How often do we hear the sentence "You don't understand" in relation to something someone is going through? One blogger in my Blogworld recently said that she had been suffering from a bout of clinical depression.
I often think about the experiences in my life and think about how they have made it easier for me to understand what other people are going through or what other people may think.
The latter is easier to understand because my whole professional training from my short period on a medical ward when I was straight out of school to my professional career as a bureaucrat involved being able to see all points of view of a situation.
I originally read public administration and my post-grad was business administration.
In the short period when I was reading for a law degree and then for the English Bar it was drummed into one that a lawyer must always be able to see both sides of the case in order to win whichever side he represented.
I came North and never did become a lawyer (English and Scots law are different). However the ability to see all points of view was absolutely invaluable when preparing a case to present to politicians either at local council level or, as was often the case, trying to persuade the Scottish Office to accede to one of the Council's requests.
When it comes to understanding what people are going through I fall back on my experiences in life from post-operative depression after having part of my lung removed when I was 16/17, the death of our elder son in 2006 and living with cancer since I was operated on in 1998.
I must stress that in their own way though they were awful experiences - particularly Andy's death - they were also a way of making it possible to understand what other people may be going through. That in itself makes real empathy possible.
Depression is different though because when you actually are going through it you don't have control. Even then I was sure it would pass and when it did I've been fortunate in that it never returned. However it was a superb experience because it's enable me to understand what it's like and empathise with those who suffer. However I still do not to go for long walks on my own as I did then day after day, mile after mile because 60 years later it still brings the experience (not the depression) back to me.
After all:
