Practicing Empathy

What I have learned from my practice of empathy is that empathy is about timing, especially when to listen and when to speak.

When I perceive my partner to be in pain, be it professional or personal, I am sometimes stimulated to speak before he is ready to hear my ideas. I know this because he will raise his hand to his forehead in anxiety; these are my clues that I have stepped out of empathy. Invariably, I will say to him, “I regret that I began talking and am ready to offer you empathy. Would you be willing to try once more?”  When we resume, I find myself more fully present to what is alive in him and am better able to manage whatever was stimulated in me.

Often, when my partner receives empathy, he will say, “This is so helpful to me. I can see some things I didn’t see before,” and by the time our empathy ends, he has the clarity he needed or the answers to an issue he sought.

This is the beauty of empathy. I need do nothing. I simply sit, quietly, holding a safe space for my partner to explore what is alive in him, trusting that he will connect to what is meaningful for him and, in the connection, discover something he hadn’t seen or known before. Time and time again, this is how it works for us, whether I offer empathy to him or he offers empathy to me. We come to see what had been hidden before.

This is how it works for others as well, when given the opportunity to express, aloud, what matters to them. Often the expression is not linear; that is, the individual does not go from point A to point B. They go from A to Z to K to Q. It doesn’t matter how they get to where they are going. What matters is that they have the safety to travel, to take whatever route works for them.

The only time I ever interrupt, when I am in my sane mind, is to ask two questions, “Are you feeling X? Do you have a need for Y?” When I bring these questions into the dialogue, they help direct my partner to acknowledge the emotional intelligence he had been holding but had not yet acknowledged. When he connects to that intelligence, then pieces begin to fall together, because now he has named the pieces.

It is my joy to watch him do this, to move from a place of fear or anger or anxiety into a place of calm, and it is my joy to do so from a relaxed place, without the anxiety of worrying, “How will I fix this? What solution can I possibly offer him?” Empathy, I have also learned, is not only a gift to my partner who receives it; it is a gift to me who gives it. All I have to do is be there, knowing that my being there supports him in ways that nothing else could.