different ways of empathizing
If someone close to us is sharing his grievance with us, are there different ways to empathize?
We can take the side of this person, really sympathize with him (or
her), console and comfort her agreeing that the situation is so shockingly bad, what has the terrible world come to, and that
offender who caused the grievance deserves hell, and agree about how
hard his life is. Then maybe share some similarly miserable
experiences and make him feel justified about his behavior and
attitude.
We can also take an other approach, where here too we show that we
support the person, listen attentively, but the difference would be to
refrain from overdoing consoling and comforting the person. Any comments we
make could be to try to help the person get alternative perspectives of the same situation – maybe
the viewpoint of the others involved as well. Maybe gently encourage the
person to see if he might have missed something himself.
In the first approach, you are sure to get into the person’s good
books. The person will like you better! Its definitely much easier and
more entertaining – doesn’t require too much effort from you. It gives
short term relief for the person, though his problem remains.
But with the second approach, that prospect of winning the person’s
appreciation may look
dimmer 😉 It may not be a short-term solution, but it may well be one
small step
towards helping the person figure out a positive solution. This
approach might be a bit more difficult – and it requires a deep sense
of genuine concern for the person.
Any thoughts… please share them…
empathising with person depends on the situations when a person is in grief you have to console and make them confortable and so many people visiting will make them to get out of the sorrow of departure of near and dear and slowly they limp back to normalcy. again death of old person the situation will be different death a young infront of old is very disgusting many deaths in a family with one or two survivors in accident and like ones are very difficult times for anybody to make the living person to comfort and bring him back to main stream
In other situation like problem in office or family second appraoch mentioned may be a better option and again it depends upon how other man looks at it as each human being is different is is very difficult to generalise in these cases. may be u have to decide what approach is better based on your contacts and intimacy and the situations
praneshavare, I think you are referring to grief – which is outside the scope of this post. Grievance referred to here refers to the dictionary meaning “a complaint or resentment, as against an unjust or unfair act: to have a grievance against someone.” Thanks for your thoughts they definitely make a lot of sense.