Empathy
Empathy is always the right choice, even when it isn't and four ways to increase empathy in your relationships.
“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound, purpose-larger-than-self kind of understanding.” ~Bill Bullard
The world needs more empathy. You don’t have to go very far to overhear a heated argument or read one on the internet. Connecting with others no longer seems to be as important as being heard. We all want to be heard but at what cost? You cannot have a healthy relationship if you only speak and never listen. Much of the U.S. has decided that the solution is to surround ourselves with people that believe the same as us and cast out those who disagree.
There is a better solution though, it is to develop empathy.
When I was a kid I spent much of my time outdoors in my neighborhood, without adult supervision. The one rule was stay within earshot of my dad’s whistle. He could whistle loud enough that I could wander a good six blocks away, alone. Our house was typically unlocked and my parents usually left the keys in the cars in the driveway. It was a small town in rural Montana and it was our way of life. My wife, on the other hand, grew up in a much bigger city with a single mom. She did not wander off and did not do anything alone and regularly heard news of terrible crimes happening nearby. They always locked their house and their cars. She was taught to be cautious and fearful. And now, we have children of our own that want to explore their world. So now we get to fight, in my opinion she is overbearing and controlling and definitely not fun and so I tell her as much, she thinks I am foolish and she questions whether I even love my children and she lets me know it, but what if we don’t have to fight? What if we choose empathy?
A quick google search of the definition of empathy yields this; the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner. So, what does this look like applied and why bother? There are four things to do in heated situations to increase empathy and decrease disconnection.
Stay curious a little bit longer This means letting them be fully heard first. They have a story that needs to be told so that they can be understood. Where my wife grew up was not a safe place and she has strong emotions attached to the argument we are having. All too often we lightly listen only with intent to prioritize our story over theirs. Our opinion gets in the way of truly listening. So when she finishes her story, rather than jumping in and arguing my case, I need to ask for more information. I need to...
Ask better questions Too often we use leading questions to get our solution in front of them like “don’t you think the kids deserve to have fun?” or even worse, we don’t ask questions and our argument is just statements thrown, like rocks, at each other like; “you are always afraid” or “you don’t care about what anyone else wants, just what you want”. The best questions are the really vague ones, such as; what does that mean? How? What is next? what do you need? How are you going to do that? What else?. These open ended questions force the other person to explain themselves better and gives you more insight into the story being told.
10x your understanding of their experience, this means that once you discover what the really strong feeling in the story is, in my wife’s case it was feeling unsafe, you bring that feeling into your own mind to recognize what unsafe means for you and then you imagine if that feeling was 10x stronger. All of a sudden the issue is a big issue. You can feel fear and in danger and anxious and out of control and scared and so many more feelings that can accompany a strong emotion. Sometimes we can think of a situation that elicits strong emotion from us and relate that to the emotion they are feeling strongly.
Recognize the Drama Triangle Very simply put, the drama triangle has a victim a persecutor and a rescuer and none of those roles are healthy. If we are trying to be helpful we can easily get caught in the rescuer role and rather than the victim discovering their power and solutions they quickly learn to rely on us to “save” them. If we are their “problem” than we can be aggressive or defensive and inadvertently become the persecutor or the victim, fighting to control them and get our way or feeling attacked and helpless to stop them. It is best to recognize the triangle and who is where on it and then get out as soon as possible. Staying outside the triangle allows us to have empathy and empower them.
Empathy feels deeply and is present and it can increase trust and vulnerability. Practicing empathy is a deliberate effort on your part to connect with someone on a more intimate level and that often times will mean that you have to lose some of your own desires, ideals, opinions, attitudes and even beliefs. Choosing another person over your own beliefs can be extremely difficult and it can feel like empathy cannot possibly be the right answer, but it is.
