Quotes About Empathy

In the limousine on the way to my father's graveside services, I started to cry. My mother slapped me and told me to stop crying. I lacked a model to show me how to feel compassion for my pain.

Thomas just nodded his head in agreement, and then suggested I write a letter to myself as a child and address those painful issues.

I know you have been looking for someone to listen to you, to believe you, and no one helped; they all blamed you. You believe you are bad. That's not true!

After my last call I hung up the telephone and cried softly. So many knew, but nobody helped.

How do you forgive someone who has never asked to be forgiven; somebody who has never even acknowledged any wrongdoing, someone who continues to do the same thing? How do you forgive an offender and still protect yourself from re-injury?

Forgiveness is not a commodity that can be handed out. It is a relationship that must be entered into. — Karl Rahner

To understand is to forgive, even oneself. —Alexander Chase

Ann said, "My father died when he was seventy-seven, still unable to forgive his mother.

Nevertheless, when we fail to investigate and/or believe the victim, we become complicit with the abuse.

I always related to the pain of others; I had become numb and unaware of my own.

Your mother has had a rough life," Grandmother pleaded her daughter's case. "You should feel sorry for her instead of making things tougher for her. Bill was mean and cruel and much worse than Ed. The problem with you Nancy, is you're not forgiving," she concluded.

More dangerous than anger and hate is indifference. To be indifferent to suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. It is not a beginning, it is an end, and it is always the friend to the enemy. —Elie Wiesel

How do you "re-parent" yourself? Even if you know how to parent someone else—that doesn't mean you know how to parent yourself.

Self-compassion is such a basic skill, I instinctively taught it to my own children. Yet, I failed to recognize I didn't have it for myself.

In childhood as well as adulthood, each time I shared my feelings with someone, the chosen confidant denied my perceptions

I didn't understand the experience of receiving empathy, or that I could even successfully seek empathy.

Her conclusions were not always favorable, but she rarely aired her negative opinions about others even to her closest friends.

Our goal, then, is not to eliminate the feelings of anger from our parental repertoire. We couldn't, even if we wanted to. Rather, it is to find ways to express ourselves when we are angry that do not hurt, insult, demean, or inspire revenge and rage in our children.

Living virtuously is how we live well with others. Seneca's claim is that social fellowship is finely textured, a matter of noticing a furrowed brow, an air of arrogance, a groan, hesitation, or on the positive side, the warmth of a smile or a shared laugh.

On rare occasions, I find I have only to think about asking Eli for something—a transition from walk to trot, say, or a change of rhythm within the trot—for him to oblige me. At such moments, I believe that I have finally found my religion. I

To her, everything is beautiful in its own way, and everyone is a friend just waiting for her. And somehow it works for her.

He was just a sixteen-year old boy who had been killed, a kid whose photo had been in the paper, a kid who would mostly be forgotten by the time the newspaper went into the garbage-yet he was the universe, all the dying, all the crying. He was everyone who had ever died young.

This thing she did, her empathy and concern, turned out to have the unfortunate consequence of driving people away.

It hurts my heart, too, sweetie, but you know what? Sometimes crying is a kind of cure. Sometimes that's what the body and the heart need to do. It's hard to watch, but it's not always a bad thing.