Areas › Anger › Growing empathy
You cannot decide to feel closer to people. You can decide to eat with them, walk with them, sit near them and say one true thing, and the closeness tends to follow.
The chemistry gets talked about a great deal and it is the least useful part. What you can act on is the diary: a standing meal with someone, a hand on a shoulder, telling one person something you would normally keep back. Put those in the week rather than waiting until you feel like it, because the feeling usually arrives after the arrangement, not before it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He created spouses from among yourselves for you to live with in tranquillity: He ordained love and kindness between you (Quran 30:21). Love and kindness are described as placed there, which makes protecting them ordinary work rather than romance.
وَمِنۡ ءَايَٰتِهِۦٓ أَنۡ خَلَقَ لَكُم مِّنۡ أَنفُسِكُمۡ أَزۡوَٰجࣰ ا لِّتَسۡكُنُوٓاْ إِلَيۡهَا وَجَعَلَ بَيۡنَكُم مَّوَدَّةࣰ وَرَحۡمَةًۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَٰتࣲ لِّقَوۡمࣲ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Another of His signs is that He created spouses from among yourselves for you to live with in tranquillity: He ordained love and kindness between you. There truly are signs in this for those who reflect
Qur’an 30:21read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Pooling twenty three studies, loving-kindness and compassion meditation produced a small but significant improvement in life satisfaction, with effect sizes around 0.31 in before and after designs. Small is the honest word. Practices like these nudge things in a good direction rather than transforming a life, and much of the pooled evidence comes from designs without strong comparison groups.
Gu X, Luo W, Zhao X, Chen Y, Zheng Y, Zhou J, Zeng X, Yan L, Chen Y, Zhang X, Lv J, Lang Y, Wang Z, Gao C, Jiang Y, Li R. (2022). The effects of loving-kindness and compassion meditation on life satisfaction: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Applied psychology. Health and well-being doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Closeness comes from repeated ordinary contact more than from wanting it.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
If you can do a cutting impression of someone, you already own the machinery for empathy. It is the same copying, pointed somewhere else.
Underneath both versions sits the same small dread: somebody being displeased with you. That is the thing to practise surviving, and it does get easier.
When someone is telling you something hard, quietly let your body come closer to theirs. Similar posture, similar pace, your voice at their volume rather than your own.