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The Magic of Empathy

To get past a dif­fi­cult emo­tion, you need to first iden­ti­fy and embrace that emo­tion. Once you know what you are feel­ing and why, you are able to move into a state of mind that allows for more effec­tive prob­lem solv­ing and deci­sion mak­ing. When some­one tells you to calm down, they are basi­cal­ly sug­gest­ing that you skip right past this step and move imme­di­ate­ly to the prob­lem solv­ing state of mind. That’s just not how we work. We need that in-between step of iden­ti­fy­ing the tough feel­ing and sit­ting with it for a minute before we can move for­ward. What’s miss­ing when some­one says calm down” is empa­thy.