Is being empathic always the right response?
Learning Objectives
After considering this resource, you should appreciate a range of situations where empathy is low or even absent and how, as a social worker, it is appropriate to respond.
In social work, you will undoubtedly come across situations and service users which pose certain challenges for an empathic response.
In this video, David Howe explains that in almost all cases (including where you have to deliver bad news or when a service user's own capacity for empathy is low), it is even more important for social workers to respond empathically.
Reflective Questions
- Think of an acquaintance who you can't warm to or who can easily get under your skin. Take a moment to be curious about why they behave the way they do. What makes them tick, do you think? Might they behave differently if you responded to them in a different way?
- When have you received bad news? Do you wish the news had been broken to you differently? How?
- David Howe briefly mentions exceptions where empathy may not be the appropriate response. What might these exceptions be? When might social workers be better served by switching off their professional empathy?