A number of people have given feedback and messaged appreciation for my defining a new term, ‘contextual empathy’ explicitly to avoid thinking/empathising solely in ahistorical, here-and-now, or decontextualised human-only terms. Here is the definition used (Ahmad, 2025):
“Contextual empathy (author term/definition): Empathy seeks to understand a person’s inner world (client frame of reference) and experience as if it were their own but retains the “as-if quality” (Rogers, 1957). Contextual empathy extends empathy to the client’s contextual frame of reference, to understand and experience it “as if” it were their own (e.g., access barriers, lack of resources, historical context, cultural immersion stress, intergenerational payload, discrimination, precarious living or unsafe conditions). Contextual empathy emerges from perceiving the person’s context, exploring it collaboratively, and being in sync—often without requiring the client to explain it explicitly. Contextual moments of meeting refer to profound perceptions of clients’ contextual issues that lead to transformative encounters between client and therapist. Contextual empathy requires contextual consciousness and whole self-development.”
From the book “A New Introduction to #Counselling and #Psychotherapy” [Routledge Books ] by Mamood Ahmad
Ahmad, M., 2025. A New Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: Embedding Context, Diversity, and Equity into Practice. Taylor & Francis.
The Wholeness Solution for Training, Curricula & Practice 