Mental Health
How Do We Develop the Skill of Empathy?
There is more to witnessing grief than vicarious trauma; there’s vicarious resilience
A man in a three-piece suit walked up to the gate of one of the homeless shelters where I work. He wouldn’t be the first or the last to do this. He read the sign explaining the mission of our nonprofit and then stared awkwardly at a group of us who were sitting outside in the community space together.
Several of the community members expressed a similar sentiment of feeling like they were living in a “zoo”, so I went outside the gate to confront him.
“Can I help you?”
“What is this place?” he asked.
I shared a bit about our program.
“You mean, people get to live here for free?”
“Yes, it’s a homeless shelter. That’s generally how homeless shelters work. We don’t charge rent to survive,” I stated the obvious. He clearly had never heard of the concept of a place where people who couldn’t pay the ever-increasing rent prices didn’t have to risk their lives sleeping on cold concrete every night.
“Do they work?” he asked incredulously.