Master the Art of Empathy with These 3 Skills

How good are your empathy skills? If you’re like most people, they probably have room for improvement.

Are you caught up in an ongoing conflict with someone? Are you having trouble resolving the conflict, despite your best efforts?

If so, check your empathy skills. Lack of understanding in a relationship often causes – and maintains – conflict. In turn, improving your empathy skills can help you turn around a troubled relationship

Developing good empathy skills defuses relationship conflict. They also help to prevent relationship problems in the first place.

All you need is the willingness to work at doing a better job of understanding others. Even better, learning how to understand others will cause your relationships to grow.

What Are Empathy Skills?

If you’re having trouble showing empathy to others, you may simply not understand what it means.

For example, empathy is often mistaken for sympathy. When you express sympathy, you feel compassion for a person’s situation. But that doesn’t mean you understand what he or she is going through.

Saying “I’m sorry for your loss” when someone loses a loved one, for example, is a statement of compassion. There’s nothing wrong with compassion. But that’s not the same as understanding what the person is going through.

When you do understand the other person’s experience of a situation – and let them know – you’re showing empathy.

The book Feeling Good Together: The Secret for Making Troubled Relationships Work by David Burns, M.D. is an excellent book on communication skills.

In this book, Dr. Burns describes empathy as follows:

Empathy means that you listen and try to see the world through the other person’s eyes. You find some truth in what the other person is saying, even if his criticism of you seems unfair or his point of view is very different from yours. You also acknowledge how he’s thinking and what he’s probably feeling, given what he just said to you.

If the prospect of learning empathy skills seems daunting, don’t lose heart. With time and effort, you can master these skills just like anything else.

The question is, do you want to develop your empathy skills?

**Good Reasons for Not Showing Empathy**

Before you can begin to develop empathy skills, it’s important to do some self-examination.

It’s one thing to be understanding towards someone when you’re getting along with him or her.

It’s quite another thing to use empathy skills with someone if you’re having a conflict with him or her. At such times, you may not be motivated to do so.

Find out for yourself. Think of someone that you’re getting not along with right now. Do you want to understand this person better?

Dr. Burns has described several reasons you might be reluctant to show empathy to someone with whom you’re at odds.

These include including the following:

Truth. You believe that you’re right, and the other person is wrong.

Mistrust. You’re concerned that the other person will take advantage of you if you listen to them.

Blame. You believe the other person is entirely at fault for the conflict.

Defensiveness. You maintain you have every right to defend yourself. The other person is full of B.S.

Hidden Agendas. You don’t really want to get close to the other person.

And that’s only a partial list!

To the extent that you hold such beliefs you’ll tend to argue, blame, or stonewall the other person, rather than trying to understand him or her.

What about you, and the person you’re fighting with? Do you really want to understand this person better?

If not, that’s okay – better to admit it now rather than trying to talk yourself into it. You can’t fake empathy. Perhaps you’ll change your mind at some point.

On the other hand, if you truly want to improve your empathy skills, you’ll have to learn three essential skills.

These skills are the disarming technique, thought and feeling empathy, and inquiry.

The Disarming Technique: Finding the Grains of Truth

What is your first response when someone verbally attacks you – especially if he or she says something unreasonable or unfair?

If you’re like me, your tendency is to defend yourself – and maybe even retaliate while you’re at it.

It’s a knee-jerk reflex to defend yourself when you’re attacked. After all – you might think – why shouldn’t I?

You certainly have a right to defend yourself when attacked. But have you noticed that doing so tends to inflame the situation? The other person often gets defensive and may even ramp up his or her attacks.

When you use the Disarming Technique, you don’t defend yourself.

Instead, you find some truth – even if it is only a grain of truth – in what the other person is saying.

Here’s what the disarming technique might look like in the midst of a conflict:

The Other Person: “You’re nothing but a self-centered, egotistical jerk!”

You (Being Disarming): You (Being Disarming): “You know, you’re right – I can be self-centered and selfish. And you’re not the first person to call me a jerk.”

Why would you want to agree with such a harsh attack?

The Disarming Texhnique is paradoxical. It is both one of the most effective – and one of the most difficult – of all empathy skills.

When you at least a grain of truth in the criticism and agree with it, the other person feels heard, and tension is reduced.

This creates an opportunity for dialogue.

Show Understanding With Thought and Feeling Empathy

In addition to disarming the other person, it’s also important to understand how he or she views and experiences the conflict.

Understanding is necessary for a couple of reasons.

First, when you show the other person that you understand them, it demonstrates that you’re listening.

Second, it helps you determine how to respond. For how could adequately respond to someone unless you understood what they said in the first place?

Empathy has two sides to it:

Thought Empathy: This involves paraphrasing what the other person said. Paraphrasing shows you’re not only listening to the person but also understanding what he or she is saying.

Feeling Empathy. This involves identifying what the other person is likely feeling given what they’ve said. This is easy if someone is crystal clear about their feelings, but often people don’t express their feelings directly. It such cases, we have to make an educated guess.

Here’s what inquiry might look like the midst of conflict:

The Other Person: “You’re nothing but a self-centered, egotistical jerk!”

You (Using Thought and Feeling Empathy): “It sounds like you see me as quite egotistical, self-centered, and rude. I’m guessing you might be feeling annoyed and irritated with me right now – maybe even somewhat angry with me.”

The goal is to paraphrase accurately what the other person said – as well as his or her feelings.

This will help defuse the conflict between the two of you.

Also, the other person is more likely to listen to you if you make the effort to understand them first.

Draw the Other Person Out With Inquiry

But what if you’re having trouble understanding the other person’s point-of-view?

That happens sometimes. Maybe the other person isn’t being clear. Or perhaps it’s hard for you to focus in the heat of battle.

Inquiry involves asking gentle and probing questions to understand what the person is thinking and feeling.

Inquiry is not asking hostile, accusatory questions!

Don’t act like a prosecutor grilling a witness. That only causes the other person to get defensive. It may also lead him or her to shut down altogether.

Here’s what inquiry might look like in a conflict:

The Other Person: “You’re nothing but a self-centered, egotistical jerk!”

You (Using Inquiry): “Could you tell me what I’ve said and done that has caused you to see me this way?”

If you sincerely want to understand what the other person is thinking and feeling, using the skill of inquiry is key.

In doing so. you’ll decrease the tension between the you and the other person. Then you can start attacking the problem between the two of you, rather than each other.