Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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10 practices

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If you can do a cutting impression of someone, you already own the machinery for empathy. It is the same copying, pointed somewhere else.

People who get angry often are usually sharp readers of other people. They catch the tone, the face, the walk, and can play it back exactly. Try that…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 49:11One line of research

You can drop the neuroscience and keep the instruction. Look at the person's face, and at their eyes in particular, and let what you see land on you.

The advice does not need a mechanism to be worth following. Look at the person while they are speaking instead of at your own next sentence. Let…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 28:23One line of research

The real feeling usually crosses someone's face for less than a second before the polite version arrives. If your attention is elsewhere, the polite version is all you will ever meet.

This is why paying attention is not a separate hobby from being kind. They are the same work. Put the phone face down, look up when someone starts…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 90:14One line of research

You can feel for the child in front of you and still keep the consequence you set. Being moved was never meant to be the thing that decides.

It happens to everybody. You are firm, then you see the crumpled face, something turns over in you, and the consequence quietly disappears. What the…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 2:220One line of research

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Breaking the worry loop

Food, caffeine and fuel

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When you use something to cope

Choosing your response

Growing empathy

Reading, numbers and learning differences

When anger turns to harm

Making it stick

When everything feels flat

Self-compassion

Emotions as signals

Anger, alcohol and the body

Facing it a step at a time

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Tolerate distress

Obsessions and compulsions

Use your strengths

Being seen and judged

Touch and bodywork

Help someone grieving

Shame

Rest and pacing

Question the thought

Practising under provocation

When you notice you have stopped really being there with someone, change your body before you try to change your effort. Sit forward, unfold your arms, turn to face them properly.

Attention goes late in the day, and trying harder to care rarely brings it back. Moving does. Feet planted, hands open, shoulders squared to them,…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 3:159One line of research

Years of putting up with things build a thicker skin, and that same skin is what stops you being reached by the person in front of you. It can thin again.

Nobody sets out to get harder. It happens quietly, one shrug at a time, until a story that would have undone you at twenty barely registers at forty.…

Five minutesGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 93:9One line of research

There is more than one way into someone else's world. You can picture yourself in their place, picture them in it, or simply let their state affect you, and the three do not feel the same or lead to the same place.

Picturing yourself in their place tends to raise your own distress, which can leave you wanting relief more than wanting to help them. Picturing them…

Five minutesGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 17:24One line of research

Give yourself an instruction you can rehearse. Copy one thing about how the other person is holding themselves, once a day, and notice what follows.

Advice like be more understanding gives you nothing to practise. Advice like match their pace when they speak gives you something you can do on a…

Five minutesGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 107:7One line of research

If it really is that you feel too much for people, the useful move is not more feeling. It is learning to say no while still meaning them well.

Naming your softness as something that gets used is what makes a limit bearable to set. You are not becoming colder. You are stopping the slow build…

Five minutesGrowing empathyCBTQur’an 16:90One line of research

Go long enough without company and almost anyone will do. That is worth knowing about yourself, and worth watching for in someone who lives alone.

Loneliness does not make you a poor judge of character on purpose. It just lowers the bar until whoever turns up seems fine. The steadier answer is…

Twenty minutesGrowing empathyMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:8One line of research