伤心的时候，你最想听到什么？一则故事告诉你

Why care about empathy?

为什么要关注同理心?

The practice of empathy builds trust and increases safety in your family and work environments. It supports the social fabric required for communication and shared activities. A world with empathy is nurturing and supportive – it creates an environment where people can be creative and take risks.

同理心可以增强人们在家人之间和员工之间的信任和安全感。支持社会结构，促进人们之间的交流和共享。一个拥有同理心的世界，是一个有活力，相互扶持的世界，生活在这样世界里的人们创新，有冒险精神。

Empathy Traps (Anti-patterns)

同理心陷阱(反面教材)

Trap #1: Even Worse – the basic idea here is to compare the persons’s problem with someone else’s problem that is even much bigger. On the surface this may seem like we’re helping them. What we are really doing is that we are saying that their problem and feelings are invalid or unworthy.

陷阱1：事情本来可以更糟——本意是想把一个人的问题和别人的更坏的问题比较。表面上看我们似乎是在帮他们。可实际上，我们一直在说他们遇到的问题和感受不重要，不值得担心。

Trap #2: Look on the Bright Side – When we focus on the positive, rather than acknowledge a person’s feelings, we ignore and dismiss them as unimportant. The net result is that we invalidate the other person.

陷阱2：看事情好的一面：我们把注意力集中在想事情好的一面，而不是放在人的感受上。这样做，不经意间，我们忽视了其实最重要的是人，让别人误以为他们在别人心中不重要。最终的结果就是我们让别人很受伤。

Trap #3: Problem Solving – Typically, we start by assuming the person has invited us to solve their problem by telling us about their situation. (Why else would they tell us?) With this trap, we avoid acknowledging or recognizing the emotion and keep it just to the facts of the situation.

陷阱3：解决问题——我们预设别人向我们倾诉自己的遭遇，理解为就是邀请我们帮助解决问题。(不然他们为什么告诉我们?)在这个陷阱中的，我们忽视了他们的感受，只是在从这件事的角度看问题。

What to do about this?

万一一不小心掉近陷阱了，怎么办?

1. Notice when you are running these anti-patterns and STOP TALKING. Saying nothing is much better than falling in these traps. Rewind the conversation if you need to. It’s never too late to go back.

意识到自己掉进陷阱，就不要再说了。什么都不说也不比说错强。有必要的话，把话头倒回去。浪子回头金不换嘛。

2. Be kind to yourself. You are human like the rest of us. You’ve probably been running these patterns for years and years – it’ll take time to get better.

对自己好一些。我们都一样，可能过去的日子里，你一直都在用这些错误的技巧劝人，但是慢慢地，你会做好的。

3. Take a deep breath and practice your empathy muscles. Yes! You can learn these skills.

深呼吸，进行自己的同理心实践应用。加油!你能学会!

What can be done to turn around this empathy decline? Fortunately, a good deal. And we can start by learning the four elements of empathy.

同理心滑坡，我们该怎么办?幸运的是，有很多办法可以做出改变。 先从同理心的四个特点开始吧，看看能给我们什么启示。

Four Elements of Empathy-Teresa Wiseman

同理心的四个特点

Teresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar, whostudied professions—very diverse professions where empathy is relevant, and came up with four qualities of empathy:

Teresa Wiseman是名护理学者，她研究职业--与同理心相关、非常不同的职业，并提出四种同理心的特性：

Perspective taking (the ability to take the perspective of another person, or recognize their perspectives as their truth), staying out of judgment (not easy when you enjoy this as much as most of us do), recognizing emotion of another people, and then communicating that.

接受观点(接受他人观点的能力，或是认同他们的观点为他们的事实)、不加评论(这不容易，当你跟我们大多数人一样喜欢评论他人时)、看出他人的情绪、并接着与那交流。
 

【额外福利】视频英文原文：

So what is empathy? And why is it very different than sympathy?

Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection. Empathy is very interesting.

Teresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar, whostudied professions—very diverse professions where empathy is relevant, and came up with four qualities of empathy:

Perspective taking (the ability to takethe perspective of another person, or recognize their perspectives as theirtruth), staying out of judgment (not easy when you enjoy this as much as mostof us do), recognizing emotion of another people, and then communicating that.

Empathy is feeling with people. And to me,I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space when someone's kind ofin a deep hole, and they shout out from the bottom and they say, "I'm stuck. It's dark. I'm overwhelmed." And then we look and we say,"Hey," and climb down, "I know what it's like down here, andyou're not alone."

Sympathy is, "Woo! It's bad, ahuh?Now, you want a sandwich?"

Empathy is a choice. And it's a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling. Rarely, if ever, does an empathic response begin with "at least."

I had a...yeah, and we do it all the time,because, you know what, someone just shares something with us that's incrediblypainful, and we're trying to silver lining that. I don't think that's a verb,but I'm using it as one.

We're trying to put this silver lining around it, so "I had a miscarriage."

"At least, you know you can getpregnant."

"I think my marriage is fallingapart."

"At least, you have a marriage."

"John's getting kicked out ofschool."

"At least, Sarah, he's anA-student."

But one of the things we do sometimes inthe face of very difficult conversations is we try to make things better.

If I share something with you that's very difficult, I'd rather you say, "I don't even know what to say right now.I'm just so glad you told me," because the truth is rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.