Coach as Instrument: The Difference Between Empathy and Empathizing

This Week's Attunement 

A couple of weeks ago, I had to put down my beloved dog, Libby. My sweet pet was a constant source of warmth and joy and I've been grieving the loss of her gentle, loving presence.

And as I've communicated my experience to others, I've been reminded of the stark contrast between empathy and empathizing. While there is a myriad of different definitions of empathy, emotion researchers generally define empathy as an ability we possess to sense someone’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what they might be thinking or feeling.

Empathizing, on the other hand, is about what we do when confronted with someone else's emotional pain, how we meet and stay with them in their pain without needing anything to change or becoming enmeshed in it.

As I've told people about my loss, I've sensed people's empathy. In other words, I sensed that they could sense my emotion and they could imagine how I felt. However, I have not always felt empathized with. In fact, when I told a friend of mine (who happens to be a therapist) about the loss of my sweet pup, he asked how I was doing. I told him that morning I had gotten out of bed, had breakfast with my son, worked out, meditated and went back to bed. His response? He laughed. He wasn't being cruel or heartless. He was simply distancing himself from my obvious distress.

It's what many, many of us humans do when faced with the pain of another. His unique way of distancing was to laugh. For others, it is to "silver-line" the situation or to suggest "it's for the best" or to try to rescue others from their feelings in some way by helping or giving advice.

While we don't mean to distance ourselves, it's something we do reactively, a conditioned response that often mirrors how we deal with our own pain. Empathizing with the pain of another starts with our being with our capacity and willingness to be with our own pain.

If you'd like to learn more about the difference between empathy and empathizing and how we can be doing more of both to create deeper relationships with our clients, I hope you'll join me for a FREE class on Empathy as Ointment: An Introduction to WE-Q Relationships that Heal. Learn more here.