture, we are all connected, so I do talk about our experiences off-line when asked. Yet, I also respect the wishes of my loved one, and that is why I no longer blog about the details of our experiences. I know many of you are unable to walk our path and honestly, I hope you never have to do so.

Likewise, I have trouble walking the path of those who injured us, but I am trying to at least acknowledge that a failure to communicate contributed to the failures. And, part of the failures are mine.

I’ve been reading and studying, How to Be Compassionate: A Handbook for Creating Inner Peace and a Happier World by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Below are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

  • Just as smart public policy aims to educate people so that they can take care of their own lives, so it is with the practice of altruism: the most effective way to help others is by teaching them what to adopt in their future practice and what to discard from their current behavior.
  • With anger, all actions are swift. When we face problems with sincere concern for others, success may take longer, but it will be more durable. 
  • Whether we believe in God or karma (the power of actions and their effects), strong ethical values are the foundation of society, and must be the underpinning of our daily lives.
  • Another benefit of adversity is that hard times can build determination and inner strength. Through them we can also come to appreciate the uselessness of anger. We can even learn to nurture a deep caring and respect for troublemakers, because by creating trying circumstances, they provide us with invaluable opportunities to practice tolerance and patience.
  • Trying circumstances help you develop inner strength and the courage to face difficulty without emotional breakdown. Who teaches this? Not your friend, but your enemy.

This post was inspired by Kozo’s Bloggers for Peace Challenge.banner
Be sure to read other Bloggers for Peace Posts at:

B4Peace: A Tiger And His Boy Teach Empathy.

Empathy and Visiting Other Lands.

Emotional Intelligence, Empathy, Compassion: Terms Thrown Around These Days

Compassion, Emotional IQ, Empathy • Tags:

What do they really mean and why are they important?

FDR Memorial July 2012 ©Delightfully Different Life

FDR Memorial July 2012 ©Delightfully Different Life

Psychology Today identifies emotional intelligence as the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others. I would argue that we are all responsible for our own emotions, but that there are some responses that are more socially acceptable when responding to others’ emotions. This is where some with special needs might need help. You can refer back to my post at Special-Ism.com about recognizing and teaching kindness for this.

The New Oxford Dictionary defines empathy as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things. —–Thomas Merton

This is my final post for Special-Ism, so I leave you with the following ways you can be more compassionate and continue to help your children too.

Be kind to yourself. 

  • Allow yourself to have at least thirty minutes a day that are just yours even if you have to take the time in five to ten minutes increments.
  • Use this time for prayer, meditation, a nap, taking a walk, reading, or doing something else that makes your heart sing.
  • Acknowledge that you will make mistakes and forgive yourself when you do.
  • Congratulate yourself when you succeed.

Forgive those who do not understand you and/ or your children.

  • Take a deep breath. Then smile at the man who mutters under his breath when your child meltdowns in the store. Then ignore him and attend to your child. This is not the time to educate the world.
  • Calmly educate the teacher who fails to understand your child. Seek help from the school counselor, your child’s aide or another professional to get through to her if you need too, but remain calm throughout the process even if you have to step back or walk away briefly or call her back.
  • Decide in advance how much to share with your extended family, with  other parents and children. And share only on a need to know bases until your child is old enough to decide how much they want to share. Remember it is his life you are talking about and respect that future adult child.

Seek positive role models for your children.

  • When a person you admire does something that helps others, use their behavior as a positive example.
  • Find community mentors who you trust and who have a reputation of supporting all children.
  • Identify kind, older children with the help of teachers or school counselors and see if they are willing to be mentors.

Find positive and supportive friends for both yourself and for your children.

  • Make time for your friends even if it is only to call them during your thirty minutes of me time to touch base. Everyone needs friends.
  • Help your child to develop friendships when they are small by finding ways they can participate in activities even if they cannot tolerate a four-hour long birthday party. They might go for part of the party either at the beginning or the end.
  • Get to know the parents, so you can encourage these friendships for years to come and so you can verify the kind ones.

Give positive stories more power by sharing them instead of the negative stories.

  • We all get upset with misinformation in the media.
  • Give them less attention and instead share positive stories related to the same topic.
  • Start a campaign to get others to share the positives too.
  • One day we will get through to the media if we stop giving them views for the negatives.

Support other special needs parents. Remember everyone experiences life differently, so if you disagree with them please do so privately and with respect.

  • Support the ones you know in real life by calling them or inviting them for a cup of coffee.
  • Share posts of those you only know via the Internet.
  • Leave encouraging comments.
  • E-mail personal advice if you disagree with them and have a more positive solution to offer.
  • Above all please remember we are all in this together.

References:

“Emotional Intelligence.” Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness Find a Therapist. Sussex Publishers, LLC, n.d. Web. 24 Dec. 2012.

Walker, D. S. “How Do You Know? Recognizing and Teaching Kindness.”Specialism. Special_Ism.com, 4 Nov. 2012. Web. 24 Dec. 2012.

Originally posted at Special-Ism.com, 4 Jan. 2013

 

Teachers Please Inspire and Support Our Children 8

Autism Spectrum, Education, Empathy, Schools • Tags: ,

I left a comment on a blog back in April about what I would want to tell the teachers of tomorrow. This is what I said:

“Please remind them that they have a responsibility to help our children and judging them does not help anyone. Remind them that they have a choice to be an inspiration or a detriment to our most vulnerable children. Advise them that even when children on the autism spectrum are teenagers they are not typical teenagers and asking them to write from a typical teenager’s perspective is ludicrous especially if a simple change in the assignment can avoid problems. Please beg them to assume the best rather than the worse about our children and to be aware that other things besides the class itself may affect our child’s ability to complete an assignment. Wrong assumptions can and do harm our children.”

Good teachers are the ones who are supportive of those who struggle either academically or socially without calling attention to the child. They promote kindness and tolerance and they avoid making assumptions. They realize each child is unique and they do not assume they know everything about a child on the autism spectrum or with any other diagnosis just because they have known other children with the same diagnosis. They realize past bullying can take years to overcome.  My daughter was fortunate to have a few of these teachers. 

Then we have teachers that bully our children as indicated in Teachers Bullying Your Child? Dealing With Teacher Problems.  Now, I cannot fathom a teacher intentionally harming a child, but I know many hurt my child whether they knowingly did so or not.  I believe they actually contributed to the bullying even if they did not knowingly bully her.  This has to stop!

One more thing that needs to stop is teachers who fail to recognize how long the effects of bullying last.  The teacher who ultimately caused my daughter to leave her school told me she did not see how bullying that happened over four years prior could still be affecting my daughter.  I have said it before and I am still saying it, the bullying caused more problems than Asperger’s traits and sensory sensitivity combined for my child.  My daughter’s school let us down by their lack of understanding.  Teachers, counselors, and school administration all need to read this, New Study Shows Long-Term Effects of Bullying Tied to Empathy « Bullying Stories and this, Long term effects of Bullying in girls and boys – Child Psychology and Parenting Blog: Child-Psych.org.

P.S. I have offered my services for free to my daughter’s former school, yet so far they have not accepted this offer. Maybe they think I have an agenda other than helping them, I do not know. I keep hearing stories about the same counselor making the same mistakes over and over again along with more bullying stories. I have to wonder why they are unwilling to accept help.

Learning Empathy and Tolerance for Others While Helping Our Children 1

Accountability, Education, Empathy, Parenting, Tolerence • Tags: , ,
Photographed at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Photographed at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

We all have to support each other and try harder to be empathic. It is not always easy to do, and this is especially true when we perceive an attack on our children. The grizzly bear or lioness comes out for me then.  I usually just avoid posting when this happens, because I know I will say something I will regret later otherwise.

Does this mean I always do the right thing?  I only wish this were true.  I too have been guilty of saying the wrong thing, as I think most people have.  I just hope anyone I have ever offended in any way has it in their hearts to forgive me.

It certainly brings home the issue of children bullying others over the Internet. That is why it is so important that we as parents teach our children that the Internet is forever.  They need to understand that it can’t just be torn up or erased.  It is the job of parents and educators to teach this to our children.

My son’s school has a wonderful class that they teach to the sixth graders called Technology.  It is not a quick one time class.  Rather, the class meets daily all year. They learn how to safely navigate the Internet, applicable laws that apply to information on the Internet, as well as, how wrong it is to cyber bully someone. They are learning that they are held accountable for their actions on the Internet.  I think it would be great if every school did this, although given the precociousness of today’s kids, it might need to be done at an earlier age.  Maybe we all need a class like this too!

Mahalo again for listening,

D. S. Walker