The Role of Empathy in Healthy Relationships
Your partner comes home from a terrible day at work, sighing with exhaustion. What is your first response? Do you immediately start offering solutions? (“You should talk to your boss!”) Do you try to minimize their feeling? (“It can’t be that bad.”) Or do you pause, look at them, and say, “That sounds incredibly rough. Tell me about it.” This third response is an act of empathy, and it is the superglue of all healthy relationships. It is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, and it is the foundation of true emotional connection.
At Televero Health, we help our patients to both give and receive empathy more effectively. It is a skill that can be learned and strengthened. When you can meet another person in their emotional world, you are creating a bond of trust and safety that can transform the quality of your connections.
What Is Empathy?
Empathy is often confused with sympathy, but they are very different. Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone. It creates a sense of distance. (“Oh, you poor thing.”) Empathy is feeling with someone. It creates a sense of connection. According to researcher Dr. Brené Brown, empathy has four key components:
- Perspective-Taking: The ability to see the world from another person’s point of view and to recognize their perspective as their truth.
- Staying Out of Judgment: This requires you to put aside your own opinions and biases and to simply listen with an open heart.
- Recognizing Emotion in Others: The ability to read another person’s non-verbal cues and to understand what they might be feeling.
- Communicating That Understanding: This is the crucial final step. It’s the act of letting the other person know that you get it. A simple phrase like, “That makes so much sense that you would feel that way,” can be incredibly powerful.
Rarely does an empathic response begin with “at least.” Trying to silver-line someone’s pain (“At least you still have a job”) is a way of dismissing their feeling, not connecting with it.
Why Is Empathy So Important?
Empathy is the antidote to loneliness. It is the feeling of being seen, heard, and understood by another human being. When someone offers you empathy, it sends a powerful message: “You are not alone in your feeling. Your feeling is valid.” This sense of connection is a fundamental human need and is essential for our psychological well-being.
In a relationship, empathy is the foundation of emotional intimacy. It is what allows you to navigate conflict, to support each other through difficult times, and to build a deep and lasting bond of trust. A lack of empathy, on the other hand, is one of the quickest ways to create distance and resentment.
How to Practice Empathy
Empathy is a skill, which means you can get better at it with practice. Here are some ways to cultivate it.
- Practice Active Listening: As we’ve discussed, active listening is the core skill of empathy. When someone is talking to you, put away your distractions and make it your sole mission to understand their world. Quiet your own internal monologue and get curious.
- Listen for the Feeling, Not Just the Facts: Listen for the emotion that is underneath the story they are telling. Are they feeling disappointed? Scared? Overwhelmed?
- Use Reflective, Validating Language: Once they have shared, reflect back what you heard. “It sounds like you’re feeling incredibly stressed and unappreciated at work.” “I can see why you would be so hurt by what she said.”
- Be Vulnerable Yourself: Empathy is a two-way street. Being willing to share your own feelings and struggles with the people you trust invites them to do the same. Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection.
- Broaden Your Horizons: Read books, watch films, and listen to stories from people whose lives and perspectives are very different from your own. This can help to build your “perspective-taking” muscle.
Empathy is a choice. It is the choice to connect with the feeling in another person, not to fix their problem. It is a quiet, powerful act of love that says, “I am here with you in this feeling, and you are not alone.” It is one of the most healing gifts you can offer another human being.
Key Takeaways
- Empathy is the skill of feeling with someone, of understanding their emotional experience from their perspective. It is different from sympathy, which is feeling for someone.
- It is the foundation of emotional connection and is essential for all healthy relationships.
- The four key components of empathy are perspective-taking, staying out of judgment, recognizing emotion, and communicating your understanding.
- You can practice empathy by using active listening skills, listening for the feeling behind the words, and validating the other person’s emotional experience.
Ready to take the first step? We can help. Get started with Televero Health today.