Empathy Circles, Empathy Blind Spots

America today is waking up to a myriad of different voices.  Some of the voices are quiet, peaceful and gentle.  Some of the voices are screechy,  violent, insulting, whiny, or preachy. There are many different kinds of tones, feelings, and points of view being voiced in many ways.  .  
     I’m trained to help people find and heal unhealed parts of themselves.  When people first start this work they can sometimes be inundated with parts of themselves that have been walled away- denied, ignored, smothered, in general not welcomed.  We learn to do this walling away from our parents and our society.  If our family or culture don’t/can’t accept anger, for instance, we smother our angry parts so we can fit in and be loved.  This can happen for any parts- weakness (don’t be such a pansy), aggressive parts (stop bullying your brother), sadness (big girls/boys don’t cry), rebellious parts (I don’t like that tone of voice).  We then exile these parts of ourselves until later in life, when they sometimes come out in crazy ways or sometimes we can heal them through therapy or emotional self-care.
     Just as we may suddenly we realize we’re not the person we thought we were because we have access to previously “unacceptable” parts of ourselves,in the same way America seems to be discovering new parts also.  We thought we had one personality, but it turns out there are many “Americas”.  We have always had these parts of our country, but now the internal pain has been turned up so much that the voices are coming out whether we want to pay attention or not.  When we start to feel that pain we need to witness it,  release it, and  then welcome in qualities that will help us in our freed-up lives.  The main requirement for witnessing this pain is empathy.
​      I’ve recently been hearing in news reports stories about “blind spots” in our national consciousness.  We all have these blind spots, and each of us has slightly different ones.  That’s because we all came from families and cultures that were “blind” to different things.  Some people’s stories  we are willing and able to hear. .  Other people’s stories we have no empathy for.  
     One of the needs I see in the world is to widen and deepen our empathy circles.  We may currently have empathy for people like ourselves, and then we may have added oppressed black people, or women, or gay people, or a different religion, or a different society/culture.  We may have a bit of empathy for rich, overworked people but not for people we see as bigoted or oppressors.  Each of us has a different story- our original family wounds, beliefs that were ingrained from our parents and teachers,  what we learned from our peers, things we have been required to do for our jobs.  Each of these influences causes deep psychological changes- we pay attention to some people, events, and feelings, and tune out others.  This is especially required in today’s busy, every-changing world.  We can’t pay attention to everything or we will go crazy!  
I’ve made a spreadsheet that might help us sort out our inner world.  What were our original wounds?  What did our family focus on or ignore?  What influence did our schools, churches, and first jobs have?  Where do we now have empathy circles and empathy blind spots?  How can we meet people in our blind spots, hear their stories, and expand our awareness so we see more of the world more clearly?
     I’ll share what I know about mine in the accompanying spreadsheet.  There will be a column for “blind spots I’m ready to heal”.  If people know of resources for hearing stories of those people (in writing, in podcasts, in  person, by internet) there will be a column to enter those also.   I don’t mean I want to hear their biases, I really want to hear the story BEHIND their current opinions.  How did they become the people they are today?  What wounds, teachings, beginning jobs, and life experiences caused them to be the way they are now?  Telling those stories is the best way to encourage empathy.  Recently there have been books, movies, radio shows blogs and podcasts which have shared more and more of people’s truths.  These are the resources I’m talking about. I welcome people to add to my resources.
     I welcome people to join the spreadsheet or create a copy for yourself to think about in privacy (the spreadsheet right now can be seen and edited by anyone with the link).   You can write in your own empathy story- how did you start?  What things have influenced your empathy circles?  Who are you willing to add to your circles now?  
     I obviously don’t know how to solve the whole problem of conflict in America.  I only know what seems true for me from my experience and training in emotional healing.  It seems to me we have been ignoring emotions for far too long, trying to be objective and rational in all things.  It is irrational to avoid them any longer- they are obviously the driving force in many things that are happening right now.  And building empathy seems to me to be necessary in order to communicate, cooperate, and get things done.  Together.
Empathy building spreadsheet 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NdzdINzRlkRtluRv-x9M5XK9pIVrZzMlw_C104UwClE/edit#gid=0