Linkedin Facebook Twitter

What if I told you there was a magical process that broke down defensiveness, ended hostility, opened people’s hearts, and built connection and intimacy? Would you use it? Would you giggle along with me in awe as you watched relationships improve almost instantly?

Most people want a silver bullet to improve their relationships and work through conflict as easily as possible. If we are honest with ourselves, it’s because we want to avoid discomfort or frustration. However, avoiding isn’t the answer. We need to lean into it using the right approach.

As a mental health professional working with adolescents and their families, I am often in situations dealing with relationship conflict. Sometimes this conflict is between family members. Other times the frustration or discontent is directed at me. As the clinical director of my facility, it can also be a general complaint about how some aspect of the program or how an employee did not perform their duties in a way that was satisfying to them.

In most of these scenarios the first inclination, either for myself or others, is to feel and react defensively. We want to justify or fight back at a complaint or accusation. We also tend to judge the other person; fairly or unfairly.

Early in my career I found myself easily getting sucked into that pattern. I noticed two reasons for this. The first was that I was too full of myself. I was convinced that my opinion was right–I knew better than the other person. They were an obstacle in the way of things going the way I was planning. The second is that the situation had triggered one of my insecurities and I didn’t feel safe enough with myself to be vulnerable and open.

Thankfully, I grew and matured and learned valuable lessons along the way. I shifted my perspective away from judgment and moved into understanding.

I remember one situation in particular. I was in one of those moments of judgment, frustrated at the “poor parenting skills” of a particular set of parents whose son was in my care. In my moment of high-mindedness, I knew all the answers about how they had messed up in their parenting and what they should have done instead.

Then, thankfully, I took a moment to imagine having their son in my own home and trying to raise him myself. Instantly my arrogance melted into compassion and empathy for these parents. They were doing the best they could and were exhausted with the challenge they had been facing for years. I stopped seeing them as the problem. I stopped the judgment.

Then something magical happened: I expressed all the compassion and empathy I was feeling toward them.

Instantly they calmed down. Their defenses lowered. We connected with understanding.

The words, “Wow, he isn’t an easy kid, is he?” validated their experience. I’m sure they had been dealing with the sideways glances and condemning stares from others for too long. They didn’t need it from me. They needed someone to understand what they were going through and walk with them.

So, with my heart and mindset changed, I poured on empathy. I validated their emotions. I cared for them, human to human. In doing so, they changed too. They were quickly more open to my counsel. They asked open questions and were hungry to know what they could do differently to help their son. They were open and vulnerable about their own mistakes and insecurity.

That was a changing point in my career. No longer would I fall into the traps of judgment and accusatory conceit. My heart was changed. I approach things now seeking to understand by placing myself in someone else’s situation and perspective. I meet them where they are at.

I learned an important lesson: Empathy is magic. Validation works miracles. 

There is a funny YouTube short film that demonstrates this principle. In it, a couple is struggling to connect on an emotional level about an obvious problem. The wife is frustrated because her husband keeps trying to fix the problem. All she needs is for him to understand how hard her situation is. Eventually, he is able to express the words of empathy and validation: “That sounds really hard.”

While the expression of those words didn’t fix the actual problem, it did change the wife’s emotional experience. It took me years to understand that it’s not about the nail. It is empathy–or understanding–that shifts conflict into connection.

Still to this day, many years after learning my important lesson, I am shocked at the power and effectiveness of starting with empathy and validation. It invigorates and excites me to connect with another person, heart to heart, especially in their challenges.

Here are a couple of examples of where I have seen empathy work its magic on others:

  1. A young fifteen-year-old struggling with ADHD and social connection came to me feeling like all his peers hated him. It was clear to me that his problems were due to the weeks of his impulsivity and rudeness toward them. I knew what he needed to be accountable for and the changes he would need to consistently make each day to improve his situation. Yet here he was, in a victim mindset, blaming his peers for his challenges. He was legitimately trying to change, but his learned behaviors of giving up and lashing out when things got hard were kicking in. So I chose to respond like this:

These statements disarmed him. He wanted to be defensive to any coaching that I was surely going to give him. He was ready for me to tell him what he was doing wrong.

But I didn’t start there. I just empathized with his struggle. I put myself in his shoes and walked with him for a while.

And he calmed down. He dropped his defenses.

It wasn’t long before he was listening to the bigger picture I was wanting to show him. He accepted the encouragement and counsel. He felt my lack of judgment.

  1. A loving and anxious mother had sent her son away to the care of my facility to get help working through his trauma. This was the first time they had ever been apart. Her anxiety and concern for her son were coming across to the untrained eye as demanding and overprotective. She was asking more of my team than was sustainable. It would have been easy to label her and see her as a problem. I knew that would be the wrong approach. Here is what I did instead:

The aggressiveness started to melt away. She opened up and told me about her own trauma and how other settings she had entrusted to care for her son had utterly failed and she had needed to step in to protect her son from further harm. My heart filled with understanding and compassion. I could see beyond her outward behaviors. It allowed me to have and express even more empathy.

The continued empathy dropped her defenses and anxiety even further. She expressed gratitude for the understanding. And then, like magic, she opened up to coaching and seeing another perspective. She was still tentative, yet we were now working together as a team for the care of her son.

Empathy Is A Connector

There are times when I find myself giggling with joy inside when I watch the magic that occurs through the simple practice of empathy. It amazes me every time. It has such power in our relationships. First and foremost, it changes our hearts to be present with another person. We have to start with ourselves first. We can’t expect others to change if we are unwilling to be the catalyst for that change.

Once our heart is right, the magic starts to happen. I’ve seen empathy do the following:

Empathy…

If you are finding yourself in a challenging relationship or social situation, try starting with empathy. It is more than just a time saver. 

It is a connector. 

A healer. 

A unifier.

Empathy is magic.

Tagged , , , , , , ,