Blog entry for:

contemplating the nature of my life today and how it applies to the reading is a process i actually have time to do. when i came to recovery i thought i knew the meaning of the root " pathy ", after all i had experience in the medical field and it usually meant a disease as in pathology -- the study of diseases. what i had forgotten is that the greek word pathos also means feeling or perception. in that context the pathology of my disease of addiction had manifested in the symptom of apathy -- the lack of feeling, and acted in an antisocial manner -- a sociopath. so when i started hearing about empathy, naturally i was confused. some how sympathy and empathy were confused in my silly little head. after all when something bad happens to someone else i offered sympathy, i felt sorry for them and could understand what they were feeling -- a loss. what i needed to learn was how to feel what other people were actually feeling -- empathy.
so what does all the seemingly random musing have to do with the reading this morning. it is my current impression that sympathy is a language of the head -- like french, greek or spanish, i understand intellectually what someone is saying and can reply with the correct phrases. empathy however is a language of the soul, i actually can feel what someone is telling me, their pain, their joy, their excitement and respond with the emotions those feelings invoke in me. their feelings become my feelings and if they are open, they can receive the gift of my concern, pain, joy or hope. i not only understand intellectually what is going on, i understand at a level that i had anesthetized away in my active addiction, hence the apathy, sociopathy.
have i become a true empath? not by a long shot, but at least today i am willing to let the process of learning that language occur. i am more fluent in the language of empathy than i was yesterday, and perhaps if i do not exercise to much self-will, i will be more fluent tomorrow! it is after all a process like everything else in recovery.
∞ DT ∞