My time acting the part of a patient to teach medical students, and then becoming a real patient myself, taught me the nature of learning empathy.
In this sense, empathy isn’t just measured by checklist item 31—voiced empathy for my situation/problem—but by every item that gauges how thoroughly my experience has been imagined.
Empathy isn’t just remembering to say that must really be hard—it’s figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all.
Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to.
Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing.
Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.
Empathy means realizing no trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries. Sadness becomes a seizure.
Empathy demands another kind of porousness in response.
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Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking
the questions whose answers need
to be listened to.
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