Arc of Empathy
Empathy is often imagined as warm and fuzzy. Maureen Walker's ARC of Empathy pushes us further. Awareness, Respect, and Compassion help us stay present to what is happening, curious across difference, and cognizant of our shared humanity. ARC creates an opening for disruptive empathy: the kind of empathy that can unsettle old stories without turning difference into contempt.
What is the Arc of Empathy?
Three practices help build disruptive empathy: Awareness notices what is happening within and between us; Respect welcomes difference with curiosity; and, Compassion remembers our shared humanity.
Applications in therapy
- Notice your own reactions, assumptions, and urges to rescue, reassure, or defend.
- Take the client’s experience seriously, especially when it challenges your intentions or self-understanding.
- Instead of applying labels like "resistant" and "noncompliant," lean into repair, relational movement, and mutual accountability
Applications in community
- Notice whose experiences are centered, unheard, or made easier for others to tolerate.
- Make room for disagreement and truth-telling without treating them as threats to belonging.
- Stay connected to shared humanity while allowing differences in history, identity, and power to matter.
Evolution of the Arc of Empathy
Empathy has been central to RCT from the beginning. Judith Jordan, Janet Surrey, and Alexandra Kaplan’s 1983 paper Women and Empathy, described empathy as thinking and feeling with another while maintaining clarity and awareness. Later RCT writing outlined mutual empathy, emphasizing responsiveness, visible impact, and the experience of being moved by one another.
In her 2016 keynote on disruptive empathy, Maureen Walker extended this foundation into more explicit engagement with difference, conflict, culture, and power. She argued that empathy must do more than communicate warmth: it must help us question the stories that divide people into “us” and “them.”
Walker formally introduced the ARC of Empathy in her 2019 book When Getting Along Is Not Enough. The three practices—Awareness, Respect, and Compassion—offer a way to put disruptive empathy into action. The ARC carries RCT’s longstanding commitment to empathy into the work of confronting racialized disconnection and creating more authentic relationships across difference.
Questions
- What truth am I tempted to soften or avoid?
- What is my goal in having difficult conversations?
- What shifts when I remember our shared humanity?
Relational Challenge
Notice one moment when you want to explain, smooth things over, or pull away. Pause and attend to what is happening inside you and within the relationship. Ask one question that makes room for difference, then allow what you hear to shape your next response.
Empathy is a complex skill that involves joining with another in his or her emotional experience, while maintaining cognitive clarity.