Excellent post! We teach these values in my agency's peer support volunteer trainings. Of course I respect any individual's lived experience as their own experience. But a hyper-focus on the unique individual experience can diminish the fact that we, as humans, all draw from the same palette of human emotions. As you say, the reasons dif…
Excellent post! We teach these values in my agency's peer support volunteer trainings. Of course I respect any individual's lived experience as their own experience. But a hyper-focus on the unique individual experience can diminish the fact that we, as humans, all draw from the same palette of human emotions. As you say, the reasons differ but the emotions do not. It is particularly important that peer support volunteers recognize this, else they get caught in a mind-trap where they feel too ill-equipped to support a senior and/or a person with HIV or cancer, simply because they "have not walked in their shoes." I mean, no they have not, of course, but... they've also felt loneliness, happiness, sadness, loss, excitement... that's the purpose of empathy, to see the commonalities in emotions. And then, eventually, commonalities in experience & perspective may eventually come up. Or not! Who cares, vive la difference and all that, but we're all also human beings despite our differing lived experiences.
"else they get caught in a mind-trap where they feel too ill-equipped to support a senior and/or a person with HIV or cancer, simply because they "have not walked in their shoes.""
Absolutely. I see this kind of thinking on such wide range of issues. It helps to approach people as people as people *first*. Not as a disease or an age bracket or a "race". If we focus on the human, it's very rarely difficult to relate to people on a meaningful level.
And it is being taught in... the California Bay Area! The agency that I work for has charted its own course since the late '70s. Usually to much acclaim, but sometimes to controversy. Strange to think that our perspective of looking at the whole human with empathy - rather than thinking one part of a human equals the whole - could ever be considered controversial. Fortunately, literally thousands upon thousands of volunteers & staff trained in our model over the years have embraced our values. Turns out that being able to hold the ideals of both universalism and individualism simultaneously is not rocket science.
Excellent post! We teach these values in my agency's peer support volunteer trainings. Of course I respect any individual's lived experience as their own experience. But a hyper-focus on the unique individual experience can diminish the fact that we, as humans, all draw from the same palette of human emotions. As you say, the reasons differ but the emotions do not. It is particularly important that peer support volunteers recognize this, else they get caught in a mind-trap where they feel too ill-equipped to support a senior and/or a person with HIV or cancer, simply because they "have not walked in their shoes." I mean, no they have not, of course, but... they've also felt loneliness, happiness, sadness, loss, excitement... that's the purpose of empathy, to see the commonalities in emotions. And then, eventually, commonalities in experience & perspective may eventually come up. Or not! Who cares, vive la difference and all that, but we're all also human beings despite our differing lived experiences.
"else they get caught in a mind-trap where they feel too ill-equipped to support a senior and/or a person with HIV or cancer, simply because they "have not walked in their shoes.""
Absolutely. I see this kind of thinking on such wide range of issues. It helps to approach people as people as people *first*. Not as a disease or an age bracket or a "race". If we focus on the human, it's very rarely difficult to relate to people on a meaningful level.
It's encouraging to hear that this is still being taught in the 2020's.
And it is being taught in... the California Bay Area! The agency that I work for has charted its own course since the late '70s. Usually to much acclaim, but sometimes to controversy. Strange to think that our perspective of looking at the whole human with empathy - rather than thinking one part of a human equals the whole - could ever be considered controversial. Fortunately, literally thousands upon thousands of volunteers & staff trained in our model over the years have embraced our values. Turns out that being able to hold the ideals of both universalism and individualism simultaneously is not rocket science.