Dr. Ekman describes the steps towards feeling empathy and acting compassionately, as well as the different forms of compassion.
The first step toward being empathetic and acting compassionately is to recognize how someone is feeling and, in particular, when they are suffering.
This is often the simplest and easiest step of the process. For the most part, people are pretty skilled at recognizing how others are feeling when others clearly express emotional information through their words, facial expressions, and other nonverbal communication.
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