Empathy and the Double ABCX

Sorry guys! This post has been a draft for about 4 days, unbeknownst to me. It seems I forgot to publish it. Well, it has been rediscovered and officially made part of this blog!

This week we talked about "The Family Under Stress." This included things like infidelity, family contention, and family crises. This post will concentrate on the last of these.

People are always telling us that we are sent trials for a reason, and sometimes that reason is just so that we can help others overcome similar trials. When I was young and inexperienced, I honestly thought this was a stupid reason. Couldn't we be just as effective helping people without having to suffer ourselves? Well, the answer to that question, as I found out in class today, is "No."

First of all, there's a difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy just means you feel sorry for someone, not really that you relate to their pain. Empathy, on the other hand, has some relatability to it. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, empathy is defined as "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present" One who experiences empathy has experienced similar circumstances and therefore feels a vicarious pain or struggle along with the suffering person. There is either a sense of helplessness or a sense of hypocrisy. Empathy is deeper and more effective in helping people, but can only be experienced if the empathizer has experienced similar trials.

Secondly, there are some resources and perspectives that can only be obtained through experiencing trial. By going through hard times, you gain knowledge and understanding of how to deal with those challenges effectively. To help explain this, McCubbin and Patterson developed a modified version of Reuben Hill's ABCX model simply called the Double ABCX model. The idea is that the results of the first time you encounter a stressor influence the second time you encounter it. This plays into helping others because you, with your already-altered paradigms, can help them see what you do.

So, the next time your Young Women Leader tell you that going through trials can help you help others, listen. Because there's definitely more than a little truth in that.