Quotes About Empathy

But then a university friend got diagnosed with depression and described it to Brooke as a kind of half paralysis, as if all her muscles had atrophied, and Brooke had a sudden memory of Amy eating cereal in slow motion, swaying like seaweed under water, and she realized she was offering this friend more sympathy and understanding than she'd ever given her own sister. These days she tried hard to see Amy with objective, compassionate eyes,

I knew there is nothing more patronizing to an Infertile than to hear a new mother complaining, as if that will make you feel better for not having your own baby. It's like telling a blind person, "Oh, sure, you get to see mountains and sunsets, but there are also rubbish dumps and pollution! Terrible!

You shouldn't only be nice to nice people.

student Rani. "Passive listening is the way he listens to me.

For the first time ever, she saw her mother as just a girl: a girl like her who made mistakes, who screwed things up, who was just making it

For the first time ever, she saw her mother as just a girl: a girl like her who made mistakes, who screwed things up, who was just making it all up as she went along.

The risk of upsetting Stan outweighed the risk of upsetting Amy. The risk of upsetting Stan had always outweighed the risk of upsetting any of the children. Nearly always.

My husband hits me, Renata. Never on the face of course. He's far too classy for that. Does yours hit you?

She had not realized that grief was so physical. Before Zach died, she thought grief happened in your head. She didn't know that your whole body ached with it, that it screwed up your digestive system, your menstrual cycle, your sleep patterns, your skin. You wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy.

He liked his friends, but he had no interest in hearing their personal problems and he therefore couldn't share his own. He

It gave me a shock. A sudden shock of indescribable pain, like when you're a kid, and you're hit on the nose with a basketball on a cold morning, and you cannot believe how much it hurts, and your friends all laugh and you want your mother so bad.

She was busy thinking about the concept of forgiveness. It was such a lovely, generous idea when it wasn't linked to something awful that needed forgiving.

I hate you all. For no particular reason. I guess it's for the sympathy, the pity and understanding, but most of all, for the hope.

Amy once told Joy that she had no idea how lonely it felt to be single. Joy had wanted to tell her that you could still be lonely when you were married, that there had been times when she had woken up day after day crushed with loneliness, and still made breakfast for four children.

I must eat," said Amy. "Brooke, go tell Mum we have to eat something now because you're getting a migraine." "You tell her you have to eat because you're having a panic attack," retorted Brooke. "Tell her Logan is hungry," said Troy. "She won't want Logan to be hungry." "I told her I was hungry an hour ago," said Logan.

Her mother could always charm her, even at the worst times. Just when Erika thought she was done, that was it, she could take no more, her mother charmed her back into loving her. Her

And of course Madison would have been smart enough to pick up on Alice's resentment. She was already a child who felt everything far too deeply. She'd seen her mother's friend killed in an accident and then her parents separated. No

But the truth was, she felt deeply hurt on his behalf, and somehow responsible, as if she'd messed up.

It wasn't always necessary to tell your husband the whole story.

Parents do tend to judge each other. I don't know why. Maybe because none of us really know what we're doing?

Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him, as if a "man" were a product or a service, and she'd finally chosen the right brand to get the right response.

Now for the first time she understood that her mother wasn't resisting love so much as bearing it. Now she knew that you could love so much it literally hurt: an actual pain in the center of her chest.

When her life fell apart there hadn't been one friend whom Tess could call. Not one friend. That's why she was behaving like this with Connor. She needed a friend.

It was somehow easier to just baldly admit it to her dad, who would just take what she said at face value, rather than her mother, who would listen too intently and empathetically and filter everything through her own emotions.