Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting (The Peaceful Parent Series)

by Laura Markham

Empathy is often defined as seeing things from the other person’s point of view. But empathy is actually a physical event, controlled by the insula in our right brain. Remember how the structure of the right brain was formed during the first two years of life, before your baby became verbal? Scientists suspect that the right brain is the orchestrator of intimacy. The insula connects the brain with the heart, digestive organs, and skin. So when our heart leaps, or our stomach turns, or our skin crawls, the insula is sending us a message. And when we feel deep empathy, we feel it in our bodies. That means a more accurate definition of empathy is “feeling” from the other person’s point of view.