Life Skills & Value Education – CLASS-VI -UNIT-3 Empathy: Treat Others The Way You Want  To Be Treated

Empathy is about stepping into someone else’s shoes and trying to feel and perceive things the way they do.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings experienced by someone else. It’s what connects us to our fellow humans. We encounter several situations in our daily life that call for empathy in order to understand others. Some of the ways in which we can show empathy are by:

• practising tolerance

• being by others’ side during their times of need

• making eye contact

• being a good listener

• paraphrasing others’ feelings

Practising tolerance: Tolerance means allowing others to be themselves and accepting them as they are. We should not try to change others but instead, allow them to express their opinions and appreciate their points of view, even if we do not always agree with them. For instance, if your sibling wants to have a particular food that you do not like, you can show tolerance by letting that food to be cooked instead of fighting over it. Similarly, if you are discussing a particular issue with your friends and one of them has an opinion different from yours, you could allow for the disagreement to remain without holding a grudge against that person.Being by others’ side during their times of need: Empathy can be expressed by being physically present near your close ones in their times of need. Gestures such as holding their hands or putting an arm around their shoulders when they are feeling down can reassure them.

Making eye contact: Making eye contact also helps establish an emotional connection with another person. For example, if your friend does not get selected in the audition for an important role in the school play, you can

convey that you understand how he/she feels by looking at your friend in the eye as an expression of reassurance.

Being a good listener: Listening without interrupting communicates that

         • we are genuinely interested in what the other person is saying.

         • we care for the person and respect his/her feelings.

         • we accept what the person is saying without making any  

            judgments.

Active listening can be communicated by gestures such as nodding or through eye contact.

Paraphrasing others’ feelings: Paraphrasing means expressing the meaning of what we hear using different, and in most cases, fewer words. Paraphrasing helps you mirror the other person’s feelings. For example, if someone says, ‘I am down in the dumps with these exam results’, then we can paraphrase it as, ‘I understand that you are upset about it’; or if someone says, ‘I wish I could slam the door on his face’, then we could say, ‘You seem to be quite angry’. Such paraphrasing helps convey to the other person that we understand what they are experiencing or feeling. Learning empathy makes us better human beings. It helps us emotionally connect with other human beings. When we are sad or hurt and someone just listens to us or is by our side saying, ‘I understand what you are going through’, makes us feel much better. Similarly, understanding and respecting others’ feelings and showing our care by being by their side during their times of emotional crisis also helps us feel good. Thus, empathy generates happiness around us through a ripple effect.

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