Why Empathy is Important in Calmerry’s Therapeutic Practice

Need help with your mental health? Calmerry’s therapeutic practice could be the solution

PROMOTIONAL POST

While talking about your problems and difficult feelings can help you feel better, opening up can be a real challenge. There is always that worry about your emotions and experiences not being taken seriously and how people will react after you tell them what’s happening. In cases like these, it is worth considering getting support from a therapist or a mental health professional.

Calmerry.com can give you the support you need through online therapy sessions. Apart from providing fully licensed and vetted therapists, empathy also sits at the heart of the platform’s therapeutic practice. This enables them to offer expert care and a patient-centric service to make you feel seen, heard and understood while helping you achieve long-term change and growth. 

What is empathy? 

Empathy, in its basic sense, is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes or position. It refers to having the ability to see things from other people’s perspectives and feeling their emotions. As empathy allows you to understand what others feel and are going through, it can help you act with compassion and deepen your relationship with others. 

Researchers suggest that there are two main types of empathy:

• Affective or emotional empathy – refers to the ability to feel other people’s emotions. If a loved one, for instance, is feeling sad or heartbroken, you might feel or mirror those feelings and comfort them in a way you’d like to be comforted. The same is also true if a close friend is happy and ecstatic. 
• Cognitive empathy – refers to the ability to identify and understand other people’s mental state. Also known as perspective-taking, cognitive empathy is basically being able to see or know others’ perspectives without actually sharing much about their feelings. It enables you to assess their behavior and respond appropriately. 

Empathy is not the same as sympathy. While both are used interchangeably, sympathy does not involve sharing or feeling other people’s emotions. Being sympathetic means caring and feeling sorry about other people’s problems or misfortune but not fully feeling their pain. Empathy is considered more of an active process, as it involves reflecting and validating others’ thoughts and feelings. 

Empathy in therapy

For any therapeutic tactic to work, the mental health professional needs to make you, the patient, feel heard and understood. In accomplishing this, they need not only to understand what the patient is saying in the session but also comprehend what they are not saying and be able to relay this understanding. This allows therapists to help people face and deal with their current and past experiences. 

A 2020 article published in the National Library of Medicine suggests that empathy proved vital in producing better health outcomes. This is because it enables mental health professionals to notice and recognize a person’s worries, experiences, and perspectives, strengthening the establishment and improvement of therapist-client relationships. 

The health care provider’s empathetic ability also results in improved therapeutic results, according to a 2002 research. Highly empathic therapists use active listening and concentration to sense the patient’s feelings and anticipate their needs. Again, of course, there is a need for the professionals to communicate their understanding so that the patient feels understood.

Empathy as a core principle in person-centered therapy

Person-centered therapy, developed by Carl Rogers in the 1940s, recognized empathy as one of its core principles, including unconditional positive regard and congruence. Rogers believed that mental health professionals need to be warm, genuine, and understanding for the patient’s condition to improve. 

According to Rogers, “Individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-understanding and for altering their self-concepts, basic attitudes, and self-directed behavior; these resources can be tapped if a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided.” (Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980, p.115-117).

Also known as client-centered therapy, the person-centered approach recognizes that individuals can and desire personal change and growth. With this technique, therapists create an environment best suited for the client and offer guidance and support to help them connect with their true selves. 

Empathy in Calmerry’s therapeutic practice

One important component of successful therapy is ensuring the patient feels heard and understood. This requires active listening, which is all about listening closely or intently to understand what the person is trying to convey. Active listening displays empathy and validates the patient’s feelings and experiences. 

Empathy in Calmerry’s therapeutic practice helps the mental health professionals to:

• Appreciate your (the patient’s) physical and emotional needs
• Gain an insight into how you see, interact, and understand the world around you
• Make sense of what is not being said or what is being hinted at underneath words and external facial expressions. 

The therapists at Calmerry know how essential empathy is in building a strong therapist-client relationship. The ability to recognize and understand the thoughts and feelings of another individual is vital for them to connect, respond the right way, and offer expert guidance. Empathy with expertise is what calmerry.com can offer to make sure you feel heard, included, and supported. They do this by:

• Staying present and engaged.
• Listening non-judgmentally.
• Focusing on the patient’s feelings.
• Concentrating on the patient’s needs. 
• Validating emotions and not dismissing reactions

Calmerry therapists know how important it is to perceive what the patient is bringing or their frame of reference and communicate their understanding. Failure to do this can make counseling ineffective due to a lack of empathic connection.

Improve your mental well-being with Calmerry

Calmerry provides a safe space to express your pain, frustrations, or whatever you’re dealing with. Starting at $50 a week, you can start your therapy journey and benefit from online therapy sessions and self-therapy tools. The platform provides text therapy that lets you leave a message to your therapist anytime and live video therapy sessions in real-time. 

It is also worth noting that calmerry.com is one of the most affordable providers of online therapy sessions. They have pricing and subscription plans that suit different budgets, which make mental healthcare even more accessible. They also connect you to various licensed therapists with online counselling services tailored to your unique needs and goals. 

Benefits include:  

• 24/7 human-operated support
• Counselling from licensed therapists
• Individual therapist matching 
• Cancel and easily renew your subscription anytime
• Switch therapist for free 
• HIPAA-compliant (patient information is kept private and protected)

If you’re finding it hard to open up or are dealing with overwhelming feelings and situations, online therapy at calmerry.com can help. With expertise and empathy in counselling, you can begin the healing process and make positive lifestyle changes with Calmerry.