By Grace Sweeney
Feelings can be a muddled mess at times, even for the best of us. They sway back and forth, and are entirely unpredictable. Sometimes it feels like it’s completely impossible to understand our own feelings, let alone the feelings of others.
But what if we were to cultivate the habit of empathy? How would that change our day-to-day lives? How would that affect others? How would it affect us?
To be empathetic means that we’re able to understand the emotions of those around us. For extremely empathetic people, they sometimes literally feel others’ emotions. These people sometimes are called empaths. Empathy comes naturally to them—almost as naturally as breathing.
Some of us, however, aren’t so lucky. You might find it hard to understand emotions at all. How in the world can you show empathy when it doesn’t come naturally?
You might be able to guess my answer.
Practice.
Practice, practice, practice.
There are three specific things I’d recommend you practice in order to get better at the skill of empathy.
1. Connect with and understand others.
I know it’s hard to connect with others at times—especially if you’re an introvert like me. Even if you aren’t an introvert, utilizing these couple tips might help you connect with others.
Firstly, remember that no one is just like you. Everyone has a different sort of life and everyone is dealing with something different. Never, ever assume that they’re just like you. Instead, ask them questions. Ask about what’s going on for them, what they’ve been doing lately, and so on.
Then, rather than dominating the conversation by talking about yourself, listen. You asked them questions, so you should listen to whatever it is they have to say. If they’re happy, be happy with them. Even if you don’t understand why they’re happy, smile and congratulate or encourage them. If they’re going through a hard time, offer sympathy (if applicable, sometimes sympathy doesn’t help a situation) and understanding words.
In short, put yourself in their shoes. Attempt to understand whatever it is they’re going through. Understand their side of things, even if you don’t like it. Even if you don’t agree, understanding why they think something will instantly make you more empathetic.
2. Experience new things.
Experiencing new things will give you more life experience. It’ll help you recognize that there are more sorts of people in the world than you knew before. And it’ll let you know about more circumstances and lives people can lead.
Getting out in the world may be uncomfortable for some of us (myself included), but it’s a necessary step in cultivating empathy. If we’re locked inside our own little bubble world, we’ll never understand anything except our world. We’ll never interact with others enough to know what sort of things others might be going through.
If we never do anything new or exciting, it’ll be much harder to empathize with people who are going through a new experience.
3. The 3-Step Process
Recently I read about a process psychotherapist Kristen Zaleski recommends to people when practicing empathy. There are three key steps she tells a person to go through in order to feel and show empathy.
Step 1: Recognize the challenge someone else is facing.
See what it is the other person is going through. Listen closely enough to realize what it is they’re struggling with. It could be loss, discouragement, self-doubt, hurt from someone else in their life, or a number of other things.
Recognize whatever it is they’re going through. Understand it as clearly as you can. Pinpoint it in your mind.
Step 2: Recognize the emotion their challenge evokes you.
If they’re dealing with loss, try to find the emotion that challenge creates in you. Think back to a time you lost something precious to you, and try to understand it as best as you can.
If they’re discouraged, remember times you were discouraged. If they’re hurting in any other way, allow their challenging circumstances to translate to emotions in your own mind and heart.
Hold onto those emotions, and don’t let them go.
Step 3: Transfer the emotion into action.
Finally, transfer the emotion into action. Use your understanding of what it is they’re going through and try to understand what sort of actions would help them most at this time. If you’ve gone through something similar in the past, draw on your own experience and feelings from that time. What had you wanted to hear or have done for you when you went through that?
For example, say someone’s struggling to keep up with schoolwork. You could understand that, and might offer to give them a hand in studying for a test. (Because who hasn’t wanted that at some point in our school-careers? XD)
Translate the emotion you’re feeling from their challenge into actions in some way and make sure to offer those actions back to the person.
A Few Final Tips
Empathy is a hard thing to master. In order to make sure we’re doing it in a healthy, encouraging way, here are a few more things I’d recommend you practice.
• Respect boundaries. Don’t push someone to tell you things they aren’t comfortable talking about. Respect them and what they’re comfortable talking about. Never push someone’s boundaries in an unhealthy way. It’ll only hurt them, and possibly damage your relationship.
• Don’t give unwanted advice. Sometimes when a person is hurting, they just want a listening ear. We often think we can help by giving advice, but sometimes being a listening ear is more valuable than the most helpful advice. Giving advice when someone wants an understanding ear can make them feel like the advice-giver doesn’t actually care about their feelings. And that’s never what we want.
• Don’t try to change their point of view. Yes, their way of thinking might not be reasonable. They might be seeing things through a badly-tinted lens. But don’t try to sway them over to the “right” way of thinking. Don’t say or imply things like, “It’s happening for a reason and therefore you shouldn’t be feeling this bad about it.” Let them hurt, understand their hurt, and once they’ve recovered a bit you can help them up out of the hole they’re sitting in. But don’t make changing their point of view the first thing you try to do. That can be incredibly damaging.
Remember, practice makes perfect. You won’t be amazing at empathy the first time you try. You also don’t have to feel every single emotion perfectly.
Just practice understanding where others are coming from, the struggles they’re dealing with, and take actions that show them you care and empathize with them. You’ll get better at it with time, I promise.
Take some time this week to show empathy to someone in your life. If it’ll help, try utilizing one or more of the above tips/techniques. Then let me know how it goes in the comments. <3
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