39 Surprising Life Events That Only Make Sense When You Experience Them Yourself
Ever tried putting yourself in someone else’s shoes only to find out those shoes have three left feet and a few holes? Yeah, empathy—it’s that magical emotional intelligence trick that supposedly lets us connect deeply with others. But let’s be honest, hearing about someone’s heartbreak or loss often just doesn’t hit the same unless you’ve been through it yourself. So, can you really get what someone else feels without experiencing their story firsthand? The folks over at r/AskReddit think not—and they’ve shared some brutally honest takes on life events that are practically impossible to understand until you’ve lived them. To peel back the layers of this empathy onion, we chatted with Dr. Rodney Luster, a licensed professional counselor who breaks down why some moments just elude our best attempts at compassion. Ready to dive into stories that might just punch a hole in your “I totally get it” attitude? Let’s go. LEARN MORE
Empathy, a part of emotional intelligence, is one of the most important skills you’ll ever develop as a human being. It’s your way to genuinely connect with the people around you and strengthen your relationships with them. However, in some cases like serious illness or loss, your imagination and life experience aren’t always enough to truly put you in someone else’s shoes. At least, according to some internet users.
The members of the r/AskReddit community recently shared their thoughts on all of the things that people don’t fully understand until they happen to them. Scroll down to read their thoughts.
Bored Panda got in touch with licensed professional counselor Rodney Luster, Ph.D., who shed some light on empathy. You’ll find his insights below. Dr. Luster is the founder of Inspirethought and the host of the ‘More Than a Feeling’ blog on Psychology Today.
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Losing a beloved pet.
It’s one of those weird things where you can absolutely understand why they don’t get it. Because it doesn’t make much sense why it hurts so much.
They’re not blood related. Not even the same species.
They’re so far removed from us, that from the outside, it probably just looks like losing a favourite item that has sentimental value.
But let me tell you:
I’ve lost a lot of family members in my life. But *none* of those deaths compared to the sheer utter soul rending pain as losing my Dog was.
It is the only time in my life where I did not have a say, did not have any control, in my reaction.
“Empathy has several aspects to it. The first has something to do with ‘lived phenomenology,'” he explained to Bored Panda, meaning an individual who “has lived through something similar may have more ‘relatedness’ sociologically and psychologically to the person who is perhaps describing an event they went through.”
He continued: “This can be seen in some recent research where nurses report high levels of clinical empathy in their day-to-day interactions with patients. Their exposure to a variety of things makes this more feasible and accessible.”
“In the real world, empathic feedback is necessary for the empathizer to fully relate,” Dr. Luster said. He added that, otherwise, the distractions he mentioned earlier may greatly influence how a person responds. “Empathic feedback helps transform information in sensorimotor regions of the brain.”
We also asked Dr. Luster about someone ‘practicing’ to be more empathetic if they feel like they have a hard time connecting with others. He explained that this is directly related to empathizer feedback: “That aspect we require to encode and decode from our environment is needed, and when lacking, makes it harder to empathize.”
Dr. Luster gave an example of how this works. “If, for instance, I had trouble empathizing with someone from another religion, another generation, etc., instead of working off of any bias I may have because of bias-based elements I have taken in from my life, I might try learning a bit more about that person, why they believe what they believe, what is it like growing up in their generation, etc.,” he said.
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