True Empathy
What it means and why it is important
We know what common empathy is—identification with and understanding of another’ssituation, feelings, and motives. Empathy is a powerful way to connect with another person. To hear someone empathically is to understand them at a deep level and, as aresult, both people feel better.Well, sometimes they do. Look at this example.Imagine John said, "I handed in this great proposal for growing the business, but my bossdidn’t want to hear about it. He said it was ‘far fetched.’"As an empathic listener you might respond, "Sounds like you’re frustrated because your boss rejected your idea." And John would probably agree. Unfortunately John is thinkingof himself as a victim and his relationship with his boss has not been enhanced. You made an empathic response, but it supported John’s negative judgment of his boss,encouraging John to see his boss’s behavior as the cause of his frustration. You havereinforced his feelings of rejection and bitterness. This is inaccurate and unhelpful. Let’stake a closer look.John blamed his boss for causing his frustration. But his boss’s behavior was
not
thecause of his frustration.
John’s thinking
was the cause of his frustration. Our thinkingcauses our feelings, not other people’s actions. We can see this by altering the example.Imagine the "great idea for growing the business" originated with Frank, who asked Johnto hand the proposal to the boss. John's boss received the proposal with the samenegative reaction. But this time John was thinking that its acceptance would mean a lot of extra work for him, without any positive return. So, when his boss rejected it, John feltrelieved rather than frustrated.The boss’s behavior was exactly same, but John had a different feeling reaction this time.So it wasn’t the behavior that caused John’s feeling. It was how John thought about it;whether he interpreted the behavior as good or bad.How John thinks about something is up to John. He may, however, not be aware that hehas this choice. It is important to understand how our judgments of good or bad are made.Social psychologists have recently proven that, in the first instant of perception, our unconscious mind judges everything we encounter as good or bad. We are consciouslyunaware that the judgment has been made and it may very well be mistaken.The judgment, however, cues our eyes and ears to seek data that confirm the judgment. If our unconscious mind happens to judge someone as "bad," our senses will select onlydata that supports badness, so we won’t even see another side to it. In this way our negative judgments lead us into unnecessary conflict with others and damage our relationships.Knowing that this unconscious judging process occurs, that we are easily and unwittinglymistaken about other people, we can learn to override our mistaken negative judgments.
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