• Empathy, the most powerful tool of compassion, is an emotional skill set that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect back that understanding.

• Empathy is a tool of compassion. We can respond empathically only if we are willing to be present to someone's pain. If we're not willing to do that, it's not real empathy.

• Theresa Wiseman's Atributes of Empathy

  • Perspective Taking: What does that coept mean for you? What is that experience like for you?

  • Staying out of judgement: Just listen, don't put value on it.

  • Recognizing emiton: How can I touch within myself something that helps me identify and connect with what the other person might be feeling? Check in and clarify what youa re hearing. Ask Questions.

  • Communicating our understanding about the emotion: Sometimes this is elablorate and etailed, and sometimes this is simply, That's hard. I get that."

  • PRacticing mindfulness (from Kristen Neff): That is not pushing away emtion because it's uncomfortable, but feeling it and moving through it.

• Brene Brown Atlas of the Heart p. 120-122

Empathy has huge upside. Researchers peter paul zurek and herbert scheithauer explain that empathy helps interersonal decision making; facilitates ethical decsion making and morral judegement; enhances shrt term subjective well being; strengthens relational bond; allows people to better understand how others see them; and enhanes proscial and altrusitic behavior.

Brene Brown Atlas of the Heart p. 118

With others