Valley of the Giants, OR

AJ Davidson

Empathy and Change

She tells me she’s hurting. She says that she’s forgotten what it feels like to sit without pain. To stand without pain. The purple bags under her eyes suggest sleepless nights, and “depression” written under her exercise precautions tells me that her sleepless nights haven’t been easy.

I mirror the sadness in her eyes and I tell her that her pain is real. She looks up at me and says thank you.

I prompt her to begin her stretches and press the start button on my timer. I ask her what she did this weekend. She describes the difficulty of watching two grandchildren with an aching back.

Thirty seconds - the timer beeps.

She switches sides to one much more painful. The grimace on her face shows frustration. She’s felt this a million times. She’s working but her body is not. I ask her if she enjoys the company of her grandchildren.

Thirty seconds - the timer beeps.

She switches sides and looks me in the eyes - eyes that I am trying to fill with empathy and compassion. She begins to tell a story of abandonment, abuse, and loss. My finger hovers over the start button and slowly lifts away.

Her referral denotes physical pain and her medical history denotes mental stress, but her pain is so much more than what is written in her chart. She’s here for her physical pain and that is what she will be treated for. She will understand physical therapy as a modality that could possibly diminish her pain. She is unsure. She is uneducated regarding the human body. Most people are.

I tell her that her grandchildren are lucky to have a grandmother that is selfless enough to care for them when she is the one that needs caring for. She smiles and switches sides…unprompted… without the grimace.

I want to treat her pain, but more than anything I want to be an empathetic human being for her. I want to appeal to her as a friend and as someone who genuinely cares about her. She is human, and humans are generally worth caring for.

In my experience, pain is the sandpaper and empathy is the match. Pain creates the desire for change and empathy is the spark.

Later in the appointment she asks me why she is stretching her legs when it is her back that is causing her pain. I describe to her that the body works like a chain and that one dysfunctional link can throw the entire system awry.

Is she curious now because I’ve appealed to her as a fellow human that cares? My experiential data would say so. Does curiosity lead to change? In my experience - yes.

The more I learn about our current climate crisis, the more I observe empathy to be a missing part of the climate revival equation.

We don’t care enough about other people. We don’t show it. We try to portray it. We post pictures. We write words for others to see. We portray our escapades and our beliefs and our ideas for change, but what does it all mean? What does it matter? Who cares when the majority of people can’t relate or don’t know how to relate? We use “I” far too much in our conversations.

Physical therapy alone couldn’t treat my patient’s pain, and hard-hitting documentaries, facebook rants, blame, political campaigns, diet shaming, intellectual superiority, and protests aren’t going to fix the world. Are they integral parts of the equation? Yes. But where is the empathy?

How can you expect to change someone when you don’t know them. And how can you expect a person to change when they are out of touch with what they are changing for?

Yes we need to portray urgency, and yes we need to portray the facts, but it needs to be done so in a way that is human and in a way that draws upon empathy. We are emotional beings and the thing that means most to us is the fact that someone else cares. Not that someone cares to save the earth so others can continue to reside on it - that’s too far removed. People need to know they are cared about on an individual level. That’s what will spark change.

Human connection is the bridge to a connection between our earth and humanity.

William Edmonds 

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