Today I wanted to have a quick discussion on connection, both with our kids and with other people in general. The concepts surrounding connection for this post are related to the difference between sympathy and empathy.
Understanding Sympathy: Why It May Not Help in Times of Struggle
Sympathy is when you feel bad because something bad happened to someone. For instance, if your child was really invested in making the drumline and did poorly in their audition, you feel bad because you know how it feels to be disappointed and to fall short of your goals. You can UNDERSTAND what they are feeling. Often, when sharing sympathy with someone, you are offering condolences as a result of their hard time. “I’m so sorry that you didn’t make the team, I know how bad that would make me feel.”
This understanding may seem to help with connection, but it can actually undermine the ability to create a bond with someone who is struggling. Sympathy often creates a situation where you are confirming to the person that something bad has happened, that they are a victim, and that their situation is really unpleasant.
This offers a pat on the back but does not create a feeling of optimism or movement. Sympathy keeps the person in place and then points out the bad part for them. In essence, you are seeing a person in a scary, hard, dark place and confirming that it is indeed a bad place to be. “I am so sorry for your loss” or “That must be terrible for you” is often not what people need when in crisis or distress.
Empathy as a skill set
Empathy, on the other hand, is an actual skill set. Instead of simply being able to label another person’s feelings, empathy requires a much more sophisticated ability to take on another person’s perspective. To truly be able to put yourself in another person’s experience and to feel their emotional response directly is a much deeper experience.
Most of the time, when people are struggling, all they really want is support. To use the example of the deep, dark hole again, they want you to be able to FEEL what their experience in the hole is like and to be willing to take on some of that emotion for yourself. Instead of standing outside the dark place and pointing out that you feel bad for them because it is dark, scary, and lonely in there, empathy is the process of switching your perspective, feeling some of their fear or sadness or distress, and stepping into that space with them.
The hardest part about empathy is that it means carrying another person’s disappointment, failure, grief, and/or heartbreak for a time. That can be incredibly uncomfortable for some people and often makes us resistant to truly stepping into the experience. Those big bad feelings hurt and standing there with someone is so much harder than offering some sympathy and backing up into our comfort zone again.
Empathy means being willing and able to do a few key components:
LISTENING
When your child, partner, or friend comes to you and they are having a hard time, all that they really need from you is a good listener. Most people (me included!) feel a pull to solve the problem or to offer solutions. This disconnects us from others and makes it hard to share that person’s experience effectively. Listen, absorb, and let them know you are there.
REFLECTING
The process of perspective-taking means drawing on our own experiences as a point of reference. If your child is experiencing their first major breakup, it is perfectly fine to share how you felt when your heart was broken for the first time. Just remember to listen more than you share and to not make the experience about you.
NO JUDGING
To be truly empathic, no part of the conversation should include a “should have” portion or a discussion of what you “would have” done if it were to have happened to you. The ability to make decisions from the outside and after you see the outcomes is VERY different than the process of making decisions in the moment and without knowing how it is going to turn out. Don’t armchair quarterback what happened. Don’t criticize or point out the flaws, mistakes, and missteps that may have happened. The person you are speaking with is likely to be very aware already of how they may have missed the mark and you pointing that out is likely to make them feel worse rather than better.
NO ADVICE UNLESS ASKED
The key to empathy is non-judgemental listening. This means biting your tongue if you have a brilliant solution to the problem. I am the absolute queen of too much input and too much advice. I am sure that serving as a guide and advice giver for others at work contributes, but my own personal pitfall for connection is to jump in with advice, guidance, and solutions when that is NOT what my kids needed. They just want me to climb into the dark hole, criss-cross applesauce on the ground next to them, put my arm around their shoulders, and commit to staying right there until the dark place starts to lighten up and they are ready to walk out again.