Have you ever wondered what to say to someone who is going through a horrendously difficult time? Have you ever had someone try to support you but accidentally say exactly the wrong thing? I suspect we’ve all been there. One of the reasons we sometimes stumble in offering traumatized friends support is because empathy, the tool we’ve been told is most useful for these situations, can actually land us exactly where we don’t want to be in a conversation. Why is that?
There are many stories out there about people who, while trying to relate, do things like tell a newly pregnant woman their own pregnancy horror story. Or they tell a story of their neighbor who died from cancer right after a friend reveals a cancer diagnosis. Not. Helpful. These folks mean well—they are trying to connect but haven’t thought beyond a simple connection to the topic. The person who needs support doesn’t need a connection to the topic, they need a connection to their emotions.
When most of us think about emotional connection, we think about empathy. Empathy means that we try to put ourselves in another person’s shoes, to imagine what they might be going through and so better relate to them. On the surface that sounds like a great idea, but there are a few big flaws with empathy.
Empathy is a fantastic connection tool, except in high-emotion or high-complexity situations. There’s another very simple tool that can help us do better. To understand where empathy fails, imagine you’re at the end of a dock and you see someone drowning. Empathy would entail imagining their panic and reacting to it by jumping in to help. You may be able to help, but now you’re both in the water. There’s another choice. Same scenario, but this time you intentionally take a step back from the emotional intensity of the situation, and you look for ways that you can use who you are and what you know to help the person in distress. You grab and throw a life preserver while yelling for help. This is compassion: recognizing distress and having a strong desire to relieve that distress.
When we choose to use compassion instead of empathy, we are intentionally staying out of the intensity of another person’s emotions so that we can maintain a safe space for them to feel whatever they need to feel. I recently did a TEDx talk on this subject, and if you’d like to hear more about this idea and how it intersects with cancer specifically, I encourage you to check it out (see below). For now, I’m going to use a story that I didn’t use in that talk to demonstrate the point.
When I was 19, I was assaulted by a romantic partner. I didn’t know what to feel, but complex emotions of betrayal and hurt were at the forefront. I told 2 people about what had happened. The first was a healthcare provider, and her response was her own confusion. She didn’t know what to say, and so she made a quick “Oh, OK” response and then found an excuse to leave the room. Her confusion fed my confusion and increased my feelings of shame. Her’s was a surface-level response—she couldn’t jump into imagining my situation, so she dodged it. The second person I told was a friend. His reaction was intense anger on my behalf. His response was actually closer to empathy. In imagining my situation, he was totally outraged. This reaction was born of his closeness to me, but it shut me down just as effectively as the stunted response of the healthcare provider. In the face of his strong emotions, there was no room for my emotions…especially when those emotions didn’t align well.
When we choose to use compassion instead of empathy, there are 3 steps:
Either of the people I told of my experience could have supported me incredibly well. All they had to do was pause, take a step back from their emotions, and truly try to see me and where I was at that moment. A great compassion-based method to do this for someone is to use reflection as a technique.
Reflection is a tool of compassion, not a tool of empathy, because it’s about stepping out of your own reactions and imaginings and stepping into an active curiosity about the other person that does not involve feeling emotions with them. Reflection means you set your own reactions to the other person’s news to the side for a minute and remember that compassion asks questions.
Compassion calls on you to see the other person’s distress and offer help or support. Reflection is about mirroring the other person’s energy to a small extent—don’t come in angry if they’re acting withdrawn or be super mellow if they’re outraged—and it’s about reflecting the person’s words. When we repeat something like “You just heard this diagnosis, and you’re still feeling shocked,” it truly makes the other person feel heard and gives them a platform to build on. As an interesting example of how validating simple and direct repetition can be, waitstaff can increase their average tips by about 70% just by repeating our orders back to us—word for word.
Open-ended questions are also a great tool. Remember that in situations of complex emotion we are never going to be able to reliably step into the other person’s feelings and perspectives. Questions show our interest and desire to help and support. You can ask, “How are you feeling about this?” Another option would be to simply state, “It looks like you’re really struggling with this. Is there some way I can help?” The best type of comments we can make are either open-ended questions or simple observations. Simple recognition of their emotions is incredibly validating. Now the person can tell you how they are really feeling. Now you can ask them how to best help.
Cancer can be a traumatizing event for anyone. But sometimes we need to laugh, and sometimes we need to cry, and sometimes we need to escape. The friend who is most helpful is not the one who tries to guess what is needed, it’s the one who takes the time to ask what is needed. And if the answer is “I don’t know right now,” simply accepting that answer…or perhaps proposing, “Do either of these (fill in the blank) ideas sound good to you?” shows an immense amount of love, understanding, and compassion.
And for those of you who might be most in need of compassion right now, it’s OK to ask for what you need. Actually, it’s more than OK. For example, it’s helpful if you can tell those who love you that you don’t want recommendations right now, just emotional support. Your support people will appreciate knowing how to best show you their love, and you will get to know who your strongest support people are likely to be. Those who can’t pivot from what they need to what you need may have to stay on the periphery right now.
“The Problem With Empathy” at TEDx.
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