Engagement Concept: Empathy
Uploaded by CaseyP on Nov 13, 2016
Engagement Concept: Empathy
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Engagement Concept: Empathy
Introduction
When a person perceives, understands, experiences and responds to other people’s emotional state and ideas, it is said that such a person is empathetic. Empathy is an essential condition in the establishment of relationships in the society. Being able to put one in the shoes of others and take steps to experience the challenges that they face can prove to be the most worthwhile effort undertaken in trying to understand what other people go through. While it is possible to understand the feelings of other people, a true empathic skill takes into perspective the capacity for an emotional attachment (Birkenmaier et al., 2014). Empathy has a sense of incorporation of a client’s inner perspectives but at the same time retaining personal emotions in a bid to enhance decision making. This illustrates that though a social worker strives to travel through a client’s world, he or she does not lose his or her own objectivity. Empathy has also been described as vicarious introspection to mean that a social worker penetrates the inner world of the clients and at the same time reflects on the feelings invoked. Empathy has also been established as an essential ingredient and dispositional trait in the facilitation of communication skills. The two basic components associated with empathy include affective matching and cognitive component that is concerned with the ability to adopt other people’s perspective.
Summary and Application
Affective and cognitive are the two primary domains that enhance understanding of empathy in social work practice. The two domains lead to behavioral expressions. Affective includes the constructs of care to the target and congruence. Professional care is a specific form of interpersonal communication whereby one party applies the principles of a specific set of knowledge and skills; for example counseling with a goal of improving human condition. Congruence was a dimension proposed by Rogers and connotes being open, honest and non judgmental in helping a person. The cognitive dimension takes into perspective such factors as flexibility in decision making and intellectuality, openness in understanding and taking the perspectives of other people. Cognition also inculcates the ability to take another point of view regardless of the initial perception. It is paramount for a social worker to try and interpret and understand another person’s mental and emotional state if a fruitful conclusion was to be attained in the long run. Altruism and therapeutic relationships...