Yes, you definitely can learn to be empathetic, just not academically. Empathy is an emotional skill, and therefore learning to be empathetic, first and foremost, is an emotional journey within yourself. I witnessed that in myself and watched it happen during the Emotional Intelligence training I provide. Once people reach a certain emotional maturity, they naturally develop emotional awareness and empathy. The catch is that you cannot train emotional maturity; you can only facilitate emotional maturing.
How did I develop empathy?
I honestly thought that I was empathetic. Yet, my wife said a few times over the years that she wished I was more empathetic. I, in return, felt frustrated, misread and misunderstood by her. Did she not see how much I cared? Seeing her struggles and pain, all I wanted was to help her. Wasn’t that what empathy is all about?
Then one day, I read about the five empathy skills in Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead.
- To see the world as others see it, or perspective taking.
- To be non-judgmental.
- To understand another person’s feelings.
- To communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings.
- Mindfulness
Reading that, I said to myself, “If that was empathy, then I have none.” Convicted and humbled, I walked to my wife and said, “You are right; I am not empathetic.” What I perceived as empathy was, in fact, a desperate try to help her fix things or fix them for her. Furthermore, it was a defence mechanism. I recognised that I hated feeling her pain because it triggered more of my unresolved hurts. I could not show empathy because I had to protect myself from adding further hurt to my already overwhelming pain. I could not allow myself to feel her hurt and, therefore, could not see and take her perspective, be non-judgemental or interested in her feelings. I had to admit that instead of being an empathetic agent of healing, I only added more hurt to her pain. I had to recognise that my unconscious attempt to hide my pain caused me to blame her for everything. Instead of taking responsibility for my stuff, I tried to make her responsible for hers and mine.
Fortunately, the story did not end there. Before reading Dare to Lead, I had already started to learn to grieve. I was conscious of the importance and value of my unpleasant emotions. A few pages later, a door opened for me. It was as if I had found the final piece to the puzzle.
“We can’t live into values that we can’t name,” Brené writes. “We have only one set of values. We don’t shift our values based on context. We are called to live in a way that is aligned with what we hold most important regardless of the setting or situation.”
On the following pages, Brené invites her readers to identify their core values. Within just a few minutes, I recognised one of my core values – curiosity. Looking through the lens of curiosity, my life made sense, including my unpleasant emotions. I began to realise that my unpleasant emotions did not want me to feel miserable but showed me who I am and what matters to me. That newfound knowledge empowered and motivated me to dive deep whenever I experienced unpleasant emotions. I took care of my unresolved pain and understood the value of proactive grieving. I learned that our emotions are not triggered by events or thoughts but by our values. Over time, my emotions became signposts to my values and identity. They helped me discover the boundaries I needed to relate to the world around me without self-harming and self-rejection. I began to feel at home in myself like never before.
About six months after I had discovered my core value, a big argument with my wife turned into a seismic shift for the better in our relationship. The following day, we eventually sat down to talk. Both of us knew the method of Emotional Logic that enables emotionally safe and creative conversations. This time was the first time we used it to resolve an argument. My wife showed me her work with the resources from the evening before. Looking at everything, I noticed that I could feel her emotional chaos for the first time, and I did not get triggered. After I shared my feelings with her, she was surprised. Never before had I made a genuinely empathetic statement without judging her. When I looked at her list of values, I realised a commonality – they all pointed to the value of independence. For years I fought against that because I perceived her independence as an enemy to my need for connection. But this time I could peacefully and empathically acknowledge and validate that it was a value of hers. That, again, was a surprise for her. After talking, I felt emotionally connected to my wife like never before. And I knew that it was only the beginning of the change we would experience.
At the time, I was not even fully aware of what I was doing. Only on reflection, I wondered whether empathy had secretly grown as part of my inner journey. With Emotional Logic in my toolbox, I could work on myself. From that day on, it also turned into a communication tool that helped create a non-judgemental safe space where I can learn to understand and communicate my understanding of my wife’s and other people’s feelings and values without the defensive and judgemental undertone that hurt my wife many times before.
People learn empathy by discovering the value of their own emotions
I witnessed something similar when I began to provide our four-session Emotional Intelligence training or three-session Emotional Logic coaching. The training and coaching are designed to improve people’s ability to work with their unpleasant emotions proactively and constructively. We teach a grief process that helps people deal with everyday setbacks and disappointments. Empathy and its importance in relationships are not part of the curriculum. Yet, after two sessions, people begin noticing empathetic responses within themselves. At the beginning of the third session, they often say that they have become aware of other people’s emotions and values and feel more capable of responding empathetically, not defensively.
How you can learn to be empathetic – here are my five steps
#1 Don’t try to be empathetic
If you focus too much on trying to do something right, you can end up working against yourself and appear dishonest.
Authentic empathy needs emotional capacity. If you struggle with your emotional world and try to come across as empathetic, you likely try to create capacity by suppressing your pain and needs. That can eventually cause you to harden your heart, make you less empathetic, and worsen your struggles.
When on top of that, people perceive you as dishonest, it can damage the relationships you desire to build and protect. If you feel too hurt by that perception, you might even disconnect altogether, leaving you feeling not heard, seen and appreciated. While disconnecting releases the tension initially, it also deprives you of having met one of our most basic human needs – connection.
If you want to know if you fit into that category, you can ask yourself the following questions to identify your inner motive to be empathetic.
Am I empathetic to appease the relationship or prevent conflict?
Am I empathetic to eventually have my needs met?
If you answer any of the questions with yes, you need to understand that empathy is not a currency that can buy you what you need. Authentic empathy is an unconditional gift – always.
If you have unmet needs, it is better to be open about them, which leads to step #2.
#2 Work through your pain first
As mentioned above, empathy needs emotional capacity. If your problems and unmet needs already max out your emotional capacity, genuine empathy is almost impossible. The best way to build capacity for empathy is to work through your pain first and improve your emotional health.
An important first step is, to allow yourself to receive empathy from someone else. Permit yourself to ask for help. Emotional healing happens when there is a healthy emotional connection. Choose the people wisely, in any case. You might even start by choosing a counsellor, therapist or Emotional Logic coach, like myself.
External help should provide you with an understanding of the value of your emotions, help you identify your values, and give you guidance to set firm boundaries. All of those things are part of my next three steps.
#3 Prioritise learning about the value of your own emotions
Emotions have value and a purpose. They are not triggered by events or your thinking, as many believe, but by your set of values. Unpleasant emotions help us to become and stay authentic. Unfortunately, many of us have never learned about the importance of emotions and the skills to tap into them. Instead, we have developed unhealthy emotional patterns and coping mechanisms that prevent us from using our emotional energy purposefully.
To learn to tap into that value of emotions, we need to understand our emotional patterns. Then we need to shift our beliefs about emotions. Often people see emotions as the problem, yet, they are, in fact, part of the solution. I already mentioned in my personal story that I discovered that my emotions are signposts to my values and identity. They are part of my immune system and alarm me whenever something threatens my set of values.
And that leads to the next point.
#4 Discover your values and identity
I often tell people that it is not the story about what happened to you that matters but what matters to you in the story. When we experience emotional pain, it is more important to understand why we felt emotionally hurt and less so what was done. Because our emotions watch over our values, they say more about us than the person or event that hurt us. Our emotions show us the way to discovering our authentic selves. Once we’ve learned to identify our values and identity, we become clearer about the situation that hurt and become able to separate the event from us. From that perspective, making better decisions and setting healthy boundaries is much easier.
#5 Have clear and firm boundaries
Boundaries are crucial to your emotional capacity to show authentic empathy. They help you separate someone else’s experience from yours and allow you to use your emotional spare capacity to feel with someone without taking responsibility for the other person’s stuff. They also enable you to facilitate the other person’s thinking because your mind is not in protective mode.
The exciting thing about boundaries is that the no enables you to say fully yes, and self-care unleashes your capacity to care. Firm boundaries around your values free up your emotional protective system for empathy and compassion.
Conclusion
In our Emotional Intelligence training, we take people through those stages and provide them with resources and tools to free up emotional capacity. Empathy and compassion are byproducts that people develop as they mature emotionally.
If you are looking for training for your leaders and teams, schedule a free discovery chat to discuss how we can help your leaders and teams. Empathetic and compassionate leadership are crucial to recovering lost productivity.
