Learning after failing the empathy test..
I kicked myself over and over. The young man's father had abandoned him.
He was amazing in his talk about technology.
I thought I was encouraging him to take one step at a time before he achieved his dream, and to hold the dream one side while he got work and some experience to aid in the dream.
The place where he was staying was noisy he said.
I managed to make contact with his caregiver and hope that they could check with him and that some repairs could be done.
If I was in a counselling or other situation, I would have been working my mind through the usual steps of listening. There were other things the young man mentioned.. that's not my name, i hope to change it, to finally get rid of my father....
I have applied counselling skills, and I think managed empathy, when people say'' Can I talk to you about something personally'.. but this time, the mode was different and as I think through the conversation I realise that the track would have been different .
It would have been talking through some more the dreams and the obstacles so far, and the father and forgetting. It would have been involved in realising that the youngster was making decisions for himself and had ideas about getting through and that he had to work out why the decisions were not correct and that there were other ideas.. without being told 'you are wrong' when he probably had been feeling wronged anyways.
One learning is perhaps that I should have to keep on the empathy switch all the time.. it is not natural to me as yet, and I should be more mindful about listening in every single situation, and not just when people ask me to listen.
The other learning is that more people than I thought will want to be heard and listened to without asking directly, and that the empathy should be as natural as cussing up when I vex.
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