Empathy: myself, yourself and the other one
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
-Abraham Maslow
What is a person without emotions? It is the emotion in everything we do and experience the companion. Joy, surprise, excitement, even anxiety, fear, anger, and sadness. Emotions exist to remind us they are fully integrated into our body, which responds, listens and feels. They exist to remind us the purpose of life, no matter how complex or simple it may be.
This year, we launched and implemented the Experiential Emotions-focused Workshops, which targets on motivating and supporting people with disabilities to recognize, manage and express their emotions. In this Workshop we work on ourselves for ourselves, expressing our emotions, learning via sharing our experiences and supporting ourselves as well.
How important is to connect these concepts about the self and the other in our lives?
Participants have the chance to experience all emotions, familiarise themselves with their emotions and how to manage and express them. This is accomplished through experiential learning, psychoeducational techniques and sharing in the team context. Also, this workshop offers the opportunity to get into the emotional world and motivate people to reinforce positive self characteristics, such as optimism, self-esteem, empathy, savoring, gratitude with an instant impact on their quality of life.
Why we focus on reinforcing expression and sharing?
The nature of humans as social beings is to live and coexist in a society. So, whatever we experience, we must also have the way to communicate it. That is why, only when we know how to express ourselves, can we take an active role in a society to claim what we want, empowering our own voice. Being able to be included.
In addition to our involvement in an active society, the most important thing we have is the self. And as I already say to each of my patients, “the only honest and trustworthy relationship you can have and maintain in this life is with yourself.” Because the one who will help you first is yourself, the one who will always be there for you, to recognize you, to appreciate you is your own self. Therefore, the most important thing is to recognize what we are experiencing, learning to manage it and to accept it. It is okay to feel any positive or negative emotion.It is okay to express what we really feel.
Thus, for a society that is essentially equal to include, accept and act for all, the experience, management and expression of emotions should be enhanced, even if there are difficulties. The aim is to motivate and educate people with developmental or intellectual disabilities, in order to strengthen their social skills. In this way, we focus on the socialisation and inclusion in a society of equal opportunities, experiences and rights.
Vasia Stamati-Psychologist | Trainee EMDR therapy
e-mail: stamati.vasia@yahoo.com
LinkedIn: Vasia D. Stamati
