Give Empathy Not Advice
GIVE EMPATHY NOT ADVICE EXERCISE
The thing people need most when they are suffering is to feel understood, seen, and cared for. Active listening and giving empathy to others is a skill that can be built, but it takes practice. Expressing empathy calls on our emotional capacity skills to be able to sit with the other person’s feelings and potentially be uncomfortable while we do it. If we’re uncomfortable, that can lead to trying to fix or solve their “problem.” If you have a difficult time sitting with feelings, yours or someone else’s, you might want to practice this exercise before trying to offer empathy.
Next time you’re talking to someone you care about who’s sharing something difficult or challenging, try to practice these tools:
Repeat Back to Them What You are Hearing
This might feel awkward at first, but feeding back what you’ve heard, not adding your interpretation or your opinion, but really staying what what the person has actually shared will go a long way to having them really feel heard and understood.
Check if You’ve Gotten It
Check with them to see if they feel you’ve understood what they are saying and ask if there is something you’re missing or not getting. And if they share something else, practice the first step again, repeating back to them what you’ve heard. Once they’ve done that, ask again until they feel like you understand what they are saying and how they are feeling.
Express Compassion
Now see if you can locate a sense of care and concern for this person knowing they are suffering this way, and say something heartfelt and compassionate from that place. Examples of what you might say include:
“This sounds really hard”
“I’m sorry you’re going through this right now”
“I”m glad you’re letting me know what’s going on, I care about you”
“You’re being hard on yourself, anyone would be having a difficult time in your place”
“Go easy on my friend, she/he is hurting”
If you’re having a hard time locating compassion for this person, it might be a clue that you don’t have the emotional resources to really listen and offer empathy at this time. That’s okay, you’re a human being too. It might mean you are in need of taking care of yourself and filling up your own emotional gas tank before you can offer empathy to someone else. You might benefit from the Self-Value and Self-Compassion tools to help fill your emotional reserves first and then see if you’ve got some compassion to offer someone else.