This week, I learned a valuable lesson in empathy, that not only hurt, but left me humbled at the same time.
According to Psychology Today, the definition of empathy is: the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective. To place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling.
The lesson came from trying to do what I felt was the right thing to do. The goal was to try to make someone feel that they weren’t alone, something we all do from time to time. I wanted them to know that I knew how they felt but the truth was I have no idea how someone feels when they suffering a loss. Believing that sharing what I thought was a similar story, I hoped it would somehow make them feel less alone. I thought it would comfort them to know others felt like they did, but I was wrong.
I’m an empathetic person. I try to make other people feel safe and comfortable sharing their grief or heartbreak with me. In return, I try my best to be vulnerable and authentic by sharing my own stories with them because I believed I truly understood how they felt. Sometimes, this can be draining but the lesson I learned this week, was that I’ve been doing empathy all wrong. Real empathy means that I need to let others share their own stories without inserting my own. Ouch!
I thought saying “I know how you feel”, was comforting!
All this time, I’ve been saying “I know how you feel”, thinking I was comforting them, when I couldn’t possibly know how they felt. We’re all different in how we process our pain, and by saying I knew how they felt, I was being dismissive of their pain because I wasn’t being fully with them. Instead of allowing them to share their story I was looking for my own similar story to share with them. Sociologist Charles Derber, describes this as “conversational narcissism”. Double ouch!
I am left humbled by this valuable lesson. I’m going to try to stop being a conversational narcissist and just open my arms, open my heart, and close my mouth because at the end of the day, I value empathy and kindness much more than the sound of my own voice. Don’t you?
