Empathy is necessary for our emotional health

On many occasions we talk about how we have to be ourselves first and then others, and that is fine, since we are our priority. Then there is the typical phrase that says "Think of others before yourself, have empathy" and it is important to clarify that empathy, self-love or our personality are totally different concepts.

It is important to emphasize that empathy is the one that allows us to recognize what another person feels, it makes us more understandable, human in itself. While self-love is to give us our value, to be ourselves, to love ourselves, to want to become our priority, among other things, being this the difference between the two.

Thanks to empathy we can know when a person (whether a family member, friend or even a stranger) is sad, angry or going through a difficult situation. In conclusion, it is putting yourself in the other person's shoes, feeling or respecting how the other person feels, respecting their way of thinking, giving their opinion or living.

For example, when a family member or a friend does not treat you with empathy and is not able to understand you, minimizing your problems, it is tiring and hurts.

Personally, I am a very empathetic person, I care a lot about others, sometimes I identify with people, I like to understand them and help them as much as I can, also, thanks to such situations I learn with the person and grow mentally, because every day is a new teaching, a new help for them as well as for me.

Without leaving aside that being empathetic brings many benefits to our mental health, such as:

• It helps us to connect with other people and because of this, we will be able to improve our interpersonal relationships.

• It makes us be more objective, that is to say, to put ourselves in the other person's place, making it easier for us to understand them without prejudice.

• Being empathic strengthens our esteem, that is, it helps us to grow emotionally, because we know new perspectives of life of the people with whom we relate. It also helps us to improve our emotional health.

But, what can we do for our empathy to emerge?

Here below, I will leave you some recommendations that will surely help you see life from different perspectives, which makes our empathy flow towards other people:

• Relate with others: It is fine to spend time alone and believe only in your ideology, but sometimes it is good to know the opinions of others and their personality, this helps to see things very differently, plus you will get another kind of information.

• Activities: Doing any activity, helps us to see life from an unusual perspective.

• Listen to others: In definitely, opening up and listening to others about seeing life in their own way, helps to understand the why of their actions, creating in us new perspectives on life itself.

Remember that you are not obligated to be an empathic person, it's all up to you, if you want to be one, go ahead and do it, it would be great and I support it.

I hope you liked this article and I hope you enjoyed it, remember that not everything only affects our physical health, but our mental health as well!

Tell me, what did you think and your opinion about it?