Tag: empathy

Making Empathic Reflections Work

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What are you needing?  

Does it come from someone else, necessarily? When your need is unmet or when your need is met, how are you feeling? Can you trust your feelings and intuition to tell you when you are satisfied or discontented?  

What are you feeling about your need being met or unmet? If you need something from someone else, be sure to make a concrete request and keep your communication clear and direct. Reflect and ask what their needs are, too. Ask the person if you got it right. Show them you care and that their thought is important to you. Reflect to them what you think they mean. How do you feel for them? Do you feel the empathy for them now? 

Acknowledge the feelings you have and the feelings they are having. Ask if you got it right. Say something like, “I can see that you are feeling_____”; “It sounds like_______”; “Let me see if I’m getting this right_______.” 

Discuss together how you are going to go about meeting those needs. 

EXAMPLE OF EMPATHIC REFLECTION: 

“It sounds like there have been many times that I’ve hurt you and you want to even the score and get back at me. You must be awfully furious with me. It sounds like you are also afraid. You may have the need to be seen and to matter, that you haven’t been able to connect with me to convey your feelings because you need connection and empathy. You sound angry because I’m hurting you and you have not gotten the acknowledgement and apology from me that would re-establish a harmonious connection.” 

How to Make an Empathic Reflection 

When we paraphrase by paying attention to particular words which seem to capture the essence of what you and the other are expressing, we can then check for accuracy. Instead of parroting the entire story, we can focus micro-shifts that are being made while matching the tone and energy. Here are three examples of reflections that connect the listener with the speaker: 

  Speaker: I am not influencing the group the way I had hoped. 

Listener (recap): You’re saying you had hoped to influence the group differently.  

Listener (empathic reflection): Are you sad, longing to connect more deeply with the group? 

Listener (reframing): It sounds like you can envision a better way to have the influence you want? 

Empathy is feeling the other deeply, as one in the same, and feeling the desire to alleviate the suffering of the other. Empathy is an action connected to the compassionate choice that ethics holds us responsible for. It is what is most real.

Mostly, words promise to bring more hope back into your life and the world. Speech that carries a message of unity and fairness to all is remembered.  These basic touch points are based in empathy. In other words, they address the universal needs of humanity. Now, following through is much more complex. 

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How to Communicate with Empathy 

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How do we communicate effectively and break through conflicts with others that have been longstanding? Through open acknowledgement, directness, and honesty. But when honesty that is direct is difficult and borders on the confrontational, how do we communicate with empathy? Empathy in our approach and in our language is the most effective way to forge a connection and bridge the gulf of disconnection.  

First, do not try to change the other person or expect something from them, especially if you’re not making a clear, concrete request. Just encourage them to express their truth and their feelings. Try not to meet them with criticism but be in the spirit that you seek to understand them. This usually disarms them from conflictual arguments and opens more possibilities to reconcile and arrive at better solutions, even a win-win solution.  

If you are not saying how you feel about a situation, you are rarely accurate about it, ironically enough. When you express your feelings, you are expressing something true on another level, because whatever may or may not have happened, how you feel is the most important.  

The key to speaking with empathy is to first learn how to listen. Arguments are disarmed with keen listening, because arguments are precisely fueled when each person argues over the other. In an argument, both parties never feel like they’re getting their point across. 

In the face of conflict, when you’ve said everything you can possibly think of to say, you can apply a few of these listening skills.  

LISTENING SKILL #1—The Disarming Technique 

This is based on the premise that we don’t listen to what the other person says because it upsets us to hear how they feel. We are afraid of being hurt and of experiencing pain.  

When you resist the urge to argue or defend yourself and you instead agree with the other person, you will paradoxically end up a winner. They will feel like a winner, too, and likely to be more open to your point of view. 

“You’re right to be______. It is understandable what you’re saying. I would like to hear more of what you have to say.” 

LISTENING SKILL #2—Thought Empathy and Feeling Empathy 

In the spirit of genuine curiosity, your goal is to understand where the other person is coming from and not to argue or state your own point of view. 

Mirror what they are saying in a nonjudgmental way so as to grasp the essence of what they are feeling. 

Repeat and paraphrase their words to grasp what they are thinking—the thought behind their words. 

Acknowledge how they’re probably feeling, given what they are saying to you—the feelings behind the words. 

Empathy is in language and the way you listen. Learn not only peaceful words, but how words connect us or destruct us. It is in the language you choose to speak that can transform your life and the life of others because its real message is meant to be sincere. Sincerity is felt not in words of rhetoric but words of truth. Empathy clarifies your most honest choices. Its power is based on the results of the harmonious cooperation between you and the other. 

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