What It Means to Care and Why Caring Is So Important

I care about you. Yes, I do. I care about you as a human being, as a person who has a story, as a patient in my practice and any other way that you want to show up in my life.

What It Means To Care

I was thinking about the meaning of the word, caring, the other day. I was thinking about it as part of my evolution as a person and healer in the writing of my book. An article from the NIH (National Institutes of Health) explains the difference between empathy and caring really well. (You can read the full article here.)

The article suggested that being empathic allows you to feel another person’s feelings but doesn’t really give space for you to check in and see how that person is actually experiencing life. Caring, however, asks that you check in, find out what’s happening and then find a way to help the person get what they need or want. I’ve always been empathic and in the past I have allowed that to guide my experience. At some point I realized that I needed more than empathy to be really present. My clients and friends needed to feel that I cared. It wasn’t enough for me just to feel them, they needed to feel me too.

Caring isn’t just about health care. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who works in the business world. He works with people all over the world and he said that some countries don’t care about their employees at all. On the other hand, he finds that people in the bay area basically have to care, because their workers have choices-they can go elsewhere.

What Caring Means To Me

Why is caring so important? As I think about it in my world. Caring means that I pay attention to detail. I care about what I do and make an effort to do my best. I care about my health and see that I do things that are good for me. When you care, you put in that extra effort to make sure that something works for you or the other person you care about.

No matter what setting I’m in when I meet a new person, in my office, or out in the world, I want her to care as much as I do. And I want her to know that I care too. In my office that leads to us  creating a team that helps her health get to the place that she wants. What do you care about? Let me know what you think by writing some comments here.