ABSTRACT
This chapter describes empathy as the essence of professional and personal relationships, and that is exactly what it is. This may involve experiencing another’s emotional world and mirroring those emotions (“emotional empathy”) but more usually it would involve sensing and understanding another’s emotions and recognising these without directly sharing them or losing oneself in them (“cognitive empathy”).
Effective communications, rapport and trust relationships all depend on an authentic empathetic connection. Humanity and compassion are founded on empathy.
We need to understand how empathy arises, its relationship to attunement (both between parent and child, as outlined in attachment theory, and adult attunement) and the basic neuroscience underlying it.
But there also needs to be an awareness of what empathy involves in a professional context. We cannot allow empathy to blur or distort objective and rational decisions and actions that are needed, but nor do we wish to lose our humanity by ignoring it. These contradictory influences need to be balanced, in what the chapter calls “boundariedempathy”.Indeed, boundaries form a significant part of professional life and conduct, and these are considered in this context.
