Empathy Podcast Episode

All of a sudden you start to see walls that come down and you start to see light that starts to shine and hope that starts to come into a person’s life. And it is just from being seen, from being understood, from being heard, instead of what has felt like being locked down being mistreated, being misunderstood. 

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. I’ve got a familiar voice back into the studio today. Amber Miller’s with us. Thanks for coming in, Amber. Thanks for having me, Matt. Amber has taken a new position, I’m sure many don’t know, but taken a new position with Harvest Call. 

Why don’t you say a little bit about what you do there? So, in my role at Harvest Call, I work as the missionary care coordinator and work with those that are interested in moving toward the mission field. Those that are on the mission field doing some support with them as well as those that then transition off the field. 

It was hard to see Amber go, but we feel pretty proud to have offered her services to Harvest Call. So, thanks for doing what you’re doing and what you do for them. Amber, the topic today is empathy. And I want you to take us to a deep dive of empathy. What is it? Kind of put some parameters around this word so that we can see it. Certainly, we want some applications, but I’d like to set up this conversation, Amber, with this. If I’ve learned a lesson in the last three months. And this has come from a variety of different places, actually a quite diverse group. 

I’ve learned this lesson, Matt, stop talking and listen. I’ve learned that lesson because, and let me finish that, because you don’t understand. And it’s been kind of a hard pill to swallow. But once it goes down, I realize, they were right. And again, I’m not even pointing to one specific instance. I’m talking, this has come to have been part of my reality from a number of different fronts. Yeah. And I do think empathy has a place here. Am I right about that? What is empathy? Give us a definition and lead us in this direction.  

Thank you. Yeah. And so, empathy, just a quick definition is really the ability to emotionally connect and to try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and to walk through a hard emotion with them such as anger, frustration, or sadness. You actually had a question, a bunch of really important words in that definition. One is connect. Okay. For some of us who might not be feely people like, oh boy, here we go again, connect with emotions. I know how to connect a trailer to a truck. But what is connecting with emotions? 

So, being able to connect with emotions is really being able to allow yourself to go into a place where you feel instead of trying to fix and you don’t automatically try to make things better, but can I say feeling with a person then? Yeah. Is that a good phrase? Absolutely. Okay. 

Yeah. And so being able to just feel what the other person is feeling or trying to put yourself right there alongside of them instead of almost like saying, hey, let’s go over here. Or like, let’s think about this or think on the bright side. And trying to pull someone out. There is a tendency to react or respond to the feelings of another person in a counter way. 

Yeah. And I’m not saying the opposite way. I don’t mean counter that way, but countering it like, oh, it sounds like you need a little of this. Yeah, but that’s not what empathy is. Maybe it has a place someplace, but that’s not what empathy is. Right. Yeah, a lot of times I think it is such human nature to want to pull someone out to want to want to say like, let’s look on the bright side, especially as Christians, we want to encourage people and help them through a time. 

But I think it’s really hard for us to remember that sometimes the best thing we can do for someone is to walk right next to them and to just listen and to just be still in that moment instead of talking too much, instead of trying to encourage or trying to make the situation positive. And Amber, as I listened to you instructing in that way, here’s what I realized about myself. 

Oh yeah, I do this counter thing. And if I was completely honest with myself, sometimes I do that for myself. Yes. Okay. Because oh my goodness, I hope it’s not as bad as it sounds. Or I hope this won’t stay as bad or as long as it seems like it’s going. So, I want to help. Does that make sense? 

It’s almost a selfish reason that I’m like, okay, how can I put a silver lining around this thing? Yeah. When you are trying to give empathy to someone it’s really hard to stay present and to actually allow yourself to feel deeply. Because one of the things I noticed, Matt, is that, as a counselor, when I would listen to someone, all of a sudden I have all these secondary emotions that pop up and so maybe some of it is guilt that I haven’t had to walk through this hard thing that this person across from me has, or just inadequacy or, all these uncomfortable emotions that start to come in waves towards you. 

So, a secondary emotion is my emotion that’s been spawned by their emotion. Yeah. Basically, kind of like a reaction to that emotion. Okay. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And I’m responding to my own thoughts and feelings, trying to correct those anyway, and so then you want to get out of that because it’s uncomfortable for you. 

It’s very vulnerable for someone who is trying to empathize to actually be in that spot. And so, as listeners, as empathizers, Sometimes, we bail too quickly, and we don’t stay present with that person who really just needs to talk it out. Who really just needs you to understand and wants to be heard. 

I think that’s the biggest thing, a lot of times people just want to be heard in a moment. They don’t want it to be fixed or they know you don’t have the power to fix it. But a gift that you can give someone is just to listen and to hear their story. Getting my mind off of myself and onto that other person could perhaps be half of the battle here. 

Yeah. Absolutely. And then when my mind is on that other person to connect with that feeling, to sit with that feeling, to feel with that feeling, okay, so now let’s explore this place. You already mentioned, maybe I haven’t had this experience and it’s hard to connect or it’s hard to understand. What do we do then? 

Or is the answer to this. Yeah, you know that does help build empathy. I have to acknowledge that people who have gone through challenging life situations because they are acquainted with the deep and the hard emotions through their own personal life experience, sometimes they can pull on that past and they can be really great empathizers. 

That’s not always true though. I just want to make that clear that just because you’ve gone through hard things doesn’t automatically make you great at empathizing. Sometimes it makes a person very cynical or bitter about what’s happened in their life. And so sometimes it’s almost the opposite. 

I would say, the best-case scenario is that God redeems that in a person’s life and does allow them to be very empathetic to others, but not always, you know, God doesn’t call us all to the exact same walk of life. He doesn’t call us all to the exact same life experiences. And that’s just reality that we have to acknowledge. 

But I think there is ownership on each of us to be able to connect emotionally, because that is one common denominator across the human race. We’ve all been given a set of emotions. Some of us it seems have a greater range than others, but every human has a basic set of emotions. 

Okay, so I think I think what you’ve just said there is key and huge We don’t all have the same experiences, so empathy does not rely on that. But we do all have the same basic emotions. I think it’s been counted different ways from six to eight. Sure. Yeah. To half a dozen or whatever. We all have that palette of sorts of emotions, different intensities, and different expressions. 

But that’s what we’re trying to master is saying, okay, I am familiar with this feeling this person is conveying to be able to say if someone is expressing a lot of anxiety around something in their life that’s going on, to be able to stop and think through in your own experience. 

Like, yeah, I can pull from that. I’ve felt that anxiety before. Maybe it’s not the exact same scenario, but I can connect with that emotion. So, there are some, I think you’re talking now through some of the nuts and bolts of this, but there is a self-reflection that says, okay, this person is hurting. 

It sounds like they’re wounded. Maybe embarrassed. Okay. And connecting with that similar experience, which looked different for me, but I’m connecting. So, we do, that’s where that experience is helpful. But not projecting it upon the other person. Exactly. And so that’s really a way to practice. 

And the more you practice, it’s like strengthening a muscle. The more you practice empathy and the more you practice getting in touch with that emotional experience instead of automatically trying to make it positive or pushing it underneath the surface or whatever. As I am introspective in this area, I can see that I can fall into two ditches, and fail at empathy, all right? 

One ditch or one pull is that I don’t see the emotion of another. Missed it. Missed the cue. Where was I? I don’t know. So that’s one, right? One area of problem. Then on the other side, I see it, but dismiss it. Yeah. Explain it away. Yeah. They’re overreacting. Yep. It’s not warranted. And then get myself off the hook for empathy as well. 

Do you see those two extremes? Oh, totally. You know, and I’d like to just talk a little bit about that first one, not being able to catch emotion sometimes. You know, that can be for a number of reasons. I see how stress really plays into that sometimes, or if there’s a lot going on in your own life, it can be really hard to connect with someone else emotionally. 

And so just different things like that can come into play. I think too, we just get out of touch sometimes with our emotional experiences and we get busy and this is a silly analogy, Matt, but I’m going to bring it up anyway. Yeah. You know, like when you, when you’re looking at buying a new car and you research that car, you maybe go test drive that car and you’re thinking about that car a lot. 

And so, it’s on your mind and all of a sudden what you notice is there are lots of people that have that car, and that car is all over the road. I know exactly what you’re saying. Right. That’s true. And some people take that as a sign. Hey, I need to go buy this thing. You know, people do different things with that. 

But what’s happened is our brains are all of a sudden attuned to that. Yeah. And I think the same thing happens when we pray for opportunities to empathize with someone, when we pray for opportunities and growth in emotional connection, all of a sudden, our brains start to look for those conversations. 

They start to look for opportunities to grow in that way. And I think if you pray for those opportunities, I really believe God’s going to be faithful to open up a door for a conversation at church or whatever that may be to grow that empathy so that we can see it in others, and I think that’s terrific. 

So, what you’re doing is you’re really providing some equipment to say yes, if you miss the emotions of others, you might just muse a bit on your own emotional experience. You might need to connect a little bit with your own and then to see that others are going through some of those same things. How about that other side of the pole? 

I mean, is that where we can dismiss or downplay? And here’s what I found. Okay. And then I’ll let you go ahead and tell me what ails me, but I am generous when it comes to understanding the magnitude of my emotions. And I am stringent on another person’s expression of emotion. 

Does that make sense? And maybe I’m an outlier here, but if there are any like me out there, that’s not helpful for empathy, is it? No, and you are definitely not alone in that, Matt. I would say that is very common for people to just downplay what someone else is expressing. 

And then all of a sudden, you know, that little thing that happened to us today is just like the end of the world. And so, you can get very dramatic about that, but then not allow someone else in your family or in your life to be dramatic about that about their thing that felt so huge to them. And so, for sure, that’s a really common ditch to fall into of not allowing others to fully express or to give them the space and opportunity to really convey what all is going on in their life. 

So likewise, I would say that not only when you’re giving empathy, but also when you’re receiving empathy, there are some ditches that you can fall into. And some of it plays on those same problems. Exactly. You know, sometimes one ditch would be that the people miss someone’s empathy, or they take it wrong. 

They don’t allow someone to actually express that emotional connection to them and they reject it. They say, no, you’re not the same. You haven’t gone through the same thing I have. Therefore, you can never understand me. We can make the same mistake on the other side of the empathy equation, can’t we? 

Where we over approximate experience and only allow people into our world with that same experience, which is exhausting and not very realistic when we think of the nuances of our experiences. Right. If I were to say that the only person that could understand me is someone that’s been in the exact same life situation that I have, that’s gone through the exact number of losses at the same time that I have gone through, I’d be looking my whole life to find someone that I could connect to and that’s just not reality.  

And so, what happens is people do really find themselves isolated and disconnected because they’re not allowing people in to connect with them emotionally. And I fully understand that sometimes that is hard and that sometimes people don’t do that correctly. 

And so there is hurt. Sometimes that happens. And you don’t necessarily do it to every single person. There’s a sphere of people that you would do that with. But the reality is you do need to allow people to try to empathize with you and to let them speak into that life.  

Okay. And that now triggers another thought. Sometimes I think we can kind of hold that out and hold that over people to the point where their empathy is never sufficient. So there seems to be some grace needed here. And just to remind yourself that God has maybe not called that person to that same experience that you’ve gone through in your life. But that through the body of Christ, there can still be connection and learning from one another. And that if you’re willing to share your experience with someone and allow them to listen and to empathize with you, to allow them to be able to connect emotionally, that can be for the other person’s good too. And so just the hope that can come from that is really powerful.  

Speak to the health that is brought by empathizing. Okay. For somebody who says, alright, Amber this person is angry. I know what anger is like. I can connect with anger. Are we going anywhere? You know what I’m saying? Yeah, it might not feel like it at first, but yet that little step can make a big difference toward the big picture, and you do have to start somewhere. What kind of health is brought when a person says, okay, you get it. You understand the emotion, all of a sudden you start to see walls come down and you start to see light start to shine and hope start to come into a person’s life. 

Again, it’s not an overnight process, but you see that glimmer that starts to come. And it is just from being seen, from being understood, from being heard, instead of what has felt like being locked down, being mistreated, being misunderstood. For someone who has been deeply wounded, a lot of times it’s not just that one empathetic encounter that turns the whole ship around, but all of a sudden it starts to, and again it is that glimmer of hope that they start to feel. 

So, empathy isn’t necessarily won in a moment, but often won over longevity. And I think the optimistic point here to get to capture is that sometimes when it seems like six months down the road, we might be able to reflect on those moments as very healing moments. And healing, not only for those people that were receiving the empathy, but healing for those that were giving, maybe through that exchange, or maybe through just a one-time interaction. That person has thought deeper about that. Other people’s experiences outside of their own. And all of a sudden, they are more in tune to that, and they are growing deeper as well. 

I think at the end of the day, what makes this so hard is that we can do all these things perfectly. We can connect on an emotional level with someone, and yet we are never going to completely walk in their shoes. We are never going to completely, fully understand every little aspect of what they’ve experienced. 

And that needs to be acknowledged. I think we have to own that. And empathy is not held hostage by complete understanding as much as we’ve touted understanding in this podcast. So that’s important. That’s part of empathy, but complete understanding is not going to be possible. And empathy is not held hostage by that. 

Correct. Incredibly important, I think, Amber, which requires grace, doesn’t it? Absolutely. On both sides. And so, any encounter that you have, I think, does have to end with grace because it’s going to go so far. And then you do have to trust that at the end of the day, there is only one who can perfectly fully understand every person’s experience and every person’s level of pain. 

And that is Jesus Christ. And so, we can do our part and we should. And growing and continuing to strengthen our empathy muscles and our interactions with others and leave that and rest in that, that Jesus is the answer. I love that. You know, he gives us jobs to do. Jesus does. And we play them out and there’s always this gap. 

For me, it’s quite a chasm between me and him. And in that gap between me and him is what he comes in and fills. And so, we let him be that Savior then. And I will never be for another person. And I think that’s important for both parties to understand. 

Isn’t it? Absolutely. Yeah. So, Matt, there is a Scripture that I always think of when it comes to empathy, and it is 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, and I’ll just read it here. It says, Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort where with we ourselves are comforted of God. And to me, that is just a reminder of why we empathize with others, of where that emotional connection comes from. It comes from the comfort we ourselves feel inside from the Holy Spirit. Whenever we see Jesus as the answer, I get excited. 

And really, even in this activity of empathy, we’re connecting people with Jesus. And we do that very much through empathy, which I think is absolutely profoundly wonderful. Yeah. It’s amazing to me, Matt, how Jesus himself lived as a man and because of his experience, therefore he can connect with people with what we are feeling and what we are living out down here on earth. And I know when I rest in that and trust in that, it just makes me profoundly thankful that he is my intercessor. What a wonderful note to end on. Thanks for being here sharing on this important topic. Thanks to each of our listeners. 

As we engaged with one another no doubt you had no problem coming up with a name of a person that you could empathize with. Maybe your own heart is crying out to being empathized with. We trust and pray that this content could help move us in a continually healthier emotional place to connect with others. 

Thanks for being here. Goodbye.