The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life's Most Essential Skill

Copied from Karla McLaren's website:

What if there were a single skill that could directly and radically improve your relationships and your emotional life? Empathy, teaches Karla McLaren, is that skill.

We all long to be seen and understood, to be valued and honored, and to be loved for exactly who we are. We also want to connect deeply with others, understand them clearly, and respond skillfully to their wants and needs. We want to navigate through difficulties and conflicts with grace, and we want our relationships to be a source of healing, strength, humor, and love. We want empathy – and we want to know how to offer our empathy to others. In The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill, you’ll learn how to develop and work with your empathy, and how to become a healthy and happy empathic presence in a world that needs you!

With her groundbreaking model of the Six Essential Aspects of Empathy, McLaren teaches you how to understand empathy clearly, how to pinpoint your strengths and challenges, and how to support healthy empathy in yourself and others.

Informed by Karla McLaren’s four decades of extensive empathic experience, plus current insights from neuroscience, sociology, the arts, and healing traditions, The Art of Empathy explores:

• Why empathy is not a mystical phenomenon, but a natural, innate ability that you can strengthen and develop
• How to support healthy empathy in yourself and others
• How to regulate your empathy if your empathic abilities are uncomfortably hyper-activated
• How to identify and regulate your own emotions and boundaries
• How to shift into the perspective of others with authenticity, ethics, and respect
• How to support and communicate with others in sensitive and perceptive ways
• How to help children (of any age) develop healthy empathic skills
• Targeted chapters for improving your relationships at home, at work, and in your community
• In-depth information about the empathic challenges of the workplace, and how gossip (!) can alleviate them
• Insights into the dark side of empathy and how to avoid the trap of excessive in-group empathy"