That sounds like a painful and unfair experience. There's an art to empathy that I find difficult at times --sometimes it feels helpful and appropriate to share a parallel experience as a way of relating or commiserating and sometimes doing that lands poorly and makes the other person feel like I'm trying to shift the convo toward myself…
That sounds like a painful and unfair experience. There's an art to empathy that I find difficult at times --sometimes it feels helpful and appropriate to share a parallel experience as a way of relating or commiserating and sometimes doing that lands poorly and makes the other person feel like I'm trying to shift the convo toward myself and away from them. (I'm not talking about inter-racial conversations specifically, just in general). I'm not always confident in my ability to read a situation and know whether to share a personal story or not.
That sounds like a painful and unfair experience. There's an art to empathy that I find difficult at times --sometimes it feels helpful and appropriate to share a parallel experience as a way of relating or commiserating and sometimes doing that lands poorly and makes the other person feel like I'm trying to shift the convo toward myself and away from them. (I'm not talking about inter-racial conversations specifically, just in general). I'm not always confident in my ability to read a situation and know whether to share a personal story or not.
Fair point.