Practicing as a psychotherapist, my clients will often ask me how they can show more empathy to their spouse, children, or friends. Sometimes a spouse will specifically ask me to help a husband or wife grow in empathy as a skill.
Clients desire to show empathy in relationships but have difficulty knowing how. Learning how to build the empathy muscle and share another person’s point of view can be difficult. The good news is, you can learn how to be more empathetic in a relationship! Empathy plays a large role in what makes marriage work, friendships last, and families thrive.
Over the years, I have seen hundreds of clients develop empathy as a skill. As a result, their relationships with family members, friends, and significant others begin to flourish! You can practice and learn empathy as well!
What is empathy?
Empathy is the ability to get behind another’s eyeballs and see and feel the world as they do. Empathy allows you to experience someone else’s feelings without becoming so emotionally involved that you lose your judgment. Because of this, empathy plays a crucial role in all relationships.
Learning how to be more empathetic in a relationship not only builds connections, but it is essential in maintaining healthy relationships. Brené Brown reminds us of the importance of empathy in her statement, “Shame cannot survive empathy.”
Experiencing empathy from someone brings connection, feelings of safety, and warm, positive emotion. Empathy can lift the spirit, heal emotional wounds, and increase positive emotional states.
How to be more empathetic in a relationship?
But how can you go from low empathy or even a lack of empathy to learning empathy as a skill? What sparks your growth in empathy? Curiosity plays a tremendous role, as it opens your mind to experience the other.
It is crucial to practice curiosity in combination with a reflective empathy statement. (I list these statements later on.) This primes your mirror neurons to become receptor sites for another person’s experience. Curiosity creates attunement, and attunement creates empathy.
Empathy is a reach of one’s imagination into the subjective experience of another. This reach and the tension in the space requires practice and experience.
1. Listen to others without judgment or blame
A curious, empathic person has no hidden agenda. Instead of sizing up another person and making assumptions, practice active listening and seek to understand others’ perspectives. This is a key way to practice how to be more empathetic in a relationship.
Be willing to openly sit in the place of ambiguity without driving to a specific conclusion. Set aside your agenda and ask yourself, “What are they experiencing?”
As you listen, be supportive. Reflect without shaming or blaming. Focus on understanding instead of problem solving. As you explore, seek to know the person.
Only after you sense that the person feels known and understood should you explore options to find the best solutions. And as you explore, stay more collaborative and less hierarchical.
2. Ask lots of open questions
A curious, empathic person asks a lot of questions and uses interrogative pronouns such as: how, what, when, where, and why.
A note of caution: use the word why prudently since the question can also imply judgment. Make sure you are paying attention to your own why behind asking the question.
Additionally, do your best to stay away from closed questions the other person can answer with a yes or no. Ask exploring questions, such as:
- “How did you respond to this?”
- “What were you feeling when this happened?”
- “What were you thinking when this happened?”
Open questions allow the individual to answer in their own way, without feeling like they must fit an agenda. Opennens is vital to learning how to be more empathetic in a relationship.
When you talk with a curious person, you come away feeling known. When you are known, you feel a connection. You experience positive emotion. You feel seen.
3. Be fully present
Empathy requires space, time, and patience. An empathic person gives their full attention, turns toward the other person, and puts down or pauses what they are doing.
They show they are fully present by their listening skills. Empathic people turn off their phones and focus on conversations. Empathy creates the space to be curious. When someone is multitasking they do not nurture empathy. Consider the disinterest this body language communicates:
- On the phone while listening
- Cooking while talking to the family
- Reading while being spoken to
- Looking down
Remember that staying present creates the space for curiosity and heartfelt connection.
4. Practice empathy statements
One of the best ways to practice empathy is by learning and using empathy statements.
Empathy statements open your imagination. Imagination is essential to see the world from another’s perspective.
When using empathy statements, always follow up with careful listening and observation. Remember that you don’t have to “get it right.” You are attempting to connect.
If your empathy statement isn’t spot on, simply respond with “tell me more” or “I’d like to hear more.” Don’t be hesitant to use an empathy statement because you are afraid of getting it wrong.
Showing empathy is vulnerable, and vulnerability is essential for creating connections and building relationships. Taking the risk to connect shows you care.
Below is a list of empathy statements. Use them to build your empathy skills and open your mind to others’ perspectives in a non-blaming, non-shaming way.
Empathy for partners:
- Things are tough right now, but I’m here for you, and I love you.
- You must have felt really…
- You must have felt so….
- It sounds like this is very hard for you. I want you to know that I love you.
- What you’re saying makes so much sense to me.
- I wish I had been there with you when that happened. Is there anything I can do to help you with this?
- That must have hurt your feelings.
- I’m sorry you are going through this and are discouraged.
- It’s perfectly normal to feel frustrated about this.
- If that happened to me, I would feel…
- You have had a difficult time, haven’t you? Would you like a hug?
- I hear what you’re saying.
- I would have a hard time with that too.
- That sounds like an impossible situation.
- It makes me so mad just hearing about it.
- You must have felt so…
Empathy for a friend or family member:
- Tell me more.
- It sounds like you did everything you could.
- I can see how difficult this has been for you.
- The whole thing sounds so discouraging.
- I can see why you would be upset.
- This is so hard.
- I’m curious; it sounds like you were feeling…
- I can’t believe how well you’re holding up considering all the stress you’re under.
- If that happened to me, I would be so (sad, mad, upset), too.
- What a (day, week, year) you’ve had!
- I hear what you’re saying.
- It is totally natural that you would feel this way.
5. Show and develop empathy with children
Developmentally, empathy is caught more than taught. Children who experience empathy learn empathy as a skill.
For example, experiencing empathy from their primary caregivers and watching their family show empathy toward one another primes children. Watching empathy modeled develops the neural pathways of empathy in the child’s mind
If you are a teacher or coach, make empathy a part of your emotional lexicon. As you show empathy to others, your students and players will pick up empathy through the mirror neurons in their brain.
Much like yawning, mirror neurons pick up the feelings of empathy and the movements of empathy. They then fire similar neural pathways that were fired in the giver’s brain—creating empathy.
Psychologist and writer Daniel Goleman compares mirror neurons to Wi-Fi. He says they “operate like a neural Wi-Fi” to produce emotional transmission and physiological rapport.
A process known as Stay-Listening can help to nurture empathy in children. The Stay-Listening Technique helps children identify their feelings, understand their emotions, attune with you, and feel soothed.
The first step in Stay-Listening is body posture and positioning. Start by getting on your child’s level—get on your knees or sit in a chair. Be attentive. Face your child.
From this position of attunement, do the following:
- Identify with your child’s feelings: “Are you feeling sad? You are feeling sad, aren’t you?”
- Help your child understand their feelings: “You are feeling sad because I’m leaving, right? You don’t want me to leave, do you?”
- Connect your child’s feelings with yours: “I don’t want to leave either. I feel sad too.”
- Identify the feeling in your body and in the child’s body: “I feel sad right here (pointing toward chest). Where do you feel sad?”
- Attunement with a child creates connection. Practice turning toward, listening, stopping what you are doing, and staying present.
Empathy is a skill you can improve with practice. Practicing empathy helps you to connect to others. But learning empathy as a skill also allows you to:
- Identify your own emotions
- Stay better connected to yourself
- Increase your mental health
Learning empathy takes practice, but the benefits will surprise you.