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four attributes of empathy

Empathy is not something we either have or don’t have. Empathy is a skill we can develop that can help us show up for other people when they are having a hard time.Empathy is letting someone know they are not alone in their pain. It is communicating that you are in it with them, see them suffering, and communicating that their emotional pain matters to you. Empathy is best seen as “stepping into a state of service” for another person in moments when they are having a hard time.
For Pastoral counseling to be effective we must understand the four attributes of empathy as follows;
1) Stay out of Judgment: A counselor cannot simultaneously be judging someone and have empathy for them. In order to extend empathy to someone a counselor have to suspend their personal judgment and approach them with an open heart and open mind. That is having empathy rather than sympathy which recognizes that the person is having a hard time, but typically has judgment involved – as in “you poor thing”.
2) Perspective Taking: counselors must have the skill of Perspective taking which is the art of looking at a situation through the identity lens and experiences of the person having the experience – not through our own identities/experiences. Perspective taking reduces the likelihood of implicit bias short circuiting your attempt to demonstrate care.
3) Identifying what the person is feeling: counselors.must be able to identify and recognizing quietly to themselves, what counselees are feeling at that time. That is their emotional state at the moment.
4) Demonstrating care that the person is feeling what they are feeling
People are sometimes hesitant to lean in and be with someone who is having a tough time because they don’t know what to do, or how to fix the situation. Empathy has nothing to do with fixing. Empathy is not about the content of the person’s situation, it is about tending to the emotional experience the person is having. Empathy is about caring, and more specifically it is about tangibly demonstrating to the person that you care – so they feel seen, heard, and cared for and supported.