)
n my four decades of work as an empath, I’ve
found that empathy is
without emotions, people would be completely
rst and foremost an
rational, like a computer, or like the hyper-logical
emotional skill. But in a culture where most
and seemingly unemotional Star Trek character,
people are confused by or upset about emotions,
Mr. Spock. However, nothing could be further
this fact can make empathy a dif cult thing to
from the truth. What Dr. Damasio discovered as
work with. Thankfully, I found a wonderful
he worked with many emotion-impaired patients
approach that makes working with emotions
throughout his career is that each emotion has a
easier, more fun, and more empathic
speci c role in the maintenance of essential social and cognitive functions. If you take
Emotions are actionrequiring neurological program
emotions away from people, they don’t become smarter; they become less able to function independently, they lose many of their interactional skills, and they often
In his work as a neuroscientist of emotion, Antonio Damasio has been able to study people who have lost their ability to feel some or all emotions. If you have been trained to think of
require direct assistance to care for and
protect
themselves
emotions as mostly problematic, you might think of these people as lucky. Many of us imagine that
.
fi
fi
s
.
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Excerpted from The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill