EMPATHY
Empathy is the ability to recognize and relate to other people’s emotions and thoughts. Empathic thinking is often characterized as the willingness and ability to place oneself in another person’s situation, to feel another person’s feelings, or to recognize that another person might experience feelings in the same way as oneself. When we feel sympathy for someone we might view them with pity. While pity makes a victim of the sufferer, empathy empowers them: "i have a sense of your world, you are not alone, and we will go through this together".
Carl Rogers(1969), the founder of person centered counseling, concluded that the important elements of empathy are:
• The therapist understands the client's feelings
• The therapist's responses reflects the client's mood and the content of what has been said
• The therapist' tone of voice conveys the ability to share the client's feelings.

1.1 Role of Empathy in Therapy
Empathy is considered essential to therapy because for any therapeutic tactic to work, the therapist has to make the person in treatment feel understood. To do this, the therapist must not only understand what a person says in a therapy session but also understand what the person is not saying and communicate this understanding. Therapists who are highly empathic can help people in treatment face past experiences and obtain a greater understanding of both the experience and feelings surrounding it. Empathy is different from sympathy, which can imply pity, and conveying empathy is also not a passive process. A good therapist will generally be able to sense another person’s emotion through concentration and active listening, but the process requires continued engagement. Because empathy can be expressed in many ways, especially in therapy, there is no “right” way for a therapist to demonstrate understanding and acceptance to those in treatment
1.2 Three steps for showing empathy
• Step 1: Create a safe and nurturing environment for the client. This is both literal and figurative. The area should be uncluttered and private. The counselor should be a calming presence.
• Step 2: Use encouraging behaviors to prompt the counseling client to share more information about his life circumstance. These include non-verbal cues such as open body posture and verbal cues such as “um,” “I see,” and “tell me more.”
• Step 3: Truly listen to the client’s words and observe non-verbal cues. Every single ounce of attention needs to be focused on the client. Try to see where the client is coming from and what he is experiencing.

1.3 Formula for showing empathy
• Once the counselor has created a safe and nurturing environment and the client has opened up about what is going on in their life, the counselor can accurately reflect the client’s feelings. Identify the key emotions of the client and restate the emotions back to the client to clarify and focus attention on the client’s feelings. The basic formula for displaying empathy:
• You feel…..(name the emotion expressed by the client)
• Because…..(name the thoughts, experiences, and behaviors the client has mentioned).
• One may want to include a disclaimer beforehand such as “let me see if I have this right” or “please tell me if this is accurate.”
• Through the use of the advanced communication skill of empathy, counselors can continue to follow their noble calling of helping others and creating meaningful relationships with clients.
1.4 Five-Point Scale to Measure Empathy
Several scales have been developed to measure empathy. The Empathy Quotient test, for example, can measure how easily one picks up on the feelings of others and how much one is affected by those feelings. This test shows that women typically have greater empathy than men, and that those with Asperger’s or high-functioning autism demonstrate a lower capacity for empathy. Another test, Carkhuff’s five-point scale, can be applied to all human relations, but it is effective at measuring the use of empathy by therapists in session. It is based on observable behavior and attempts to eliminate the ambiguity of previous scales.
• Level 1 (no empathic behavior): The therapist responds in a way that ignores the message of the person in treatment.
• Level 2 (no empathic behavior): The therapist attempts to understand and respond to the message but does so in a way that lessens the impact.
• Level 3: The therapist responds to a stated message and surface expressions but ignores or is unable to hear the implicit message and feelings of the person in treatment. This may be an appropriate response at times, but if a therapist always responds at this level, he or she is generally not expressing deep empathy.
• Level 4: The therapist’s response adds to what the person has said, demonstrating that the therapist has understood both what was said and what may have been only implied.
• Level 5: The therapist understands what the person in treatment meant, and the therapist’s response adds to what the person has said in such a way that he or she is able to accurately expand upon the person’s thoughts without beginning to interpret or suggest new explanations.