Empathy has long been recognized as an essential element to providing proper service to our clients. To make sure we are on the same page, let’s start with this basic definition of empathy: the ability to share and understand the feelings of another.
Ahbyasa – consistently taking deliberate steps in the direction of your goals.
We are all consistently taking steps. Are these steps in the direction of our goals? All the little steps, all the little habits add up to routines. Do these routines support your goals?
Let’s just look at this professionally. What are your professional goals?
It’s not generally easy for us human beings to adopt new habits. One thing that helps is to make them easy. Noticing is a habit made easy by my seventh grade teacher and Dick Olney.
Living in Turkey, it was natural to hear the call to worship several times a day. A teacher at the time invited our class to pause whenever we heard it, be quiet, still our bodies and notice. That stuck. When I moved back to the states, sirens and red lights and now the sound of an airplane overhead invites that same pause –modern mindfulness bells.
Last weekend, while I was facilitating an Intensive and participants were exploring the profound ineffable territory of empty consciousness and healing, Nazis were demonstrating in Charlottesville.
While a hearty group gathered in the hills of East Tennessee to push past their own illusions and limited ideas of separation, a man plowed into a crowd with a lethal weapon, killing one and wounding others.
It’s one thing to accept and experience the truth of yourself in the privacy of your solitude ~ NOT interacting with others. It’s a whole different matter when you try to take that same humanity into relationship and bump up against someone’s grumpy mood or your own unmet expectations.
I join many millions this week as we reconcile ourselves to the election results and what they tell us about our collective evolution and unmet needs. For me, this began with grief in all its manifestations. For others, it began with excitement. Regardless of who you voted for or who your clients voted for., there are strong reactions.
As a young therapist, I was not completely comfortable saying “I’m a therapist.” It felt much more congruent to stand in “I practice psychotherapy.” It’s a practice, the more we do it, the better we get. Practice implies a deep engagement with the subject of practice. Practice is distinct from work.