Empathy is Recovery

Do you feel you’re in tune with your doctor? What is patient engagement? Patient engagement is having an empathetic and trusting relationship with your provider, which is formed with mutual respect and understanding as it is a give and take response with the doctor and consumer or patient whom have active roles with one another. So what is empathy? Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s thoughts, feelings and experiences in a relationship.
Empathy allows the clinicians, doctors or others to connect with consumers.
Communication and listening is a very important part in the understanding of the consumer, patients needs and should be kept simple so that there is an understanding between doctor, clinician and patient. With the use of empathy a patient can understand and respect and learn by being listened to and can become more involved in their treatment and psychiatric needs. As a consumer I have somewhat a hard time expressing myself verbally and I feel weak when having to express my feelings or emotions, yet as I grow to understand the definitions and verbal usage of the doctors I associate myself with I know what I am seeing as this weakness. I grow stronger with a lot more courage. As consumers we can grow out of the mental and physical deterrents’ of our illness by understanding what empathy is and how we may use it, to make choices which empower us to grow.
Empathy allows the therapist to understand what the patients or consumers are experiencing. By knowing their emotions and listening, they can help and understand the patients and empower them to become active in their treatment and recovery.
Engage With Empathy : Health in 30
Written by Donald S.

The Idea of Empathy

Empathy is the sharing of feelings and or ideas of another person or persons. There are ways to reach others how to handle their emotions which is through trust and empathy. These two aspects help in learning and coping with emotions through verbalizing in a way that the experience of learning and coping are understood by the mental health consumer. I for a long time, having used drugs throughout my mid-teens to middle adult life, had a hard time at understanding or being understood. I was frustrated, and had a hard time acquiring my needs, I didn’t know how to express my true feelings anymore and basically “vegetated” and identified with anyone who was at the bottom of the “heap”. Empathy is real, it is responding in a way that others are as satisfied as you are or want to be, reflecting and expressing yourself in a proper way in respect to feelings of others. It was difficult at that time in my life, harboring anger, and discontent towards others, yet with the compassion of mental health workers, case managers, therapist and other consumers, I began to build self esteem and listen and know what expressions brought good feelings which helped me to understand that I could think of good ideas and solve problems by associating with others instead of living in frustration. Learning to involve yourself, with people with similar aspirations helps build friendships and strength of character. This involves empathy, yet as we are climbing from the depths of a well, the apathy, the lack of interest or motivation has to become something other than the indifference we live. The helplessness and anxiety exit yet when understanding and support of our weakness is understood the apathy gives way to empathy, and then we begin to develop our identity and know the importance of respect for our fellow beings. Written by Donald Sammons