This is another article I did in the Imagine magazine about having empathy. To view the rest of the magazine, see the link below.
Got Empathy? 
Is empathy something that some people are naturally born with and others aren’t? Is it a learned trait or an inherent quality to be brought forward? How can we help our youth deepen in empathy?
There is a significant amount of neurological research today that indicates the prefrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to mature. In fact, it doesn’t become fully formed until a person reaches his or her mid-twenties. These studies say that due to an immature prefrontal cortex, teenagers tend to make irrational decisions and exhibit a poor sense of empathy. I can partially appreciate these conclusions because I have worked with teens that exhibit a sense of invincibility and have a lower fear factor than most adults. But as far as empathy goes, I’m not so sure I agree.
In my mentoring practice, I see many teens that express concern and caring for others, including their parents. I also see the other side of
the spectrum where teens seem to be completely self-absorbed. I’ve often wondered why it is hard for many of them to have real experiences of empathy.
Here are a few my observations:
Teens often do not take time to stop and think about how their actions might affect themselves, let alone others. They are more inclined to be running off to do the next exciting thing. This can set up a habit of making the same mistakes over and over. Interestingly, it just doesn’t occur to them to do anything else.
Teens are me-centric. As parents, we actually train them to be this way when we allow our world to neurotically revolve around their needs and desires. When teens are caught up in their emotions and hormonal ups and downs, it can be difficult for them to transfer any sensitivity or concern to someone else. Many teens have challenges expressing how they feel. Asking them to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and imagine how they feel might not be easy.
Bottom line: I believe it is up to us as parents, guardians, and teachers to use opportunities that arise to help bring forth the inherent, and often latent, capacity for empathy in our youth. We can do this by taking time to talk with them about situations that might come up in school. Ask questions like, “What would it feel like if you had a learning disability and the kids at school were making fun of you and you were eating lunch alone everyday?” Engage in dialog about difficult issues around the world, and not just about what is happening, but how the people and even animals must feel in those situations. Expose them to challenging conditions and have them consider what it would be like if it were actually happening to them. It’s hard to cultivate empathy for others when you don’t take the time to slow down and imagine walking in their shoes.
Recently I was introduced to a young woman named Erin Staadecker, who is currently the program director for seniors in an assisted living facility in Seattle. She shared some of her earlier experiences that led up to a college project where she put herself in the shoes of a homeless person and what she learned about herself.
Erin’s story
I was raised by two highly socially-mindful parents who brought me to homeless shelters since the age of three; I endured my own trials with adoption and personal loss and grew up in a generation that speaks fairly candidly about racism, sexism, classism, and any ism we can rally around. To top it off, I’m a woman! So I should have this handled. Whatever the true source of human empathy, I’m discovering it’s a mountain with no top, and my relationship to it is constantly transforming.
When I was four I explained to my mother, very matter-of-factly, that we are all brothers and sisters and we need to take care of each other. I recall in fourth grade, standing up for the nerdy kid being bullied at recess. As one of the “cool kids” I couldn’t exactly identify, but was nonetheless intuitively called to action. Even after I moved to a different town, he and I wrote letters because somehow I knew he would need my friendship. Had I known the word for it at four or ten years old, I probably would have called that empathy.
It’s no surprise that when I got to college at the University of Arizona, my friends and I started the Social Justice League—not to be confused with the league of universe-defending superheroes, although we often fashioned ourselves as such in the name of the aforementioned “isms.” We hosted lectures, demonstrations, peaceful marches, fundraisers and the like to address issues ranging from sex trafficking, immigration and fair trade as the catalyst for social change, to religious intolerance, domestic partnership benefits, and LGBTQ rights. We were an extraordinary group of young men and women with a huge commitment to a world that works for everyone and no one is left out. Years later, I’m proud to say our Social Justice League members have continued with vocational work to affect change in their communities, institutions, society, and the world.
In Fall of 2009, the Social Justice League chose to spotlight the issue of homelessness, particularly given that Tucson’s homeless community was largely hidden due to privatization of sidewalks and laws about sleeping in public. Over 17,000 homeless people lived virtually unseen in the city. Despite being one of the world’s large human rights issues, homelessness was silently spreading in our own backyard.
We quickly realized that to make a difference we couldn’t simply watch a movie, hand out a pamphlet, or merely picket to “end homelessness.” We wanted to understand it, experience it, and to really author our own experience, we had to live it. So we decided to get as close as we could get. For one week, about 20 of us surrendered the luxuries of privileged life: no showers, beds, stocked refrigerators, cell phones, computers, washing machines, or money. Each person was allowed a change of clothes and whatever schoolwork we needed for the week (we were conducting this simulation on campus, after all, and were still expected to attend class). If you had asked me then if we were out to discover empathy, I probably would have said no, we were out to “raise awareness,” “put a face to homelessness,” “educate our peers,” “raise civil discourse,” or something like that.
During the day we built Tentropolis, a tent city on the UA’s campus mall, very central to passersby and hard to miss. When not in class, we confined ourselves to this area. We dined from a soup kitchen provided with leftovers from campus dining services. At night we packed up our few belongings and slept in a mock shelter, complete with nightly registration protocol and a hard gymnasium floor. Tentropolis participants spoke up in their classrooms and a few of our classmates came forward as being homeless youth, living out of their cars and barely scraping together tuition. Community leaders, activists, and members of the homeless community joined us in demonstration. We collected donations for a local shelter, and yes, there were still picket signs. As the universe would have it, on the first night of Tentropolis, one of my dear friends was killed in a tragic accident. I was overcome with grief but let it become a part of my Tentropolis experience. A homeless woman would have to experience her grief all the same.
Even though we were in our early twenties, we were still not arrogant enough to say that we now “understood” homelessness, or had actually been homeless. We only went a week without the luxuries of home, but we still had the suspended promise of a home at the end of seven days. I also knew I had the support of friends and family supporting my cause, as well as professors who endorsed our work. But that week challenged my senses, my values, my comfort; it triggered my fight and flight instincts, left me feeling helpless, empowered, annoyed, and vulnerable. I grieved the loss of a friend and felt naked in front of people. What I got was a deep connection with people—with the experience of being human—that is available when I am willing to make myself vulnerable to someone else’s experience. I discovered humility when I look at a homeless man begging for “anything helps” at an intersection, and that I have no idea what that person is dealing with. They are still human, just like me. I may not completely share or understand their feelings or experience, but I still honor them. Tentropolis allowed me to give up the right to know someone’s story at first glance. I discovered an access to love.
Therein lies a dilemma, and the next transformation in my relationship to empathy. Tentropolis was six years ago, and I can’t always undergo a week-long simulation to “stand in another’s moccasins,” as my mother would say. It’s also easier—and safer—to show empathy to a stranger. Even now as I embark on a career in Assisted Living and Memory Care, caring for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, which requires a high level of empathy, I cannot, nor do I want to “understand or share” the feelings of my residents. I cannot locate myself in their brains; honestly that terrifies me. Yet I still possess an extraordinary ability to be with my residents’ feelings, without making them wrong for that which is no longer in their control. Do I get frustrated? Absolutely. Am I always the beacon of empathy, grace, and patience? No. Sometimes I turn off my empathy to avoid being a puddle on the floor.
So my next step: having empathy unconditionally for the people I love the most, and being empathic towards the people who scare me.
