Principle Five:

Shared Experience

In dialogue, everyone’s statements and opinions are equal.  This implies any statement is valid because it comes from an individual’s own perspective (Borhan, 2023).

Empathy is understanding, sharing, and caring about the emotions of other people, and allows us to see things from their point of view (Depow et al., 2021).

 

Ask the client if they can authentically share someone’s experience and put themselves in their place?

 

 The activity below practices empathy which in turn helps to recognize other’s experiences are just as important as our own.   

 

Activity

Have the individual read the below story as if it was their own:

 

I live with a disability I was born with and because of it I use a wheelchair.  People often pass judgement on me for many reasons, but one that is quite upsetting is the number of hours I am able to work. 

In order to manage my complex medical needs, I receive government assistance and am at the mercy of their rules, such as the number of hours I am allowed to work and still maintain my benefits.  It makes me really angry that I don’t have any control over how much I can work, but I can’t manage my disability without this support.  It makes me angrier when I hear comments that people like me don’t want to work.  I wish people understood my situation differently before they passed judgement.

 

Discussion

Could you authentically put yourself in this person’s place? Have you ever had a situation were you were judged unfairly?

Can you appreciate this different point of view? How does this change your level of empathy?

How can you use empathy in future conversations?