Why Understanding Empathy Intellectually Doesn't Work
Adam Quiney
Executive Coach | Transformational Coaching and Leadership for Leaders of Leaders
One of the things I do when I’m preparing to write an article is search and see what the current conversation around a particular topic looks like.
When I search for Empathy, the vast majority of articles boil down to a definition of what empathy is.
Some of these definitions are pretty good, some of them are pretty bad, most of them are square in the middle.
The good definitions for empathy are usually something like:
The ability to share the feelings of another.
Having an intellectual understanding of what we’re striving for when we try to step into something new, in our leadership, is important. Possibly essential.
If I don’t understand the distinction between left and right, it’s probably going to be pretty hard for me to learn how to follow directions.
The trouble is that everything makes sense and occurs pretty simple when we look at it intellectually.
Understanding that the thing you need to do, when someone beside you is feeling sad, is be willing to feel sad with them, leaves you feeling pretty stoked.
“Okay great, I can do that. No problem. Easy. Just feel sad as well.”
This intellectual understanding isn’t what is really lacking in empathy.
A lack of understanding is almost never what really stands in the way of transformation. If that was the case, we’d only really need a Dictionary, and the rest of our lives would be non-stop transformation and relational growth.
The challenge is that empathy requires, in me, a willingness to feel whatever emotion is currently presenting over there with you. I don’t get to pick and choose.
That’s all fine and good until I’m facing an emotion that I’m not really willing to feel. An emotion that I developed a specific, unconscious coping strategy to ensure I never have to be around.
If you show up feeling angry, then, listening empathetically to you means that I need to be able to allow that anger to sit in my nervous system, just like it’s sitting in yours.
This is the point where all of the intellectual understanding in the world falls apart.
Intellectual understanding is never sufficient to get us over the threshold of our fear and into the scary practise of feeling what we’ve devoted our lives to avoiding.
In these moments, our fear doesn’t occur like fear. It occurs like an exceptionally well-reasoned argument for why it’s pointless being empathetic in this moment. An argument for the futility of anger, the inefficiency of sadness or the unprofessionalism of joy.
So the intellectual understanding can bring you to this moment of confrontation, as it helps you understand what there is to practise.
But the real work is to actually practise in those moments when you have every valid reason not to.
This is the heart of transformation.
If you want to practise, one of the best ways to do so is to simply start noticing the reasons you have for why not feel what someone across from you is currently feeling.
This will allow you to start to get acquainted with the flavour and stories of your own resistance.
Second, you can explore the question, “What is unavailable in this moment, because of my inability to empathize?”
This question has to be answered as it’s asked. Don’t get to transmute it into “Is there anything I’m missing?” Stay in the discomfort of the open-ended question — every choice means saying yes to something and no to other things.
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