The empathy map: navigating cognitive, emotional and compassionate empathy

am.

I feel like an absolute idiot.

Why? For a long time, I had no idea that there were different types of empathy.

I didn't either.

And that some types of empathy were more protective as a practitioner.

in the work sense than other types of empathy.

And I also had no idea that empathy and compassion kind of are used interchangeably, but they're very different things and they sit in different parts of our brain.

So when we access compassion, when we access empathy, different neural pathways are lit up.

i knew none of this i knew they were different and think and passion but i didn't know they say different parts of our brain yeah so that's that's cool to know isn't it it's

very cool to know i think empathy is a um rabbit hole that you could fall down um there is so much to know about empathy and when i think about empathy i don't think i've ever been taught or told enough about empathy I think in the early 2000s empathy became quite a big buzzword I remember, and I link it to Brene Brown, who's an amazing social work researcher, talks a lot about leadership and empathy.

But I distinctly remember in around 2005, in our context, some of our selection criteria became having empathetic skills and the ability to use them in work.

I distinctly remember writing job applications talking about my empathetic skills.

So what are they?

Well, hilarious that I wrote about it.

Got some jobs and I think I, in a layman's term, thought empathy was feeling with other people.

So if I was thinking about how I can be empathetic, I could listen to a client's story and I could put myself in their shoes.

That was often the...

It was always about the shoes,

wasn't

it? Put yourself in their shoes.

And then to do that, though, you actually have to access the emotions that they're feeling as if they're your own.

So you take yourself to this place of putting yourself in someone's shoes and then you begin to access these emotions, right? Because I'm feeling with.

That is, in very layman's terms, how I understood empathy for a long time.

See, and that's so dangerous when you think about... burnout yes and you think about what that does to the to the practitioner

absolutely and it is one of the uh quickest ways to get to burnout to access emotional empathy with clients so for a long time I did not know this and I just thought that was empathy putting yourself in someone else's shoes accessing the emotions feeling the emotions and as you said in a work sense how dangerous is that to keeping us well and safe at work psychologically and sustaining ourselves.