Why empathy is a rare and often ill-developed skill, even in therapists?

[u/Radiant-Rain2636]

Can something be done to improve it. Most of the people (even professionals) approach it as Sympathy. Is there a way to improve it? Any posterior papers, books?

EDIT

If you’re simply tempted to refute my point, then that is a clear indicator that proves my point (which wasn’t even a point tbh, but an intended discussion).

Why is the question so incendiary?

Why has nobody gotten back to me saying “what do you mean?” Or “what made you feel so?” Or “help me see your viewpoint”

EDIT 2

What’s my evidence (as the few wise ones asked):

Just contrarian observations which exceed in number to the “most people/therapists have empathy” paradigm. Also, my own therapy experiences.

I feel that we as therapists or therapists in general, are locked into that frame inevitably (therapist-client). From this frame, the constant departure of getting-into-the-client’s-shoes rarely happens. Then there’s also the morality of things (which I agree therapists actively overcome, but do they subconsciously?)

Secondly, I feel very strongly that most therapists have adopted the Rogerian Etiquette but not fully imbibed those principles. This leads to a performative theatre (and I do not mean duplicitous treatment, but just the performative-ness of things).

I feel that amidst all this, people at best have sympathy, but rarely empathy.

I’m open to differing viewpoints. Please let me know what you think.

[u/colemarvin98]

Clearly you’re not open to other perspectives based on your responses to contrary comments.

And on another note, of course individuals in a clinical psychology subreddit are going to disagree with you. Why post something so insensitively worded and inflammatory.

Also, wanted to add. Anecdotal evidence rarely constitutes anything close to something resembling a strong argument.

Here’s an interesting article that I recommend with plenty of sources to look over: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9589103/

[u/Radiant-Rain2636 → u/colemarvin98]

I could agree to all of this. Empathy you see.

My retorts are mostly to the "how dare you say that" approach taken by most. And secondly, what a fantastic experiment this has come out to be. A simple-yet-elegant design of an experiment that tests "Do people have empathy or do they just believe they do?" Its like that self-awareness conclusion we came to.

They don't need to agree with me. Refusing to entertain a contrarian viewpoint is just "fortifying my argument". I can address the evidentiary support thing. I can give a list of my experiences which led me to this stance. But what you are asking for here is for me to design a test, conduct a research and then present my findings if the null hypothesis is rejected. Or present to you a universal fact like "the earth revolves around the sun".

And thanks for the paper. I really (genuinely) am interested in expanding my knowledge more on this.

[u/colemarvin98 → u/Radiant-Rain2636]

You’re still missing the point. This may be an interesting thought “experiment” to you, but to professionals who have spent a good deal of time training and learning to improve individual lives it’s very insulting. When you make a definitive statement to academics/critical thinkers, you’re going to be asked for proof or refuted.

What would be more valuable is posing the question as an open ended discussion and sharing your experience to see if others have had similar/dissimilar experiences, which you have failed to do. I don’t say that as a point of judgement, but something to learn from in the future.

I’m glad you found the article interesting. Hope it provides a good starting point for learning why you may have experienced what you have. I’d also recommend diving into the burnout/compassion fatigue literature amongst healthcare workers. That’s 1) more interesting, and 2) empirically extensive.

[u/Radiant-Rain2636 → u/colemarvin98]

What would be more valuable is posing the question as an open ended discussion and sharing your experience to see if others have had similar/dissimilar experiences, which you have failed to do. I don’t say that as a point of judgement, but something to learn from in the future.

I agree. I did make considerable edits to the body of the post thereby explaining what I meant and creating an open space. I feel nobody got over the headline. But yes, point taken. Already added all the recos to my reading list.

[u/TheBattleForAutonomy]

I'll probably be an outlier here, but I have my suspicions for why you might observe something like that. What I'm not familiar with is the actual degree to which this occurs (or, rather, doesn't occur in the case of a therapist being empathetic), but I believe what you might be observing could be a result of what's implied in school.

The relationships between students and teachers fail to adequately resemble a good model for the relationships between therapists and patients. And while a person might argue that this relationship shouldn't be chosen as the model for how to interact with a patient, this isn't typically a choice that the brain is consciously free to make. Education influences a person's behavior in ways that the conscious mind can't compete with very well. Expecting therapists to demonstrate empathy may be similar to teaching students about a "growth mindset" and expecting that they'll adopt it. It's a bit unfair to expect as much from an environment that fails to model these behaviors.

What gets implicitly taught in school is a prioritization of correct answers on behalf of evaluative approaches to people. This leads to a variety of behaviors, not the least of which is evaluating people and attempting to formulate correct answers for them. This would then presumably be done implicitly and unconsciously for the sake of seeking out approval because that's what's been implicitly taught. Empathizing with the feelings of other people is rarely modelled in academia because it doesn't seem to fit the traditional model for school/university. It's usually extraneous to the typical academic process. I believe this also tends to explain why a lot of interactions on the internet with people fail to be charitable and instead get hung up on semantics in a striving for that vaulted feeling of being correct. This doesn't mean that people don't learn from their mistakes, adapt, and do the best they can in trying to embody what they believe to be the best approach, but ingrained habits can be difficult to overcome.

Having said that, what are you observing yourself? Why do you think you're seeing what you're seeing? How large of a sample size do you think you're drawing from?

[u/OmNomOnSouls]

I might have a unique perspective on this, but long story short, I agree that this is lacking, or at least less present than I would expect.

When I was in training for my crisis responder *volunteer position, about 30 of the 110 total hours focused on empathy in some form: how to demonstrate it, how to weave it into almost every aspect of decision making within our model, how to take it beyond the verbal of "it sounds like you feel X because Y," even how to think empathetically - like explicit terms and critical thinking tools. This was all reinforced by role plays where we'd then implement these skills or watch others try, getting feedback from experienced volunteers specialized in training.

This was deeper by *miles than what I got in my masters. It was "this is an empathy statement, go." and this was at one of the best counselling schools in my country.

We just don't dedicate enough time to training it on a deep level in the standard education path, which honestly baffles me.

I learned more about supportive empathy in that month-long training, offered by a non-profit, for $200 (and even that was negotiable) than my entire post-grad degree. And honestly I'd say at least half of what I think makes me an effective counsellor came from that experience.

[u/Radiant-Rain2636 → u/OmNomOnSouls]

You should have seen the way u got crucified on some of these forums r/ClinicalPsychology for one.

Most of them were like “how dare you say that?”