Why feelings and words for them are important

In order to feel empathy, you need to understand others. Understanding and empathy are easy when you yourself have experienced the same thing. How can you feel empathy when someone else is going through something you have no experience from? Answer: feelings, and words for them.

Example 1 when it is easy to feel empathy:

Your friend goes through a hard breakup. You yourself, having gone through the same thing, have a good understanding of how it feels and can thus empathize easily.

Example 2 when it is harder to feel empathy:

Your friend is under a lot of stress from work and family, and thus making plans with friends feels very stressful to add to their calendar. You have never had a similar experience and have a hard time understanding why they feel it to be stressful to meet friends.

However, if your friend can communicate what feelings they are feeling — then you can relate to that because you have probably felt the same feelings in some other situation. So communicating feelings is a way to make others understand what you are going through even when they themselves have not gone through the exact same thing.

In example 2 your friend might say they are feeling heavily anxious and stressed. Constantly thoughts moving in their mind, making it hard to sleep. This is then easy for you to understand, even though you have never gone through the same thing. Maybe. Haha. Anyway, remember to communicate how you feel if you want to expect people to understand — especially if it is a unique situation.

Thanks for reading.