When empathy is not enough

Have you ever felt that nobody understands your feelings? Even your friends, who express themselves in a positive way, trying to be empathetic, in the end, seem to have a lack of understanding?

One day, a friend – also psychotherapist in Brazil, told me that some of her clients choose her because she was also an immigrant. One of her patients told her that she saw herself having to prove and justify to the former psychotherapist how difficult some experiences were. 

That feeling, of having to prove something is about what I am writing today. 

I have already fought against this, spending a lot of energy trying to convince people to believe in me, expecting something different from “the grass is always greener on the other side” or even seeking a piece of advice on how you should see the other side. Please, don’t take this wrong. There is no problem with those perspectives, but fighting to be understood sometimes is unfair. 

Today, while chatting with a friend, she said something pretty interesting. “We are in the same ocean, but not in the same boat*”. Are you on a yacht or a canoe? Even if we are on the same one, the way that we process the context is different from each other. Our perceptions are influenced by our history, gender, ethnicity, etc.  

So, being in the same boat is not necessary, but it makes a difference. It brings more humanity to the context, even though, sometimes it is important to hear from someone else who is taking a sunbath on the beach.

*Thanks to my besty @maecronicaoficial