The Mag­ic of Empathy

Pic­ture your­self in the mid­dle of a meltdown.

Oh, you don’t have those? Riiiiight.

Any­way, you’re los­ing it, your face is hot, and your hands are balling up into fists. Maybe you feel like cry­ing or you just want to hit some­thing. Per­haps you are already full on yelling, a human vol­cano spew­ing frus­tra­tion and neg­a­tiv­i­ty. A loved one firm­ly tells you to calm down. You respond with, ​“You’re right hon­ey. I’m being com­plete­ly unrea­son­able right now. I should set­tle down before I make a fool of myself. I’m sorry.”

That’s not what hap­pens at your house? Good, because mine either.

Why Doesn’t ​“Calm Down” Work?

To get past a dif­fi­cult emo­tion, you need to first iden­ti­fy and embrace that emo­tion. Once you know what you are feel­ing and why, you are able to move into a state of mind that allows for more effec­tive prob­lem solv­ing and deci­sion mak­ing. When some­one tells you to calm down, they are basi­cal­ly sug­gest­ing that you skip right past this step and move imme­di­ate­ly to the prob­lem solv­ing state of mind. That’s just not how we work. We need that in-between step of iden­ti­fy­ing the tough feel­ing and sit­ting with it for a minute before we can move for­ward. What’s miss­ing when some­one says ​“calm down” is empa­thy.

What is Empathy?

Empa­thy is the abil­i­ty to under­stand and share the feel­ings of anoth­er per­son. It is putting your­self in some­one else’s fig­u­ra­tive shoes and con­sid­er­ing what they might be think­ing and feel­ing. For our pur­pos­es here, empa­thy is a tool – an approach to com­mu­ni­ca­tion that can be used to dif­fuse con­flict and find com­mon ground in a tense situation.

To use empa­thy is to lis­ten, not just to the words being said, but to the feel­ings behind the words. Being empa­thet­ic means focus­ing less on the behav­ior or actions hap­pen­ing in the moment, and more on the emo­tions under­ly­ing them.

Empa­thy is lis­ten­ing to under­stand, not lis­ten­ing to respond. To be empa­thet­ic requires us to be present and to set aside what we are think­ing and feel­ing for a sec­ond. I’m not say­ing your own thoughts and feel­ings are irrel­e­vant. It’s just that, espe­cial­ly in a con­flict, explor­ing two people’s points of view simul­ta­ne­ous­ly doesn’t usu­al­ly end well. A bonus with empa­thy is that if you use it well, oth­er peo­ple are often more able or ready to hear what you have to say in return.

Tip: Empa­thy is not prob­lem-solv­ing, crit­i­cism, giv­ing demands, set­ting lim­its, or sympathy.

Why Use Empathy?

Using empa­thy val­i­dates, or con­firms, anoth­er person’s expe­ri­ence or emotion.

Feel­ing under­stood is a basic need. When some­one uses empa­thy, or lis­tens to the feel­ings behind our behav­ior, we feel under­stood. When we feel under­stood, we are bet­ter able to label and sort out our own emo­tions and get past them. Empa­thy forms a bridge between pow­er­ful neg­a­tive emo­tions and the state of mind we need to be in to resolve the prob­lems that might be caus­ing those emotions.

Think about the last time you were super upset. Like over the top, puls­ing vein vis­i­ble on your fore­head, spit­ting when you talk (shout?) upset. Did you want some­one to tell you what to do or set lim­its on your behav­ior? Or would it have been help­ful for that some­one to take a sec­ond to lis­ten and real­ly hear what was at the cen­ter of your emo­tions in that moment?

This is not to say that we always need anoth­er person’s empa­thy to calm down. Often, we do the work of sort­ing our emo­tions out by our­selves, as in, ​“I’m just angry because no one is lis­ten­ing to me and there’s tooth­paste on the @#% ceil­ing. Again. (HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAP­PEN?!?!) It’s okay though, I can han­dle this. I’ll just get the step lad­der.” But for those moments when we are too over­whelmed to deal, a small amount of empa­thy can go a long way.

How Do We Use Empathy?

Empa­thy can be used to dif­fuse an esca­lat­ing sit­u­a­tion, find com­mon ground dur­ing an argu­ment, iden­ti­fy the cause of a bad mood, or just to build a con­nec­tion between peo­ple. Nat­u­ral­ly, it works best if every­one involved is lis­ten­ing with empa­thy but often if one per­son begins lis­ten­ing to under­stand, the entire inter­ac­tion will shift.

The basic for­mu­la for respond­ing with empa­thy is to lis­ten to what a per­son is say­ing while also notic­ing their non-ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Men­tal­ly set aside your own inter­nal reac­tion and focus on what the oth­er per­son needs or wants in this moment. Here are some sim­ple exam­ples of state­ments you might use dur­ing a tense sit­u­a­tion and alter­na­tive respons­es that uti­lize the skill of empathy.

Exam­ple 1

Not empa­thet­ic: ​“I know you want to golf this week­end but you golfed last week­end and I want to go shop­ping so you’re just going to need to get past that.”

Empa­thet­ic: ​“I’m hear­ing you say that find­ing some time to golf this week­end is impor­tant to you.”

Exam­ple 2

Not empa­thet­ic: ​“Would you calm down, please? Geez. You’re get­ting all worked up over noth­ing. What you need to do is start say­ing no more often, stop com­mit­ting to so many projects.”

Empa­thet­ic: ​“Wow, you’re feel­ing pulled in so many dif­fer­ent direc­tions right now. It’s hard to know where to even start, huh?”

This video humor­ous­ly illus­trates both the pow­er of empa­thy and how chal­leng­ing it can be to use it. See if you can relate!

Next week, we’ll talk about using empa­thy with kids. Or as I like to call it, ​“bit­ing through your bot­tom lip so you can teach your child how to deal with tough emotions.”

Until then,

Nik­ki

*The con­tent in this blog should nev­er be con­sid­ered an alter­na­tive to qual­i­ty med­ical or men­tal health care and is intend­ed to be a source of infor­ma­tion only.