Podcast #16 The Power of Empathy

Introduction:
Thanks for clicking on Conversations with Crosswinds Counseling. I’m Curtis Smith and I invite you to subscribe to our podcast and to like and share it as well. I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

Podcast: 

Curtis: Hi, everyone and welcome to Conversations with Crosswinds Counseling. I’m your host Curtis Smith. Thanks for being with us today on the podcast. As always, we are joined by one of the amazing counselors from Crosswinds Counseling, and today it is Jenna Garcia. Jenna, thanks for being with us. 

 Jenna: Yes, of course. 

 Curtis: We’re talking about a topic that I’ll bet comes up a lot in counseling. And that topic today is empathy. Tell me why it’s so important. 

Jenna: Empathy is really how we connect with other people. 

Curtis: Yeah. 

Jenna: It’s what helps the other people – other person feel heard and understood. When we’re talking about something, especially a conversation that’s maybe a little bit more difficult to have. 

Curtis: It feels like it’s one of the core tenets of human behavior. Right. Like not just in counseling, but being able to empathize with someone, being able to connect with them on that level, well it just it feels like it’s something that I do naturally, or I try to do naturally. I’m certainly not perfect on it, but it helps me just kind of navigate life. Is it something that a lot of people really struggle to do? Is it something that you see a lot of people coming in, saying, I don’t even know, ‘I don’t have empathy. I don’t. How do I gain it?’ Yeah, is it a struggle? 

Jenna: It’s definitely a struggle. Empathy is something that we often become so uncomfortable with because it requires us to be in touch with our own emotions, and that’s hard when you’re sitting across from someone who is sad. It’s hard to feel sad. It’s uncomfortable to feel sad. If you’re sitting across from someone that’s angry, it’s hard to feel angry. Empathy is really being able to take the perspective of the other person and feel that feeling that they’re having because you felt that way before. It’s judgment-free, [that] also gets in the way from time to time. It’s hard to show empathy. A lot of us can connect and feel it, and then the showing it is where there might be a challenge. 

Curtis: Wow, all right so I have several questions. For someone – let’s start with the feeling it, because you can’t show it until you feel it. So let’s start with feeling it, right. So, for those people who might be watching the podcast who are thinking that just triggers something in them. They’re like, “Wow, I don’t often feel that. I have a hard time empathizing. I have a hard time connecting on that level.’ What would be a tip, a trick, something they could work on to help them get more connected to others, and be more empathetic. 

Jenna: Yeah, you’ve got to be able to identify feelings. You’ve got to be able to say, ‘Oh, this is anger.’ ‘I’m feeling sad.’ If you can identify your own feelings, it will make it so much easier to identify that in someone else. 

Curtis: And then let’s talk about the showing because this connected with me, when you were saying it, I thought to myself, why, I feel like I’m pretty good at feeling what someone else is feeling and joining them in that emotion, but I don’t know if I always show that. I don’t know if it always comes across, yeah, you’re angry – I feel that anger. I’m with you. That’s not right. Yeah, you’re sad, I’m sad, but I may not show that. So, for those who are out there, who maybe feel like, ‘I’m empathetic, I connect well with people, but I don’t know if it always comes across,’ what would you say to those folks who are struggling with the showing it. 

Jenna: Sure. Empathy is not sympathy. It’s not saying, ‘Oh you’re sad I feel really bad for you. That thing happened.’ That’s sympathy. Instead, we want to show that we feel what they’re feeling. That we’re hearing and understanding those deeper emotions. So, when someone is going to sympathy first, or is trying to compare and saying, ‘Oh man you’re in this really tough situation. I had a really tough situation too.’ So many people default to that comparing in an effort to connect. 

Curtis: Yeah. 

Jenna: But, unfortunately, that really invalidates the experience of the person that you’re talking to. So oftentimes we can miss in this way, where we go to comparing or sympathy. Instead, it’s better to reflect the feeling that you’re hearing. So, Curtis if you’re telling me, ‘I had a really hard day yesterday, I made this mistake at work.’ Saying, ‘I’m so sorry you went through that. I can hear how frustrating yesterday was for you.’ So, you’re sticking with the emotion that the person is bringing up, and not saying, ‘Oh yeah, I remember when I messed up at work too,’ – and you know giving an example of your own. Stick with the feeling. 

Curtis: It feels like when you do that comparing, if I was in the shoes of someone who’s sharing my emotion with you, and you go to comparing it feels like, ‘Well, wow, Jenna just made this all about her.’ 

Jenna: Exactly. 

Curtis: And not a – and I thought we were here, I needed to unload my problem. I needed to talk about me for a minute, and she kind of shifted the whole thing to her. 

Jenna: Yes.  

Curtis: That’s how it comes across. Right? 

Jenna: Exactly, and that’s what I tell couples a lot, or parents and children. Make it less of you and more of them. So, if someone’s coming to you with their stuff, it should be all about them in that moment. So, you really want to stick with their story. Their emotion. What they’re going through, and not really bring in your stuff to the table. 

Curtis: So, that’s interesting because I instantly jumped to couples. I thought okay this is something that a lot of married couples uh would certainly struggle with. 

Jenna: Absolutely. 

Curtis: I guess it didn’t register with me that it might be an issue between parent and child  

 Jenna: Yeah. 

 Curtis: Um, tell me about what that often looks like. When – are parents not able to empathize with their kids or vice versa. Or both.  

Jenna: I think, I think it could be both, but if you want your child to be empathetic then you need to show them empathy. So, I think it really starts with the parent. 

 Curtis: Yeah. 

 Jenna: So maybe a kid’s having a difficult time with peers and the parent goes into, ‘Well, when I was in high school this is what I did with my friends, and this really worked for me.’ That might be helpful further down in the conversation but when you first start you gotta stick with those feelings that your kid is bringing up. 

Curtis: Is that – it feels like that is a struggle. 

Jenna: It’s absolutely a struggle. 

Curtis: Yeah, especially when your kids are young, it seems so easy. My kids are older now. I have three boys. They’re all in their 20s, but I think, I just looking back here, I can maybe remember times I just almost invalidated their feelings because, ‘Oh, they’re just little kids,’ and even as they get older, I think we have this tendency as parents to maybe always see them as little kids, and that feels like it could be a stumbling block in this area.

Jenna: For sure. So, your child [coughs], excuse me, let’s say your toddler is feeling really angry because you didn’t let them have the piece of candy after dinner. They’re feeling so angry about that. So often we invalidate those feelings because that anger doesn’t seem real or justified. And so as the parents [are] like, ‘Why are you angry? You’ve already had three pieces of candy.’ Right. And so instead. sticking with, ‘Man, I know what it’s like to feel angry and disappointed that I didn’t get something I wanted.’ And so if you can stick with that feeling, your toddler is going to calm down so much more quickly when they feel like you hear and understand the feeling that they’re having. They don’t have to keep showing it to you. 

Curtis: Tell me a little bit about maybe a couple, or a parent-child relationship that you’ve worked with, where you saw real progress and what that ended up doing to the relationship. When people are able to become empathetic and work on this and truly live it out, what kind of a difference have you seen that make in their relationships. 

Jenna: Sure, um I can think of a couple where they really struggled with bringing in their own stuff and doing the comparing. ‘You had a bad day. Well, my day was worse.’ And, so ,they really struggled with that comparing aspect. 

Curtis: That’s not even comparing. That’s like one-upsmanship. 

Jenna: And that’s so common for couples. And so common for people. Right. In any kind of relationship, and so we shifted the dynamic and shifted the language they were using with each other to reflect first, to say, ‘I hear the frustration you’re having. I’m sorry that was hard.’ And if you can make that simple shift to reflect first, you’ll see such an improvement in your communication and in your relationship in general. 

Curtis: Yeah, good stuff. Uh Jenna, I know this is just one of the many areas that you work on with people, but it seems like such a core thing to the human experience so just great stuff today. Jenna is one of the many wonderful counselors here at Crosswinds Counseling. You can look for her at crosswindscounseling.org. You can schedule an appointment with her now. We have self-scheduling on the website. So, it’s very easy to connect with Jenna, and Jenna, we appreciate you connecting today on the podcast.

Jenna: Thank you.  

Curtis: We’ll see you next time on Conversations with Crosswinds Counseling. 

Outro: 

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