Empathy

The Pastor

The pastor sat in his chair behind his large oak desk. He listened intently to the woman sitting across from him. He nodded and said comments like, “Yes,” “um,” and “I understand.” He gave her a tissue when she cried.

The woman felt a relief as she talked. She yearned to feel understood. She desperately wanted someone to “get” her. She explained everything very thoroughly. She started at the beginning and explained everything that happened right up to the present time. After she was done talking, she paused to hear what the pastor had to say. More than anything she wanted to hear an indication that her pastor understood where she was coming from.

Upon hearing the parishioner pause, the pastor sat back for a minute. He thought carefully about what the lady told him. He wanted to make sure he understood everything. After internally analyzing everything she said, he decided to let her know that he understood her. He looked the parishioner squarely in the eye and said in an emphatic tone, “I understand.”

The woman sat and waited for the pastor to elaborate on what he understood. “He knows that he thinks he understands me, but I don’t know if he really understands me,” thought the woman. She wanted to hear some sort of indication that the pastor knew what it was like to be in her shoes.

The pastor wrote down a verse from the Bible. It was a very good verse that spoke to her specific issue perfectly. His job was done. He gave a solution that matched her problem. He promptly dismissed the parishioner.

The woman walked out of the pastor’s office and toward her car. She thought about the experience. The verse was a nice verse. She felt lighter having expressed herself, but she was still feeling uneasy and she wasn’t sure why.

As she sat in her car she reflected on the conversation. Her mind still felt a little disorganized. She would have liked to have talked things out a little more. She always felt a little less confused after a good conversation, but what she had wasn’t much of a conversation, it was more like a verbal purging. She could have had the same experience talking to her dog. Her dog was a good listener and didn’t talk either.

She also didn’t really know if the pastor understood her. She would have liked to have heard him explain what he heard her say. That way, she would know for certain that he knew what she was going through. It was difficult to take his word for it that he “understood.” She didn’t feel the human connection with the pastor that she usually feels when someone understands her at an intimate level.

Empathy

Jacob thought that his wife was emotionally unstable. She always had a lot of emotions all the time. Sometimes she would cry for no apparent reason. She always wanted to talk. When she talked, she wouldn’t get to the point. She would start talking about one thing and then she would dive into everything related to the subject at hand. She would talk about the past, present, and future in relation to the subject. She would talk about how the subject could effect various family members. She would talk about all the possible solutions and possible outcomes. Then, at the very end, she would come up with a conclusion that looked nothing like the original statement that she started exploring at the beginning of the conversation.

 Tiffany thought her husband was emotionally cut off.  He never wanted to talk about problems. If he had a problem, instead of talking about it, he would become withdrawn and seclude himself. When he finally emerged, he would act as if nothing was wrong. Tiffany never knew what was on his mind. If she asked him about the problem, he would simply say that he solved it and he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

Tiffany felt her emotions very deeply. Sometimes all of the emotions would get jumbled up in her mind. It was hard for her to sort through all of her different thoughts and feelings. She usually felt better if she could talk things out. When she talked about her thoughts with someone else, it helped her organize all the different emotions she felt. Once her emotions were organized, she could easily identify a solution to her problem.

Jacob didn’t like feeling his emotions. They were painful. He liked to push them away and focus on the facts of the matter. It didn’t help him to talk it out. He found that he could resolve the problem if he could identify a logical solution. Once a solution was discovered, Jacob could shelve the problem in his mind and not think about it anymore.

Jacob didn’t like it when his wife asked about the problem, because then it required him to resolve it and reshelve it all over again. He would rather let the problem be. He also didn’t like it when she tried to help him problem solve. Jacob liked to only focus on the problem at hand. It wasn’t helpful to him if his wife talked about how his problem could be effected by different variables from the past, present, and future. He wanted to keep a narrow focus and her wide view of the problem overwhelmed him.

Tiffany didn’t like it when she talked to Jacob about her problems. He wasn’t able to tolerate experiencing the different emotions that her language invoked. When he felt emotionally uncomfortable, he would withdraw or lash out in anger. He commonly felt like Tiffany was blaming him and he would respond to her problem by blaming her or becoming defensive. Sometimes Jacob would try to cut her off and jump straight to the solution. He would get mad if she brought up anything from the past. What Tiffany really needed was for Jacob to listen to her, be inquisitive, and validate her emotions.

Empathy Logistics

According to Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn (2013), women tend to be external processors. They need to talk out loud in order to organize information. In general, women will experience emotions related to a problem and they will need to process out loud in order to organize all of their emotions. Once they are done organizing the emotions, they can easily solve their own problems.

 When solving the problem, women tend to constantly see all of the variables that are related to the problem. They need to fully understand how a problem is connected to all the variables before they make a decision. To a woman, the past often holds information that helps her to understand the present. It needs to be taken into account.

Men tend to be internal processors. They need to think things through internally. They like to set the emotion aside and jump straight to solving the problem. Men will tend to focus on the task at hand and try to limit variables that they see as being unnecessary. To a man, the past rarely explains the future and needs to be dismissed.

These examples are generalizations and no one really fits into a specific mold. The important thing to recognize is that our spouse is different than us. We cannot expect our spouse’s mind to operate the same way our mind does. We cannot deem our spouse to be inadequate, simply because our spouse thinks differently than we do.

 Men and women can help each other out by being empathetic listeners. Laurence and Emily Alison (2020) describe three levels of empathy that we should strive to achieve in a conversation.  These levels are restating, putting ourselves in their shoes, and trying to see the situation through their worldview.

The first level of empathy is restating back what we heard. We usually don’t interpret the message the way it is intended, so it is a good idea to ask our spouse if we heard them correctly. If we are normal, we will misunderstand what our spouse is trying to convey. Asking our spouse if we heard them correctly, gives them a chance to correct any misunderstanding.

The second level of empathy is putting ourselves in their shoes. It is helpful, when trying to fully understand someone, if we try and remember a time when we experienced something similar to their situation. If we can remember what it felt like in a similar situation, then it helps us to be more relatable. We can recall what emotions we felt. We can understand the weight of the situation. If we haven’t been in a similar situation, it is helpful to ask enough questions about the situation until we can imagine what it must be like to be our spouse.

The third level of empathy is seeing the situation through our spouse’s worldview. We may have experienced a similar situation, but because we are different people with different upbringings, our experience in the similar situation would have been quite different. It is helpful to try to ask questions about what our spouse was thinking and feeling so that we can try to feel and think about the problem the way our spouse is experiencing it. We want to gather enough information so we can get as close as possible to vicariously experiencing the problem the same way our spouse has. This takes a lot of time and undivided attention.

As the man is listening, he needs to tolerate the different emotions that are being brought up and discussed and not try to avoid them. The man needs to allow the woman to discuss her theories about how the past is impacting the present. He needs to let her think through all the different variables that might be impacting the problem. He needs to give her all the time she needs to think out loud until she is able to organize her thoughts and determine a solution.

As the woman is listening, she needs to pace the man’s processing. She doesn’t need to bring up different variables that he deems are unnecessary. She needs to give him space to go inside his mind and think things through on his own, if he asks for time. If it isn’t a problem that affects the marriage, and he says he is done solving it, it will be helpful for her to not bring it up again. This is because he has found a way to live in peace with the issue and bringing it up again would require him to go through the process of reshelving the problem all over again.