Staying in Touch

How easy or difficult is it for you to stay in touch with your feelings and with someone else’s feelings? One of the difficulties for us when communicating is in how to be empathic with the other person. We tend to be busy thinking about what we want and how to get it, rather than with understanding the other person. Really excellent empathic responses come from a deeper sense of the other person, and is perhaps closer to the word “attunement” than to empathy. Our ability to be attuned to the other should not mean that we have to give up what we want, but it does mean that we need to consider the impact we have on others, and to do this we need to actively listen as well as seek understanding.

When we are busy trying to “convert” people to what we think that we can miss them. If we miss the other person we also miss out because we have not made connection and developed relationship. We have therefore probably not put down all the “trash we have accumulated since the maternity ward” (Berne E. 1984, What Do You Say After You Say Hello?).

However, being empathic is also enabled on the other person’s part if they are willing to communicate with us, and are able to accept our empathic responses. When the other person is aloof, or cut off in some way then the ability to be empathic and attuned is hampered.

Let’s take the example of caring for someone who is ill. For some people illness may mean that they withdraw and cut-off. When this happens the carer is more likely to experience higher stress levels as they are unable to stay in touch with the person who is unwell and, in turn, they can become increasingly debilitated and tired. How different it is when the person who is ill is willing and able to be responsive. Although tired the carer will feel heard and responded to which helps their own process and energy levels.

Whilst this is a more extreme example than just daily communication it does highlight the need for communication to be two-way (or more). Communication, caring and empathy are co-created with givers and receivers. Both the giver and the receiver need to stay in touch with themselves – their own needs and wants, as well as the other’s needs and wants, and find ways to exchange. This will be a more rewarding process than one where a person cuts offs or negates the empathic or attuned response.

Continued caring for someone who is not able to give back can encouraged “burnout” and lead to a lack of empathy for others. However, where the love and empathy are responded to even those who felt lacking in empathy can have this rekindled.

So, find your empathy and be prepared for others to be empathic with you so that you can create an attuned appropriate response in the here and now, not hampered by the past. Enjoy!



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