Quotes About Empathy

I regularly made an effort to remember one of the most important lessons from my training: There's no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn't be ranked, because pain is not a contest. Spouses often forget this, upping the ante on their suffering—I had the kids all day. My job is more demanding than yours. I'm lonelier than you are. Whose pain wins—or loses?

Sometimes the changes you want in another person aren't on that person's agenda

Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

Perhaps men apologize preemptively, by holding their tears back.

In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty.

you're going to get hurt sometimes, and no matter how much you love somebody, you will at times hurt that person, not because you want to, but because you're human

Even in the best possible relationship, you're going to get hurt sometimes, and no matter how much you love somebody, you will at times hurt that person, not because you want to, but because you're human.

Study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your treatment is your relationship with the therapist, your experience of "feeling felt.

But unlike neurosurgeons, we gravitate toward the sensitive area, pressing delicately on it, even if it makes the patient feel uncomfortable.

I'll bet you could name five truly difficult people off the top of your head right now—some you assiduously avoid, others you would assiduously avoid if they didn't share your last name. But sometimes—more often than we tend to realize—those difficult people are us. That's right—sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

Our training has taught us theories and tools and techniques, but whirring beneath our hard-earned expertise is the fact that we know just how hard it is to be a person. Which is to say, we still come to work each day as ourselves—with our own sets of vulnerabilities, our own longings and insecurities, and our own histories. Of all my credentials as a therapist, my most significant is that I'm a card-carrying member of the human race.

we are asking forgiveness of others to avoid the harder work of forgiving ourselves.

In reality, there are many people we could be happy with. It's just that your soul develops in different ways with different people.

Forgiveness is a tricky thing, in the way that apologies can be. Are you apologizing because it makes you feel better or because it will make the other person feel better? Are you sorry for what you've done or are you simply trying to placate the other person who believes you should be sorry for the thing you feel completely justified in having done? Who is the apology for?

Freud argued that "the physician should be impenetrable to the patient, and like a mirror, reflect nothing but what is shown to him.

Our experiences with this person are important because we're probably feeling something pretty similar to what everyone else in this patient's life feels.

Every day, our patients are opening up questions that we have to think about for ourselves. If they can see themselves more clearly through our reflections, we can see ourselves more clearly through theirs.

You can have compassion without forgiving. There are many ways to move on and pretending to feel a certain way isn't one of them.

You are not the best person to talk to you about you right now.

I'm mindful of the fact that Very Angry People aren't Very Approachable.

But John often took note of my appearance: "Now you're looking more like a real mistress" (when I got highlights in my hair); "You better watch out, some people might see some cleavage" (when I wore a V-neck blouse); "Are those your fuck-me shoes for after work?" (when I wore heels). Each time, I'd try to talk about his "jokes" and the feelings underlying them.

we both know in a bone-deep way that there's nothing else to say.

Even though I'm the one who should be holding her hand, even though she's the one with the missing appendages and a massive infection, she's reassuring me. And though this could make a great story line on ER, in that millisecond, I know I won't be working on that show much longer. I am going to medical school.