The Self in Empathy: Self-Empathy [2nd Ed] - K.J. Train & L.W. Niezink

SELF-EMPATHY
THE SELF IN
EMPATHY
Dr Katherine Train & Dr Lidewij Niezink

The Self in Empathy: Self-Empathy 1
Self-Empathy
Dr Lidewij W. Niezink
The Self in Empathy:
This booklet was originally self-published as a series of short articles. You can read more
about our work on www.empathicintervision.com .
Dr Katherine J. Train &

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Table Of Contents
Creative Commons 3
Introduction 7
     When interpersonal dynamics get in the way 8
     Empathy helps to avoid misunderstanding 8
     The rst step to empathy is self-empathy 9
     Self-empathy observes and integrates experiences 9
     Self-empathy skills and its practice 10
Noticing with Self-empathy 11
     Observer self and experiencing self 12
     Creating presence 13
     Becoming aware of sensations, emotions, thoughts and needs 13
Self-empathy with Ethical Responsibility and Presence 15
     Ethical Exploration and Agreement 16
     Arriving 17
     Sensing 17
Suspending Judgment and Assumptions in Self-empathy 19
     Suspending judgment 21
The Light and Dark Side of Empathy 23
     Setting Personal Intentions 25
     Invoking intentions 26
Self-empathy as a Prerequisite for Empathy with Others 27
      Empathic Intervision: Practising empathy with others 30
References 33

Pearl, oil on panel, Copyright , 2017
Candace Charlton
Introduction
When most people think of empathy, they think of empathizing with someone else.
No wonder, considering the many circumstances, in both personal and work life, where
you nd yourself caught between people or groups of people, expecting you to
‘understand’. These circumstances require you to manage, mediate or facilitate amongst
di erent individuals as well as maintain some form of personal connection with each of
them. If not maintained with care and attention, interpersonal relations may become
sources of stress and can get in the way of doing w
hat needs to be done.

At work, you may experience pressure both from the task you need to accomplish, as
well as from the interpersonal dynamics. Task related pressures can vary from the need to
provide care to others, to completing budget plans, having to reach a sales target or
having to solve a design problem. The interpersonal di culties are something else, often
more complex and less clear. Despite the fact that they seem rather invisible, they can
have a powerful e ect on your well-being and your ability to function in the world.
Empathy helps to avoid misunderstanding
Take for instance misunderstandings. When people start to feel threatened, small
cliques or alliances quickly form. Amongst those alliances, one starts to speak behind each
other’s backs. Sometimes it even progresses to gossip and backstabbing. Whether you are
in the group that is doing the backstabbing, or are the one that feels gossiped about, the
experience can be quite disconcerting. Trying to get a job done under these
circumstances, you will probably nd that it overshadows your ability to concentrate on
the task at hand. In order to move forward and nd solutions, you will need to engage with
empathy.
Engaging with empathy will help you to understand the people you are working with
and to know more about their thoughts, feelings and actions. It will also help you to get an
experience and understanding of the deeper motivations behind their thoughts, feelings
and actions. Empathizing means you are taking the rst step to avoid misunderstandings
from happening. When done skilfully and attentively, you will be able to communicate in
both an e cient and e ective way.
When interpersonal dynamics get in the way

But when you are feeling challenged and misunderstood yourself, empathizing with
someone else is di cult. And if you are not aware of your own inner experience,
emotional and mental state, how can you be sure that that which you perceive to be part
of the other, is not rather a projection of your ow
n self upon them? That is why the rst
step towards empathizing with someone else is to empathize with yourself (
).
Barrett-
Lennard, 1997
We’re not talking about feeling sorry for yourself, or bringing love to your own
experiences. Self-empathy is not the same as self-compassion. Self-compassion involves
treating yourself with the same kindness, concern and support you’d show to a good
friend ( ). Self-empathy means that an aspect of yourself observes, in an
empathic manner, the aspect of yourself that experiences. This is done with an attitude of
suspended judgment and openness towards yourself ( ).
Ne & Dahm, 2015
Jordan, 1994
Self-empathy observes and integrates experiences
Self-empathy simply requires you to notice and recognise what is happening in you.
Attentive self-empathy provides both, a ective and cognitive empathic access to your own
lifeworld. It provides an opportunity for you to integrate aspects of your current and past
experiences, and doesn’t necessarily require reinvention or radical conversion of those
experiences ( ).
Sherman, 2014
The rst step to empathy is self-empathy

Although there is some literature on self-empathy and its supposed e ects in
psychoanalysis ( , ), surprisingly little is written on the skill itself.
How does one empathize with oneself? What blocks to self-empathy can prevent us from
doing so? How does self-empathy di er from related commonly used terms like self-
awareness and mindfulness?
Jordan, 1994 Sherman, 2014
In the following sections, we will tackle these and other questions. We will try to
clearly de ne self-empathy and, more importantly, w
e will look at the practice of it itself.
How can one notice with self-empathy? How do we practice it with ethical responsibility
and presence? What is the role of suspension of assumptions, opinions or judgments in
self-empathy? How do we set personal intentions and how does self-empathy serve as a
tool to empathize with others? In this book, we will dive into the nitty gritty of this crucial
and embodied skill. Because empathy without self-empathy can lead to projection,
emotional contagion and even a complete failure of connection, all empathy begins, and is
maintained, with self-empathy.
Self-empathy skills and its practice

Quiet Vision, oil, gold and silver on canvas, Copyright , 2009
Candace Charlton
In our previous section, we introduced you to the concept of self-empathy as a
prerequisite to empathizing with others. We also laid out possible circumstances in either
personal or professional life where empathy is a useful skill to relate to other people and
suggested skilful empathy as a basis to prevent or solve interpersonal tensions. Self-
empathy precedes empathizing with others and gives you the foundation to be able to do
so.
Noticing with Self-empathy

But what is self-empathy? In essence, it is a deeply personal exploration of that which
happens inside yourself. The self, observing itself, experiencing itself, feeling itself.
Through self-empathy, the self develops self-awareness.
Whilst working on a recent project, John became withdrawn and no longer
contributed in discussions related to the project he was managing. John’s client, Jennifer,
had pointed out, in a sharp tone, shortcomings in his contributions. He felt criticized, did
not want to expose himself to further humiliation and reacted by holding back on voicing
any further contributions.
Jennifer thought she had o ered valid positive feedback. She was not aware of the
sharpness of her tone. John, however, thought the f
eedback was excessive and directed as
a personal attack on him. Neither John nor Jennifer were able to re ect on, or notice the
escalating misunderstanding or the nature of their individual responses. The
misunderstanding ended up with John wanting to walk out on the project and Jennifer
being entirely dissatis ed with the end-result. If either John or Jennifer had, at any stage of
the escalating misunderstanding, stopped to notice and re ect upon their own responses,
they may have altered the disastrous outcome of the project.
Observer self and experiencing self
When you nd yourself getting caught up in an interaction where misunderstandings
are starting to occur, you may notice that you are feeling attacked or threatened, which
can cause you to want to respond with a defending or attacking tone. You may recognise
tension in yourself. Your concentration is failing you, you feel distracted and insecure, or
angry and powerless. This is all good news, because recognising this type of tension does
not always happen automatically. Sometimes, you might recognise the tension but you
might not understand its causes, and yet end up with a breakdown in communication with
colleagues, family or friends. You might also experience a non-speci c feeling of
frustration, anger or withdrawal, and you are not sure why. In these cases, your observer
self is unable to notice your experiencing self.

Creating presence
With self-empathy we don't change the other person as much as we transform
in response to the other person. The creation of a presence with our own inner
life requires that we focus on ourselves rather than on the person we are trying to
encourage, in order to nd an appropriate response.
ourselves
If we are working to complete a budget or ful l a sales target, we may need to
motivate and lead others so that we can get the task done. If we are providing care to
others in a healing or medical setting, we may need to create a healing presence for them.
We need to nd within ourselves the inner resources that speak directly to the other
person's needs. Empathy and the willingness to transform ourselves lie at the heart of
being helpful and resolving both inner as well as outer con ict. To help and solve tensions,
we must be willing to change ourselves and become responsive to our own, as well as
other people’s needs.
Becoming aware of sensations, emotions, thoughts and needs
So in self-empathy, we arrive, notice ourselves, and become aware of our own inner
state. We get in touch with our own sensations, emotions, thoughts and needs. We feel
into our body and observe our mind. We notice how our mind becomes distracted and
how we start mind-wandering into memories or plans ahead. After a little wandering
while, we pay attention to the distraction without condemning it. This is how the mind
works; it focuses and then gets distracted for a while until we bring it back to focus. We
learn to be aware of where our mind is and how our body feels moment to moment. In
other words, we develop a . And importantly, although we work to
regulate our thoughts and our attention, we also accept ourselves as we are in that
momentary state of being. There is no right or wrong, there is merely experience and
observation.
mindful meta-cognition

In the case of John and Jennifer, noticing with self-empathy could have helped John to
acknowledge his own feeling of being criticized. It could have helped him to take a moment
before responding defensively to Jennifer. It could also have given him the opportunity to
understand why Jennifer was speaking in a sharp tone, and that the tone wasn’t motivated
by criticism towards him but was borne of her own f
eeling of pressure and exhaustion.
Jennifer could have noticed her own troubled motives. She could have paused and
re ected to nd the most e ective way to support John moving forward. If she would have
approached him still with a sharp tone of voice, it would have been a choice, not an
unconscious source of interpersonal tension. Imagine what mastering self-empathy could
do for you.
Imagine what mastering self-empathy could do for you.

M.K., Copyright , 2011
Candace Charlton
In our previous sections, we introduced you to what self-empathy is and the
importance of noticing that which takes place within your own experience. We showed
how noticing with self-empathy brings insight into your own mental reactions and habits
as well as the possibility to consciously act and react in the world surrounding you. Yet in
order to do so, one needs to have the courage to ex
plore, which requires us to contract
ethical responsibility.
Self-empathy with Ethical
Responsibility and Presence

Working with others to provide an encouraging presence or simply to hold a space
for their expression, requires providing a conducive environment for this expression. This
environment helps them to get in touch with themselves and how they think, feel and do
things. Equally, transforming yourself in response to the person you are working with
requires creating a space conducive for you to explore more about yourself. This too, is
self-empathy. You are encouraged to be in touch with your experiences and this includes
how you think, feel and do things in your work context.
To be able to be in touch with these aspects, it is important that you explore ethical
responsibility. You commit yourself to be true to any insights about your own thoughts,
feelings and actions you might become aware of. You bring clarity and space to your inner
experienced world. It is a form of respectful inner listening, with a readiness to take
seriously whatever signals arise internally. It opens you up, yet you are not swept along by
the experience itself as when you feel overtaken by an emotion. You also do not look for
ways to change what you experience in any direction, you only observe and sense what
really takes place.
Remember John and Jennifer? ‘John felt criticized, did not want to expose himself to
further humiliation and reacted by holding back on voicing any further contributions’.
When John felt criticized by Jennifer, the experience was overwhelming and he was
swept along by it. Yet, he was not aware of the experience in himself. His attention
remained on Jennifer. He thought that she was unreasonable in her demands. And that
she had an attacking personality. He wasn’t aware of his own thoughts, feelings or indeed
actions in response to Jennifer. He hadn’t practised self-empathy, and consequently he
wasn’t able to empathize with her.
Ethical Exploration and Agreement

To begin the process of nding the inner resources to be adequately available to
another person, we need to nd a quiet, inner space with which to land. It requires rst
carving an introspective, re ective space for yourself. This can be done by taking
ownership with your mind of the whole of the space inhabited by your body. One possible
way is to close your eyes, and scan with awareness through each area of the body, an
exercise called the ‘body scan’ in mindfulness practices. As soon as you turn inward into
your current bodily presence, you will most likely notice that your bodily experiences have
a story to tell. There might be tension, fatigue, nervousness or calm, or there might be
something else. Every mental state has a bodily expression.
Arriving
Sensing
The mind and the body interact with each other, just as a hand ts into a glove, and
the glove holds the image of the hand. By being more aware of the shape or gesture of
your body, you will be more aware of the state of your mind, and at the same time create
space within your body for more awareness with your mind. Once you have arrived, you
may notice an area of your body where there is intense sensation. You can focus on this
sensation by giving it a shape or gesture represented with your hands. You can intensify
the shape with your hands or your body until it matches the sensation. You can give a
meaningful name with a few descriptive words. Doing this helps you to hold a space for
yourself and your experiences and sensations and yet not be enslaved to what these
sensations demand of you. You literally create the space to open yourself up to a world
beyond your own consciousness.

River, Oil on Canvas, Copyright , 2016
Candace Charlton
A rather disturbing phenomenon keeps popping up in our societies at the moment:
Increasingly polarized situations between people resulting in hurt, con ict and often deep
and irreconcilable rifts. Families and friends, not to mention societies, become divided by
holding rm opinions on either side of issues or debates. The disagreements are not just
neutral and respectful, but heated, emotional and hurtful. And at their core lie con icting
assumptions.
Suspending Judgment and
Assumptions in Self-empathy

Judgment and resulting assumptions are a function of our belief system. Our
context elicits thoughts and emotions which we experience internally and then give
meaning to, linking it to the belief system we have in place. In other words, emotions and
cognitions shape our beliefs. Our beliefs also lter the perspective we have on any given
situation. Because we believe in right and wrong we judge certain events or behaviours to
be either right or wrong. In this way,
. This is why there is such an
emphasis on suspending judgment in (self-)empathy. Suspending judgment means that
for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter the inner and
outer world without prejudice.
assumptions prevent us from being open to the
range of possibilities with which we can experience life
When you feel criticized, or when your strong beliefs or opinions are countered by
someone, you very likely experience tension. While this happens, you are unlikely to be
aware of the fact that it is your interpretation and judgment, your evaluation of the other
person’s words, that creates this tension. If you are able to encounter a polarizing
situation with self-empathy, you will observe the other person’s behaviour as well as your
own immediate response with more clarity. You will notice your own evaluation of the
situation and your emotional response to it. You will create an awareness of, and
presence with, your own mental life. The resulting mental distance to what happens at
that moment can open you up to ask for clari cation and to give more meaningful
feedback. When you are able to catch yourself in the moment, you can prevent escalating
misunderstanding and polarization altogether.

Suspending judgment then means to the evaluation when it takes place,
name it as judgment and pause it to re ect on it or divert from it. While arriving with self-
empathy, you will need to look for the emergence of an experience of judgment, which can
manifest itself as doubt, fear, or any other experience for that matter. You might nd that
a sound in your environment is annoying you - is judging. You might think that
your experienced fear should be over with, once and for all - your
is judging. It is also important to be aware that not all judgments are di cult or
challenging. You might experience satisfaction when you are in agreement with a
colleague’s idea, or joy at what you perceive to be a job well done. These pleasing
evaluations are also judgments. Similarly, you want to be aware of, recognize and name
them.
recognize
annoying
lack of acceptance of the
fear
But how does one do that, suspending judgment while practicing self-empathy? It is
not as if the judgment won’t happen by itself or that assumptions won’t accumulate in
your mind. We all evaluate what we see and feel practically on a continuous basis.
Evolution shaped us that way.
We need to make decisions, often in split seconds, on whether a given situation is
‘safe’ or whether we need to get out of there. This requires us to constantly evaluate our
surroundings. These evaluations often even take place subconsciously, allowing us to rely
on our re exes.
Suspending judgment
Recognize and name the judgment

Emotions, thoughts, distractions, obsessions, they all come and go, if you give them
enough time to do so. If not, you’ll enslave yourself to instinctive reactions. You will nd
yourself constantly responding to both inner and outer circumstances without being able
to consciously choose how you would like to respond. S , the
act of noticing, recognizing and naming your judgment and allowing the experience of it to
pass through you, brings a certain level of control over your behaviour. It allows you the
possibility to choose how you act and respond in the world surrounding you. Preventing
polarization from happening starts with thoroughly getting to know, and work with, your
own self.
uspending Judgment Practice
What you want to be able to do is notice the judgment pass through you, without
feeling any compulsion to change it. For attitudes to change, we often need nothing more
than the patience to let them pass. They are not inhabiting our thoughts constantly; it is
only when we pay attention to them that they gain in strength. This aspect of self-empathy
allows you to observe and integrate the experiences you have. Suspending judgment is a
rst step to being able to open your mind to possibilities and perspectives beyond your
personal re exes. It also has a calming function on your emotional life.
Notice the judgment without needing to change it
Allow experiences to come and go

The Light and Dark Side of
Empathy
We are asked regularly what we think about, and how we deal with, the ‘dark side of
empathy’. An important question because empathy is not all about being good. It
shouldn’t be confused with kindness or with sympathy.
Juliet, Oil on Canvas, Copyright , 2015
Candace Charlton

Empathy can be used to hurt or to manipulate. By understanding someone deeply,
you could use that understanding to achieve many di erent outcomes - not all of them in
the best interests of the other person you empathize with. For this reason, a dose of
empathy is as good as the motivations or intentions of the empathizer.
Empathy, and similarly self-empathy, becomes useful to you and those you work with
when it is applied as a means to an end. Attentive empathy based upon attentive self-
empathy helps you to understand the thoughts, feelings and actions of others in order
that you can interact with them e ciently and e ectively. Hence, the outcome of the
empathic and self-empathic interaction is better served if it is guided by a skilfully
articulated intention. One should always check in w
ith the motivations underlying
intentions. What are you hoping to achieve by empathizing with this person? Does it serve
their best interests? How does it serve your own interests? Running your intentions and
motivations past your conscience is a good practice.
Intentions act as a road-map guiding your will and actions with a particular focus.
Self-empathy, as a practice, lays the foundation for speci c outcomes in your life. You
notice your inner life of thoughts and feelings, and any evaluations and judgments that
emerge, because you want to transform yourself in response to other people.

Once you have noticed your thoughts and feelings, become aware of, and are able to
suspend your judgments, you are likely to gain insight into aspects of how you are in the
world and how you present yourself to the world. In a sense, you are gaining perspective
on yourself as though you were observed by another person, you get a more ‘outsider
view’ of yourself. You may realize that you and others would be better served if you were
di erent in the world. At this point, this insight gained about yourself leads into a personal
intention.
Setting Personal Intentions
At this stage you may again bring your attention to the intense bodily sensation that
was experienced during the . You revert your awareness to the
meaningful name given to it. You also re ect on the assumptions that were noticed,
recognized and named. In re ecting on each of these dimensions, you determine what
you are needing, or is being asked of you. The insight gained in relation to the need is
converted into an intention for yourself.
sensing exercise
We said it before: judgments and evaluations automatically emerge in your mental
life as a function of your belief system. They are moulded by your context and life
experiences and usually form early in life, when reasoning abilities are still immature. They
may have formed as a defence to challenging life events. Later in life, the judgments and
evaluations that emerge as an automatic response are guided by these previously formed
mental images. The the act of noticing, recognizing and
naming your judgments and evaluations and allowing the experience of it to pass through,
enables you to be more aware of the judgments and how they might relate to aspects of
your belief system.
Suspending judgment practice,

Choosing to create an intention for yourself leads you to identify the inner resources
you need to create the conducive space to support or care for others in your life. It speaks
directly to the inner resources you need to be present to the other person.
Invoking intentions
Attending to self follows naturally in response to the intention set by you. With self-
empathy you have noticed and identi ed the reaction causing tension and stress. You
have become aware of your inner state corresponding to the tension and stress. In the
process you have carved an inner space for your mind within your body. Now is the time
to follow through and ful l the intention you set.
You may notice that in response to feeling sad you need a comforting hand on your
heart. In response to fatigue, a moment of rest with your eyes closed. If you are feeling
criticized, a word of encouragement to yourself may calm the inner turmoil. When feeling
joy at accomplishing a task, you may deliberately notice the energy it brings you and carry
it along to the next task ahead. By invoking your intention, literally stepping into the
expression of it, you strengthen your mental attitudes with concrete behaviour.
Through the process of suspending judgement, attending to self and setting
intentions, you develop an intimate understanding of yourself. This understanding can
then be used to achieve di erent outcomes. It is up to you how to direct your motivations
and intentions in such a way that the empathy you use to gain experience of the lifeworld
of other people is of bene t. It is not the empathy that is inherently light or dark. Your
empathic skills and their results are intimately linked to your own personal way of being
and intending in the world.

Arbor, Oil and gold leaf on canvas, Copyright , 2016
Candace Charlton
Self-empathy as a Prerequisite for
Empathy with Others

By choosing to practice self-empathy, as a deeply personal exploration, you observe
and integrate your own experiences. You bring awareness to your inner experiential,
emotional and mental state. A part of yourself observes the aspect of yourself that
experiences in an empathic manner. You create a space within yourself by attending with
your mind to your own experiences of thought and feeling and by suspending judgments
you may have about yourself ( ). The resulting inner space becomes open,
expansive and receptive.
Jordan, 1994
Your inner life may be noisy with random fragments of thought and feeling. The
practice of self-empathy orders these fragments. Af
ter going through the process of
arriving, sensing, suspending judgment, and intention setting, you will have the tools to
reopen yourself to the situation at hand with conscious equanimity. You created a
receptive space to the experiences of others and are therefore ready to empathize
without the often unconscious habit of projecting yourself unto others.
This is what the practice is about. You need to deal with tensions, you need to get
your job done, and you are hardly ever independent of the people around you. Although
you might be willing and inclined to empathize with others, you will not successfully do so
if you are not aware of your own in uence on the situation as it evolves. Coming back to
your own inner experiences and understanding that they are intrinsically yours to work
with, will help you to create space for the experience and action of others.
In our previous chapter we showed how your motivations and intentions determine
whether you use empathy to help or to harm. Self-empathy, as a practice, guides you to
tune in to your inner world and to understand, or even modify, motivations and
intentions.

Is empathizing with others di erent from empathizing with yourself? Yes and no. Yes,
because empathizing with others is empathizing with the inherently unknowable
experiences of other people. Their experiences, thoughts and feelings are not yours. And
more importantly, in order to empathise, they do not need to be either. Empathizing with
others does not mean experiencing what others are going through. It means attentively
tuning into their expressions of those experiences. To open up to their perspectives on a
given situation, to broaden your own views on it, and to hold a space for others to be as
they are.
But empathizing with others is also not di erent from empathizing with yourself.
Although the practices are di erent, they require a similar re ective presence: arriving,
noticing, taking ethical responsibility, suspending judgment, setting intentions and
attending to others.
Self-empathy helps you to develop , the awareness of yourself as being the
initiator of actions, desires, thoughts and feelings ( ). With self-
empathy you become aware of your own experiential state in the moment, enabling you
to di erentiate your own emotional experience from the experience of someone else. In
other words, self-empathy prepares you to face prof
essional and interpersonal challenges
ahead.
agency
Decety & Jackson, 2004
We consider empathy to be useful as a means to an end. You may choose to practice
empathy quietly in your own life in interaction with the people close to you. But it
becomes truly powerful when people acting together to ful l a cause engage in mutual
empathic interaction. This has led us to develop an empathic method of structured
interaction to be used when groups of people work together to identify and emerge
solutions to challenges: Empathic Intervision.

Empathic Intervision ( ) is a practical method with embedded
Integrative Empathy skills for interpersonal engagement, understanding and perspective.
It helps to identify opportunities and co-create solutions to challenges. Including exercises
in integrative empathy, it sets you on a course of engaging beyond cultural di erences, to
listen and hear each other's experiences, thoughts and feelings about a topic and to
identify and take the perspective of others. The process can either be guided by an
external facilitator or it can be self-organized. I
t requires you to maintain the re ective
presence attained during the self-empathy exercise. However, the presence of noticing,
taking ethical responsibility, suspending judgment, setting intentions and attending is
focussed towards others.
Niezink & Train, 2020
In the empathic intervision too, each person engages a self-empathy exercise. Prior
to the self-empathy step, though, participants set a collective intention. Since empathy is
applied here as a means to an end, the intention guides the process towards an identi ed
outcome. It ensures that the group is able to identify a shared goal for the group.
This introduction and setting the scene is followed by working with di erent
integrative empathy skills, all directed towards the collective intention set at the start of
the meeting. They are: kinesthetic, re ective and imaginative empathy, rounded o with
empathic creativity.
Empathic Intervision: Practising empathy with others

, the capacity to participate in somebody’s movement, or their
sensory experience of movement ( ). This helps you to connect with
others through coordination and synchronization. With kinesthetic empathy you explore,
and become more aware of how you in uence each other’s physical space. Kinesthetic
empathy practices support the role of coordination and synchronization in empathy and
enable people to hold physical space for others, hence experiencing the e ects of being
‘seen’ and ‘followed’ in action.
Kinesthetic empathy
Niezink & Train, 2020
enables you to deepen connection with others through active
and re ective listening. Re ective empathy helps you to explore di cult or stressful
situations without losing sight of your own self. Problems are clari ed, and listening is
intensi ed, through empathic dialogue.
Re ective empathy
uses imagination and ‘as-if’ acting to enable you to appreciate
and hold space for the perspectives of others you are working with and to experience the
e ects of having a problem explored from multiple perspectives. It is used as a means to
explore di cult or stressful situations or to diversify perspectives and enable creativity.
Imaginative empathy
The fth, and last aspect of an Empathic Intervision is (
). During the full intervision process, the empathic practices described above
guide and stimulate actions and reactions. The act of empathizing awakens creative
insights. People notice sparks of insight or motivation during the process. These moments
highlight signi cant change events and are ripe to be harvested and turned into tangible
next steps. The consequences of empathic interactions can be quickly forgotten or get
lost if not brought to attention. Empathic creativity is the practice of preserving that which
is created and brings possible solutions to the issue at hand. As the nal step in the
intervision process, the gathered insights are transformed into actionable outcomes.
empathic creativity Niezink &
Train, 2020

Self-portrait, oil on canvas, copyright , 2010
Candace Charlton
If you enjoyed the stunning artwork we used throughout this book, we encourage
you to have a look at the work of our friend Candace Charlton . The human form, in
particular the portrait, is the main focus in Charlton’s work. She strives to discover and
reveal the mystery and depth of the human psyche in her intensively studied portraits and
gurative compositions.

References
Barrett-Lennard, G. (1997). The recovery of empathy: Toward others and self. In
Bohart, A. & Greenberg, L. , Empathy reconsidered: New directions in psychotherapy (pp.
103–121). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. doi: 10.1037/10226-
004
Decety J, Jackson PL. The functional architecture of human empathy. Behav Cogn
Neurosci Rev. 2004 Jun;3(2):71-100. doi: 10.1177/1534582304267187.
Jankowski, T., & Holas, P. (2014). Metacognitive model of mindfulness.
, , 64-80.
Consciousness
and cognition 28
Jordan, Judith. (1997). Relational development through mutual empathy.
doi:10.1037/10226-015
Niezink, L.W. & Train, K.J. (2020). Empathic Intervision: A Peer-to-Peer Practice. France
& South Africa: Empathic Intervision. Available from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339484113_Empathic_Intervision_A_Peer-to-
Peer_Practice [accessed Mar 2, 2021].
Sherman, N. (2014) Recovering lost goodness: Shame, guilt, and self-empathy.
Psychoanalytic Psychology 31: 217–235.

When most people think of empathy, they think of empathizing with
someone else. Yet in personal as well as professional life you might nd
yourself caught between people or groups of people expecting you to
‘understand’ them. Circumstances where you are required to understand
and maintain a connection with others can be a sour
ce of stress and can
get in the way of the job-to-be-done. In this book we describe that to
empathize successfully with others requires you to rst empathize with
yourself. Self-empathy is a tool with which to observe self, rst creating
presence and then becoming aware of one's own sensations, emotions,
thoughts and needs. It requires a personal practice in which you suspend
judgment in order for you to notice how experiences come and go. Self-
empathy provides a foundation from which you can set out to practice
empathy with others.

The Self in Empathy: Self-Empathy [2nd Ed] - K.J. Train & L.W. Niezink

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