Empathy

A term with many meanings. The one I wish to elaborate on is the ability that some people have to read people. To get a grasp of what another is feeling or thinking. A person with such an ability can be called an empath.

This ability generally works by placing yourself in the other person's shoes as it were. You observe their behaviour, movements, eyes, everything and you subconsciously think "What would I be thinking to cause that behaviour?". You overlay your experience and feeling onto their behaviour and get an overall jest of what they might be thinking. Experience and practice makes it more precise and the more you know someone the more you can associate their behaviour with their feelings from the past and get it even more precise.

This trick is very useful in business, when talking about a project to read the client on the fly and adjust the briefing, presentation and explanations at will. The better you get at it the more natural your presentation or explanation seems and the better the client's impression is. I think most good businessmen are pretty decent empaths in that regard.

The problem with this trick is that its not something most empaths can simply turn on or of. It becomes a part of their personality. So much so that they often don't even realize that they are doing it. They think they have formed an opinion on facts and proof when it was actually just empathy. And one would think that this would be great, but don't forget, in most cases this empathy is based on overlaying your own opinions onto another person's behaviour. The empath is not literally reading their mind. Now within specific situations like business presentations there is usually a general theme, a common goal and similar ideas/opinions. This makes the margin of error much lower. However when an empath's ability is applying itself on a personal or social level where deeper emotions are concerned or across different cultures and backgrounds it becomes unreliable at best and painfully wrong at worst.

Assumptions made this way can cause paranoia, emotional distress and all kinds of other negative reactions. It can break up relationships and close an empath off socially from those around them. Empaths should be aware of their ability, use it in situations where it can be beneficial and always remember that it is just a hint of someone's feelings based on their own experience and not absolute truth.

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