Empathy What is empathy, exactly? Empathy is the ability to recognize and experience the feelings of another person, to see things from their perspective and to understand what they're feeling as if you're feeling it yourself. Since most people don't talk about how they're feeling, the ability to empathize generally depends on interpreting non-verbal cues. If you have never felt what another person is feeling, it will not be possible to empathize with them about that particular feeling. It's also difficult to empathize with others when one is not aware of one's own feelings. Higher emotional sensitivity and awareness leads to higher levels of empathy. ...
Tag Archives: feelings
Anger is a useful emotion
Have you ever heard people say anger is bad and that you should try to "let it go"? Anger has a bit of a bad reputation, but I believe there's no such thing as a bad emotion. They all have a purpose, and anger is no exception. As with all emotions, it can be used in productive ways, or in unproductive ways. What can we learn from anger? Notice what kinds of things make you angry. As one example, I'm 100% guaranteed to get angry when people hurt children and animals. This tells me that I value children and animals and that ...
A Basic Guide To Feeling Words
When I first started journaling, I was just writing short snippets about what happened that day, so that I could read it later in order to trigger my memories of that day. This was great for remembering stuff, but what really made a big difference was when I started making a point of journaling about how I felt every day. Like I'd still write what happened, but I'd also write things like "I felt (feeling word) when that happened". Practicing putting my feelings into words regularly helped a lot to make get better at it, and to feel better in general. ...
How I learned to say NO
Googling "how to say no" brings up a lot of advice articles, with tips for how to say it politely, and a few really basic things about why it's hard to say no... but I found those somewhat lacking. For me it was never a matter of finding the right words, it was about really genuinely understanding why the fuck it's been so hard, and actually finding solutions for the underlying causes. Why is it so hard to say no? Saying no feels like rebellion Rebelling as a kid meant I'd be in trouble, and being in trouble was scary, therefore saying no ...
Journaling
How journaling has helped me Journaling has helped me get to know myself better. To figure out how I feel about things, to access my feelings in general. I used to have a lot of brain fog, like I was trying to think of something but I couldn't find the words for it because it was just a thick fog in my mind. I had racing thoughts when trying to sleep. When I would lie down in bed and try to sleep, I'd lie awake for hours just thinking about stuff. Often the thoughts would race so fast they didn't even make ...