Empathic Listening is a tool aimed at helping people connect and really hear what another person is telling them. To do it correctly, we must imagine ourselves in the other person’s situation and try to relate to how they are feeling. It is done with open ears, mind, and heart. Our goal is to detach from our own feelings and work on understanding the feelings of the other person. This can be challenging if what we are hearing affects us as well, but it is a key piece to getting the whole story.
The main strategy of Empathic Listening is the following:
- Identify the speaker’s feeling behind the words (anger, disappointment…)
- Empathize--try to think how you would feel in that person’s situation and share these thoughts with the speaker (warning: do not say I know how you feel!)
- Reflect back what you have heard, clarify if necessary
- Assist with problem solving ONLY if requested to do so
Example of Empathic Listening with child’s emotional outburst:
Child: I hate Grandma!
Parent: You sound angry. What’s going on?
Child: Grandma’s mean, she never plays with me
Parent: Hmm, I don’t think I’d like it if my Grandma never played with me, especially if she used to play with me a lot.
Child: Yeah. Now she’s always busy with the baby.
Parent: (nodding) So, do you think the problem is that she’s spending too much time with the baby?
Child: Yeah. Can I have a cookie?
Two important points:
- Getting past the strong opening statement the child uses can be a hurdle for many parents. Those are BIG words, and if we want to find out where they are coming from we have to ignore our own emotions and listen for our child’s.
- The child ended the conversation without asking the parent to help fix the problem. Parents love to fix problems, even when they are not asked to do so. In this case, and in more cases than you might imagine, the child just needed to be heard. His feelings were making him uncomfortable resulting in his strong opening statement. At some point he might bring it up with his parent again and ask for help with ideas, but if not, it is far more empowering for him if the parent just allows the conversation to end there.
Example of Empathic Listening with a bullying disclosure:
Child: I pretended to be sick because Bart said he was going to bash my head in and teach all the wimps at school a lesson!
Parent: Wow that sounds pretty scary.
Child: I’m not scared, I’m mad!
Parent: Okay, mad makes sense too… if it were me I think I’d be both mad and scared.
Child: Could I stay home tomorrow?
Parent: I wish I could let you. I don’t think I would want to go back either. I think the school might get upset though.
Child: They won’t care. You can just tell them I’m sick.
Parent: You know what Bart is doing is not okay. He has no right to treat you or anybody like that. What he’s doing is bullying. How about we come up with a plan to help you work through this problem?
In this case the parent raises the idea of problem solving together. Bullying is a serious issue that only arises when there is a power imbalance of some sort. Often our kids will need some guidance to work their way through it.
If the child responded by saying, “No. I’ll deal with it myself,” the parent could agree but end with a check back statement. “Okay, how about I check in with you again on the weekend to see how it went?” The result would be a child who feels supported, cared for and empowered by his parent’s belief in his ability.
Sometimes we have trouble identifying the name of the feeling and in fact the speaker himself might not be clear how he feels. Don’t get caught up in identifying the feeling or it could become a circus, (i.e., Are you mad? No. Irritated? No! Frustrated? No! Furious? NO!) The idea is to connect with the person by trying to understand his feeling. Guessing it right is not that important. We will never truly know what’s going on inside another person. If he says he is not angry despite his clenched jaw, red face, and throbbing temple, accept it and move on.
Finally, despite our perfect use of Empathic Listening, sometimes our child will not be receptive. If that’s the case (you can tell because he is escalating instead of calming) ditch this tool and move into self preservation. Calmly say something like “I can see you’re not ready to talk about this now, let me know if you want to talk later.” Then walk away and refuse to engage in further argument.
Exerpted with permission from Break Free of Parenting Pressures; Embrace Your Natural Guidance by Debbie Pokornik.
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