Empathy Analysis

Empathy, is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. It’s trying to understand how someone feels in relation to what’s going on in their lives without any judgment, it’s trying to find a memory in your life that connects to theirs and to put yourself back into that place to really know how they feel. I think empathic listening would be one of the best ways to help someone who is feeling troubled, it requires no judgment as well as understanding, it is said that when a troubled person feels empathy and understood they will feel a burden get lifted off their shoulders.
When I was in grade six, my best friend had just told me she was moving out to Calgary. I come from Nova-Scotia. It was the hardest thing I had ever went through up to that moment, …show more content…
She broke up with her boyfriend of two years, took her baby and moved out of her parents’ home into the baby’s father’s parents’ house. She started working for her father to make money for rent as well as supporting herself. She was doing very good for herself when one of our very old friends and her connected again, this girl was a prostitute in downtown Halifax. It wasn’t very hard as my friend was in a very vulnerable state, to convince her to come down to the hotel room with her for one night and just try it. She did tell me about the first night, and I felt for her and didn’t give her any judgement just hoped it wasn’t going to be reoccurring. She started doing it every weekend and she would come to me when she lost herself, it was difficult because I had always been there for her, but when she kept on doing it, and lying about it then telling me later on I had a hard time feeling any empathy for her at all because I felt she was just doing this to herself. The barriers present were the lies, my constant worry that I wouldn’t have to hear a horrible story about another prostitute getting murdered so I started to distance myself. I stopped giving her the attention that she wanted, and also needed, and this is when things went from bad to worse, she got into lots of drugs and went on to lose custody of her baby. I feel bad today because I don’t feel I was good enough of a friend. I should have listened with open ears and without judgment because this was by far the hardest time of her life. I was never accepting of what she was doing or why she would do this, but I know now I shouldn’t have been judgmental because I have never been in her position. If I were open to listening, it could have prevented her from going back to the people in town to help where she was a year ago and we don’t have any contact with each other anymore. her get