You are in the UK, right? That may explain the difference.


Absolutely. I never argued that. If you read my post carefully you'll see me say that personal experience is crucial in understanding somatic nature or trauma, where by "understanding" I certainly meant empathy because empathy IS understanding through feeling what the other person is feeling.

It's important, however, to know the difference between empathy and projective identification, a useful concept from psychoanalysis that suggests that oftentimes we may believe that we are feeling the other person's pain and experiencing genuine empathy when, in fact, we are feeling our own pain. This happens when we mistakenly believe that the other person's traumatic experience is identical to what ours has been when this may not be so. In this case, we are not really feeling empathy, we are simply projecting our own pain on the other person. It's called projective identification and it's very often confused with empathy. You may recall situations in which you tried to be supportive and empathetic and to let someone know that you understand what they are going through only to hear from them that you are wrong and that their experience is totally different. Don't you feel like an idiot when that happens? I do.



No disagreement here, again, depending on how you use your past experiences.


I've only worked with those who had 20+ years of experience, and IMHO they still had so much to learn...