All about Empathy: Metaphors of Empathy

Center for Building a Culture of Empathy

Home Conference Magazine Empathy Tent Services Newsletter Facebook Youtube Contact Search

Join the International Conference on: How Might We Build a Culture of Empathy and Compassion?

Empathic Design
Empathy Circles
Restorative Empathy Circles
Empathy Tent
Training
Conference
Magazine
Expert Interviews
Obama on Empathy

References
    Books
    Conferences
    Definitions
    Experts (100+)
    History
    Organizations
    Quotations
    Empathy Tests

Metaphors of Empathy - What is your metaphor of empathy?

Metaphors sorted by the different aspects or parts of Empathy. Empathy is like:

Self Empathy

A fountain or spring flowing freely

Mirrored Empathy

Strings tuned to the same frequency.

Empathy Is Like Surfboard Riding; "Empathy, I would say is presence. Pure presence to what is alive in a person at this moment, bringing nothing in from the past. The more you know a person, the harder empathy is. The more you have studied psychology, the harder empathy really is. Because you can bring no thinking in from the past. If you surf, you'd be better at empathy because you will have built into your body what it is about. Being present and getting in with the energy that is coming through you in the present. It is not a mental understanding."
Question: "Is it speaking from the heart?"
Rosenberg: "What? Empathy? In empathy, you don't speak at all. You speak with the eyes. You speak with the body. If you say any words at all, it's because you are not sure you are with the person. So you may say some words. But the words are not empathy. Empathy is when the other person feels the connection to with what's alive in you." Marshall Rosenberg:

Ike Lasater - Empathy is like a Reflecting Mountain Lake

Empathy is like a sixth sense in that it presents us with emotional information.

Reflective Empathy

Larry Rosen - Empathy is like a Magic Mirror

Imaginative Empathy

Standing in someone else's shoes.

Looking through someone else's eyes.

Empathy is like reading someone else’s story: being one with the characters and events and feeling the emotions of the main character. It is living life with others with a certain mindfulness: observing, listening, and understanding.

Empathic Creativity and Action

Feel Of Empathy
Metaphors of what does empathy feel like as a felt experience.

The Effects of Empathy

Sort

Empathy is like going on a journey with the other person, a journey where neither of us knows where we are heading and where we will be when we arrive.

Trying to observe the slow shift from self-centeredness to empathy is like trying to watch grass grow. — Neal Maxwell.

Empathy is like gravity: its effects on a small scale are apparently modest, but observed on a global scale, the effect is so overwhelming as to create the environment that houses every other interaction. To study the effects of empathy upon individual survival without fully understanding the effects of empathy upon the survival of the species is like running meticulous crash tests but ignoring road conditions. Betsy Shebang

Empathy is like jazz. Jazz requires listening to the experience, rather than just hearing the instruments

When empathy is at its best, the two individuals are participating in a process which may be compared to that of a couple dancing, the client leading, the therapist following: the smooth, spontaneous back and forth flow of energy in the interaction has its own ascetic rhythm (Raskin and Rogers, 1989, p 157)

Like two galaxies coming together, which represents two souls coming together. Edwin Rutsch

Like the Universe - Edwin Rutsch

Like a cornucopia, Edwin Rutsch

Social Glue that binds us together. Edwin Rutsch

Like disco balls reflecting each other. Each person is like a disco ball with hundreds of mirrors that reflect the outside world.. When we become fearful some of the mirror start to shut down. Edwin Rutsch

Casting loose from the moorings to enter the deep waters of the other person (Rick Hanson)

to have enough confidence - this is were differentiation comes in
studies show that people who have pores boundaries actually have a hard time sustaining empathy
it's like Goldilocks and the 3 bears
not to hot, not to cold, not to close, not to distant - it's the sweet spot that promotes empathy
So to enter the deep waters of another persons thoughts, feelings, complex dynamics - wow, you've got to have some confidence that you're not going to get swallowed up and never come out alive.

From Dante's inferno - the angel Virgil goes into hell with Dante (Rick Hanson)

it's like a companion that goes with you.
they have an arm on your shoulder and they look out with you at the world
instead of sitting across from you looking over at you
I see the landscape of the mind is like lovely flowers and dark and smelly bogs.
One way of doing empathy is to look over and say I see it
Another way is to jump over with the other person, put your arm on their shoulder and look at t