Walking in Your Shoes

Abstract

This article reports research in "Walking in Your Shoes," an empathic way of deeply relating to one another. Stating one's intention to be another person and walking with that intention, one is able to experience a subject's energetic style, how he or she is in the world, and what abilities are used to cope. The awarenesses that arise as one walks with no conscious intention of imitating or calling on one's cognitive knowledge about the person can be used to glean information otherwise not available to one's consciousness. In the walking, one experiences a shift in awareness and, continuing to walk, shares that new awareness with the subject. Later, one notices his or her attention shifting to the subjects more repressed and constricted faculties. People who have been "walked" frequently report that they have never before felt so understood and accepted. The Buddhist, existential-phenomenological, and self psychology premises underlying the walking are discussed.

The Refinement of Empathy

“…As the distance between subject and object-between therapist and client-is reduced, there opens up the opportunity to know the client more directly. A therapist may attempt to "walk in the client's shoes" (Cogswell, 1993;Mahrer et al, 1994) or may experience inclusion in the life of the other (Heard, 1993). This is not just an observation of the other followed by a comparison of his or her experience to one's own history, as Guntrip describes above, but a movement of seeing the world through the eyes of the client while retaining one's own identity.…”