“Love your neighbour as yourself” doesn’t mean you can’t love yourself until you love your neighbour. Here’s what it’s really about…
Category archives: Empathy
Empathy is an act of imagination
I was recently in a conversation with a friend who asked my opinion on something related to men, to which I responded with my standard question when people request my thoughts: “What do you think?” Basically, I feel like I can respond better when I know where you’re coming from: what your thoughts already are and what […]
A question of empathy
In which I explore the difference it would make if we re-imagined reviews as an exercise in empathy.
It’s hard to recognise my own emotional problems
The value of emotional insight Photo credit: Dmitry Ratushny (via Unsplash) It might seem weird: how, you might wonder, does a person not know they have emotional problems? Especially someone like me, who’s trained in mental healthcare. There’s several ways to answer that question, but for now let’s just say it’s sort of like how […]
Can we all just admit life gets tiresome?
A meditation on living with existential dread (Photo credit: Mario Azzi) Death doesn’t make me as anxious as life—and living—does. And I know I can’t be the only one. Right? Right? I don’t know for sure if that’s something everyone feels. Like, I’m sure there are those who know of what I speak, but I’m not […]
Why you should stop saying “I can’t imagine what you’re going through”
And why going through similar stuff as people isn’t that essential The reason, in one word: empathy. But I’ll need to unpack that, so read on. When stuff happens to people and we say, “I can’t imagine what you must be going through,” I get it but I think it’s misguided. I think we mean to […]
How being clumsy made me a better teacher
And how my experience can help you. Yep, this would be me. I’ve always been a little clumsy. It’s why I’ve never ever been great at sports — any sport. Not that I was outrightly terrible, mind you: I did achieve passable competence at football and table tennis (with a lot of practice, but who’s asking?). Wondering what I […]
How to relate with (and help) an insecure person
…without driving yourself nuts Everyone knows and has to relate with an insecure person. Maybe it’s your boss, or a colleague, or a friend, or a spouse. This article is for the scenario where the insecure person is someone you care about — which probably rules out boss and colleague, but who knows? (Not that I couldn’t write […]
The German word that’s changed how I see people
(Bonus: an exercise to go with it that you can do with kids) Early on in my psychiatry training, I was exposed to two concepts that never actually came up in any exams. But they stuck in my head, because they helped make sense of something I’d observed as a generally practising doctor, and have proved […]
Not all thinking about death is morbid
A meditation on “dark” subjects Photo: Neil Thomas I often think about what others consider dark topics. Pain. Suffering. Death. Evil. And I’m not just interested in them for their own sake — which is why I don’t consider my interest morbid (as some have described it), but rather for the questions that they raise. I’ve always been one to ask […]