Practice Empathy: Skill 6: Empathy for Difficulty

Each MCD Relationship Competency identifies 6 Skills, along with specific practices for learning each. For more context about MCD Relationship Competency 2: Empathy, see Skill 1: Identify the differences between empathy and other responses to difficulty, Skill 2: Identify what prevents you from offering empathy, Skill 3: Use a diverse vocabulary of feelings and needs, Skill 4: Identify 12 essential aspects of empathy, and Skill 5: Empathy for celebration.

Skill 6: Empathy for difficulty: offer empathy for someone when their needs are perceived to be unmet

Sharing about a difficulty is the most obvious time in which someone may have a need for empathy. Since most of us don’t say what we want back from the other person when we share, offering empathy first is a place to start. You can offer a simple reflection, empathic nod, or guess at a feeling or need and notice how the other person responds. When they turn towards your empathic response by relaxing a little more or sharing more, it’s pretty likely that empathy was the first need present for them.

When the need for empathy has been met most people naturally move on to creative solutions or another stage of processing.

PRACTICE

Below is a format for practicing empathy with a practice buddy. I highly recommend that you have a practice buddy with whom you just do this practice once a week. You will find that in a space in which you are just heard with empathy and nothing else, a new relationship to your experience will blossom.

1. For learning, safety, mutuality and trust, it is very important to follow this structure and use the timer every time. 

2. Set a timer for 3 minutes.

3. First partner: share about something for which you would like to receive empathy. 

4. Your partner listens silently the whole 3 minutes while offering nonverbal cues that they are listening.

5. At the end of 3 minutes, set a timer for 5 minutes.

6. For 5 minutes your partner will offer empathy guesses using the feelings and needs list and one of these classic structures:

• “Do you feel________because you need (value)________?”

• “Do you feel________because___________ is important to you?”

• “Do you feel________because you long for _____________?”

Speaker:  respond yes or no as you hear the guesses without explaining or going back into the story. Simply allow more guesses until the timer goes off. 

7. Set another timer for 2 minutes for speaker debrief.

Speaker: Identify the top two feelings and needs alive for you. Share anything else about your experience of receiving empathy.

8. Switch roles following the same set of instructions.