Learning Journal 6

My understanding of empathy is that it is a connection between one person and another. It is very much a humanity with that connection and a reaching, experiential understanding for how it is for that other person. It cannot be a static or isolated momentary experience, it must be a process of developing this shared experience and mutual understanding or congruence.

Beyond simply reflecting what you hear in another way, empathy as I understand it is a deeper and more comprehensive sharing of what is felt by the counsellor to the client that may be not said, not even known by the client. Further to simply knowing that another person can understand the client’s world they may well experience, by way of the counsellor’s empathic responses over a process, a learning about themselves and their true feelings that they didn’t even realise. By this happening empathy can reveal an understanding can be supportive, growth promoting, healing and revealing to the client in a way not previously possible or accessible to them.

This week I had a discussion about the nature of empathy and its significance in the therapeutic relationship with two other students. As mentioned the role of empathy as laid out by Rogers is “potentially the most potent factor in bringing about change and learning”. It is significant because of the power it has for the client to develop their own understanding, but also for them to be held safely while this is happening. The counsellor must be able to experience the same emotions and internal references without being taken away with the feelings into the same place as this would cease to be empathy and would morph into something more akin to identification.

To be able to give the person a complete empathic and non-judgemental and congruent understanding of what it is they are going through, experiencing or enduring and still maintain the solidity to hold the client, now that is a potentially very supportive role indeed. To manage this the counsellor must be able to guide this client through this new understanding without themselves being drawn into the emotive consequences that can place impediments on our ability to understand, decide or appreciate given situations and so enable or empower the client to make sense of their world. This must be like experiencing and understanding the gravity, the emotions and the realities without being constricted by them in order to be a guide for the client.

We began by exploring the unsympathetic nature of empathy piece by Egan. Egan describes empathy as a something that the counsellor benefits from in some way, I think inferring that there is a power dynamic and that this dynamic is fed by this benefit. By somehow being able to master the reflective responses and take command of knowing the clients feelings in such a way as to show them how they really and truly experience something back to themselves is somehow mutually beneficial, but in a rather vulgar way.

That the counsellor may well get a kick out of being supportive is of no doubt to me. But I feel challenged by the words of Egan in telling me this overtly in a manner that makes me feel that it is more in favour of the counsellor than the client. That surely is down to the nature of the counsellor himself. If a counsellor is of a mind to so revel in the ability to empathise with a client, I feel that this is a dangerous pre-occupation that would surely interfere with the very act itself. Therefore by definition is not possible to a harmful degree in terms of supporting the client. Yet, it doesn’t sit well with me that the counsellor could ever be taken over by this feeling in such a form. Could this happen to me? How then can I reconcile this as a helping profession? Is it me that has the need to be held, in a similar way to the client? Is it naïve to think otherwise? Perhaps so, but I find Egan’s take on this somewhat uncomfortable. Will me getting strokes from the relationship I make with clients be my motivation for going into the helping profession, or is it an occupational benefit? I know from my life experience that all jobs have their upsides and this is obviously the side of the helping profession that makes it so appealing perhaps. However, what Egan is saying is that it may be an empowering bias in favour of the counsellor over client, which must potentially be an motivational corruption of sorts. This would potentially disturb the ethically governed relationship I imagine, as the counsellor must become attuned to his inner strokes, consciously or otherwise. If this were the case, wouldn’t he naturally seek them further, engineer empathic continuums with clients participating in their intimacy and exploration? Is it possible to know that this is going on from self-awareness or supervision? I suspect not.

A second Egan extract that made me think closely about my understanding of empathy was the sentence “the likelihood of empathy may increase the more therapists get to know their clients, but its always going to be easier for them to empathise with those clients who are most similar to themselves.” This statement I feel is contrary to how I perceive the nature of empathy, in so much as empathy cannot originate from a place of knowing already. On one hand the ability to identify with clients most like ourselves is incredibly apparent as we can relate to what they are, have been through or describe, however surely Egan cannot be so simplistic in this interpretation and carry it across to empathy.

The feeling that you can relate to another is quite a dangerous thing to recognise to me. This would perhaps mean that I am making economies and short cuts in listening as I feel that I already ‘understand’ or ‘know’. It is surely human nature to make these short cuts, to pigeon hole, to box up people in clusters or groups, this is a probably a form of evolved strategy. Perhaps this form of reducing people to groups or labels is a survival technique for assessing similarities or differences in order to form flocks and groups that can survive together. When it comes to a client that is however more diverse from myself I feel that this habit is perhaps less likely to manifest. For this reason to me at least surely those clients that are most different to us are perhaps the most easy to empathise with. This is because if someone is presenting completely novel situations and experiences and is able to articulate well enough for us to really and truly get into their world, then I would hold that the person listening and learning about them will have no preconceptions about them at all and not be held back by these polluting or interrupting thoughts. Anyway, when it comes to this level of diversity in empathy I feel that the more differences the better to offer a true unadulterated and pure form of unpolluted being with another person.

The example I can use most readily is that when working on Broadreach a year ago I used to listen to people’s stories about drug addiction and become totally lost in reliving my own disasters. The emotions that I heard were so clouded with my own memories that it was never anything close to empathic understanding, not at all. This was the opposite of walking in their shoes. More it was like being told we are both going show shopping, and me choosing what shoes that the client clearly should be buying, because I know best. Conversely when I listen to alcoholics I have less of this interference, possibly as so many of their issues are novel to me? There are enormous similarities of course with any addiction to another, especially the drug dependence addictions, however as I am not able to relive in my own imagination the specific ins and outs of the drink dependant person I find I am very able to offer a complete and open ear. I listen to their experiences with curiosity, not comparison. I listen to their life and loss and predicament with interest as I am learning about them all the time. It is new information and so always interesting.

Do I get a sense of power from this shared understanding and mutual experience while remaining grounded to be a safe and secure presence? I wasn’t aware that I could. I think that the one thing that Egan has brought to my mind is that to feel a sense of power out of this dynamic could be a distraction and something to be mindful of when developing this on-going process I am coming to learn about called empathy.