As the new year begins and all of us are affected by the still-emerging long-term toll of the pandemic, we’d like to remind everyone that empathy can help strengthen resilience and deepen connections.
In our Project Resilience social emotional learning lessons, we explain to students and teachers: “Empathy is the ability to recognize what someone is feeling because you have had that emotion, too. It helps you imagine what they might be thinking and feeling.” Being able to walk in another person’s shoes is a fundamental part of human connection.
Empathetic people are able to listen, communicate, help others, and respond more appropriately to the people they share relationships with. Most often, empathy is associated with responding to others who are struggling with feelings of fear, isolation, anger, and loneliness. However, empathy can also equally apply to responding to positive feelings people experience, such as joy and success.
When we cultivate empathy in school communities, everyone benefits. A teacher shares how the school climate has improved through our services: “I feel that there is a general sense of increased compassion and empathy for everyone as we have gone through unprecedented ways to have students learn. I'm very happy about the focus on the whole person, starting from social emotional well-being, which can then allow academic learning.“
Likewise, students found empathy to be a valuable resilience skill:
“The most useful resilience skill was empathy because it helped me understand how others feel in different situations (good or bad). It also helped me understand that others react to a situation differently than you do, so you have to look at it in their perspective, to understand where they are coming from.”
“Empathy has been the most useful for me because it leads to patience and self-control when communicating with others.”
Imagine how our relationships and community can be strengthened if each of us practiced empathy in all of our interactions and daily approaches to work and life. This can inspire more kindness and connection with everyone around us.