What does Lack of Empathy mean?
As social beings we
generally tend to empathize with people when they are experiencing a negative
emotion or loss. Empathy is a state where you can literally put yourself
in the other person’s place and understand their plight. The feeling of empathy thus implies
an active involvement with the person concerned.
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The best part of empathy is that a
person feels and relates to another’s emotions and thoughts without any of
these directly communicated to the person. Empathy is
generally felt for a person with whom you are emotionally involved, or a person
you know. They may include members of a family, friends or even people of your
community. When your friend loses his father it would be a natural for you to
feel empathy for him more
so if you have also undergone a similar experience of pain and loss.
Empathy has many benefits it not only helps the other person but also provides a valuable lesson for you.Empathy instantly connects people experiencing the same emotions together. When you empathize with someone you feel a great therapeutic or healing experience. By empathizing with someone you pave the way for developing feelings of concern and trust.
Empathy has great
relevance as a communication skill. Communicators can instantly relate to their
audience and share their emotions. It is this sense of inspiration and mutual
understanding that creates a rapport between the speaker and his audience. On
the other hand a lack of empathy would mean
ineffective communication as the communicator doesn’t understand the listener’s
perspective and there may be a total loss of rapport between the speaker and
his audience. As such the audience may feel sympathy to the
speaker or the message as part of thecommunication process.
A person suffering from lack
of empathy would be
lacking self-worth, self-love and self-awareness. In other words he is unable
to relate to the others emotions or accept their needs and choices.
Empathy is the
basis for any relationship to survive and thrive. Problems start in
relationships when there is lack ofempathy as
communication is the key to the growth of a relationship. It would be
presumptuous to assume that others can understand your emotions without you
expressing them out. Lack of empathy in a
marriage arises when the partners lack understanding and trust for each other. Lack
of empathy in
partners can percolate down to children who start developing similar patterns
of behavior.
A psychopath is called so as he suffers from lack of empathy. He cannot and
does not empathize with people around him. He is spurred to action only by his
self-interest and in a sense is socially dysfunctional. Similarly a narcissist
suffers from lack of empathy when he
focuses on his own pleasure and goes to any extent of manipulation even with
family and friends just to gratify his needs.
Empathy as such is
essential for proper social and psychological functioning. A lack of empathy would make
people abuse and exploit others in society.
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