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Eddc 605 - How We Understand Experience

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How We Understand Experience

Yvette Ramirez-Cabrera

EDDC 605

Concordia University-Portland

How We Understand Experience

        According to Dilts (1998), “Presuppositions relate to unconscious beliefs or assumptions embedded in the structure of an utterance, action or another belief, and are required for the utterance, action or belief to make sense”.  Why is it so hard to understand experiences we’ve never had?  Research suggests that we usually understand others by simulating.  We imagine how we would feel or what we would do if we were in their shoes.  We usually are not aware that we are doing it because our brain pretends easily and automatically.  Even though simulation can be useful to empathize with people in a very quick way, it also has its disadvantages.  If we haven’t experience what other people have experienced, we end up assuming they are similar to us than they really are (Whittlestone, 2015).

        My daughter while in elementary school developed a reputation for laziness.  Her teachers would tell me that she wouldn’t complete her assignments and was extremely disorganized.  Her school report card would constantly read “very smart”, but needs to try harder.  She continued being like that until she went to middle school that she was diagnosed with ADHD and Hashimoto’s Disorder.  What looked like “laziness” throughout her elementary years was in fact a serious medical condition.  

        People who have ADHD have are not considered just “lazy”, but brain scan implies that their brain is undeveloped in certain areas.  They have a hard time planning, prioritizing, focusing, and can’t control their emotions.  People that have ADHD have a hard time paying attention and to do focus on what they are doing is much more difficult than it is for other people.  Their external behavior indicates that they lazy, but in reality they are working incredibly harder than other people.  

Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease in which the thyroid attacks a person’s immune system via antibodies, attempting to destroy the person’s gland as if it was some vile enemy.  The symptoms for Hashimoto’s are silent through the early stages, but eventually people start noticing them.  Some of the symptoms include:  poor stamina; easy fatigue; depression; feeling cold; gaining weight; dry hair and skin; constipation; etc.  As the disease progresses, the person may feel hypo one day, and very hyper another.  This is caused by the destruction of the thyroid.  The symptoms that people experience as the disease progresses are the following:  diarrhea; anxiety; fidgetiness; and tightness in the throat (Stop The Thyroid Maddness, 2005-2015).  My daughter at one point was diagnosed by her pediatrician as being bi-polar, but when in reality she had this terrible disease.  Her mood swings were actually the swings between hyper- and- hyper attack of the thyroid.  If it wasn’t for my insistence that my daughter had something more than just being bi-polar, we wouldn’t find out that she had Hashimoto’s.  I never gave up and I proved to her pediatrician that his diagnosis was indeed incorrect.  After this, I changed her pediatrician and things started looking better.  She will never get cured from Hashimoto’s, but at least I know that she wasn’t bi-polar.  

It’s hard to actually imagine that other people’s internal life could be so different from yours.  Many times we hear people say that they are feeling sad, stressed, or unmotivated, but do we actually empathize with what they are feeling?  Many times we don’t because we don’t have any knowledge that is relevant to understanding their experience.  Understanding other people’s experiences is not easy because we tend to simulate how they are feeling.  Many times we end up assuming other people are much more similar to us than they really are (Whittlestone, 2015).  

The psychology of empathy is an essential part of emotions and it makes us feel what the other person is feeling.  According to Roy (2010), “Empathy or a feeling of connectedness and being in the shoes of others, is closely related to intuition as intuition helps in the understanding and recognition of emotions in others”.  If my daughter’s teachers would have felt empathy for her maybe she would have done better in school.  Empathy has to do with motivating and influencing the other person by tapping in on her emotions.  It’s easier to motivate someone if you are aware of what they are thinking (Roy, 2010).  

There are 5 stages of empathy.  “Empathy begins with intuition and ends with prediction is which one person is able to predict the emotional responses of the other” (Saberi, 2010, p.1).  The first stage is intuition where a person naturally is intuitive towards the other as with intuition of the other person’s emotions.  The next stage is the connection between two people where it leads to a feeling of mutual consideration.  Although empathy can be mutual it still can be one sided.  After the connection with the other person is established and we have a deep sense of consideration for the other person’s feelings, and understand why they feel that way, then we can say that we can relate to them closely.  This is when we can suggest the ability of being in their shoes.  The last stage has to do with motivation.  This is when people feel the empathetic connection and can motivate or influence the other person.  Influencing and motivating go hand in hand because it’s an integral part of empathy and it will fulfill the safety and security needs of the individual (Roy, 2010).

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