Exercises in Listening & Empathy
Excerpts
from Making
Healthy Families
By Gayle Peterson, Ph.D.
Copyright 1996-2003. Gayle Peterson All rights reserved.
Family researchers have identified six areas of family
communication, however listening to emotionally laden messages without
automatically blocking the flow of a discussion is primary in laying
a foundation for solving problems. For this reason, listening will
take up the lion’s share of the discussion below.
The following discussion and exercises are intended to help stimulate
thought and reflection on your recollection of childhood patterns
of communication and problem solving and your current family’s
“communication membrane”.
Every family is a unique culture. Adjust this information
to your own values and needs. When applying it to your spouse, an
attitude of curiosity and exploration of your family and how it operates
may prove beneficial, as well as a realization that you are a team
when it comes to making decisions together. Naturally, when you are
applying it to your children you retain final decision making. In
this way, family boundaries and roles remain clear of ambiguity .
Developing Your Communication Membrane
Childhood experience
Ask yourself if you were listened to as a child in
your family, and if other family members listened to each other or
not. This will give you an understanding of your own trust in being
understood and the pressure you might feel around communication that
is rooted in the past.
Remember, it is never too late to develop skills,
or take the time for listening that we did not learn or experience
in childhood. Life is for learning. And now it is your turn as parents
to decide what kind of family atmosphere you want to develop!
Rate your overall childhood experience of feeling
"listened to" in your family on the scale below. You may
also rate your childhood experience as it relates to your relationship
with your mother, father, or other family members separately, if you
wish.
1--2--3--4--5--6
almost always
mostly
usually
sometimes
seldom
almost never
If you have been "listened to" in your childhood,
you are more likely to be able to listen to others. Still, under stress,
we can abandon our best tools and resort to blocking rather than hearing
what others have to say.
Present family experience: Ask yourself
and members of your family to tell you whether they feel understood
most of the time by others in the family, some of the time, almost
never, etc. Use the same scale above to assist you. You may also want
to ask, specifically if someone feels understood by individual members.
If you do so, it is important to understand that it is common for
children to feel more or less understood by different parents at different
times, and this exercise should be done with full cooperation, knowledge
and participation of all family members to ensure a spirit of camaraderie
in understanding each other.
1--2--3--4--5--6
almost always
mostly
usually
sometimes
seldom
almost never
It is particularly helpful to do with just
your marital partner as a tool for assessing how each of you experiences
the other.
Remember that the goal is to understand the
family member’s experience, not to judge their experience. Also,
be aware of any self-criticism or judgment if you experience difficulty
understanding someone’s experience in the beginning. Developing
compassion for yourself is the first step in being able to develop
a family atmosphere of empathy and trust.
Developing your listening skill.
Wherever you currently rate your experience of being listened to in
your family, listening skills can always be improved. This is especially
true during emotionally laden discussions when conflicts arise. The
more practice, the easier it will be to voluntarily call upon a capacity
to express yourself in a way that is non-blaming, and be able to listen
to your partner’s experience without blocking communication.
The more you use the techniques below, the easier
and more quickly you will be able to get back on track when you do
become defensive or attacking. Afterall, it is natural
to become reactive in the course of daily living. However being able
to get back on track, without losing large amounts of time to polarizing
discussions will help you solve problems more effectively. And it
will help you free up love for one another, following a short-lived
but appropriate release of anger. If couples can express anger and
resentments to one another without blaming or punishing, love is preserved
and intimacy blossoms!
Listening includes the ability to be attentive to
the other person’s experience of what is being discussed. It
also means being able to understand and empathize with their
experience, even when you do not agree or have an opposite view. Showing
empathy is crucial to your partner’s ability to hear your experience
when it is your turn to describe it.
Using the following sentence, fill in the blanks with
your appropriate feelings, the description of behavior you are responding
to, and your emotional interpretation of what the behavior means to
you. When you fill in the blank for “imagined”, you may
find that your feelings are partially rooted in past childhood experiences
which may color the way you are receiving your partner’s message.
This exercise offers an opportunity for clarification, including the
possibility of separating past and present realities.
I feel ________ when you _______ and I imagine _______.
For example: I feel anxious when
you swear and I imagine you are about to lose control of yourself
and hit me. Or: I feel tense when you swear and I imagine you will
withdraw from being affectionate to me the rest of the evening.
Your partner then should reflect back to you an accurate
understanding of your feelings, without defending or explaining himself
before he or she connects with you around being understood.
For example: You feel anxious that
my swearing will result in my hurting you physically. Is that right?
You feel afraid that my swearing means that I won’t be loving
to you the rest of the day. Did I get it?
When you use this method of communicating around emotionally
charged topics, you will be more likely to be understood because you
are eliminating blaming your partner for how you feel. You are expressing
your feelings without attacking the other person. This makes it easier
for your partner to understand your feelings when they are different
from their own. Using “I” statements also allows
you to validate your own feelings. This eliminates the pressure for
two people to see things exactly the same in order to feel connected
or loved.
Space for two people to experience the world differently
decreases the possibilities of misinterpretation. And this kind of
connecting allows people to reflect on the source of these feelings,
sorting out what percentage of their feelings belong to their present
partnership experience, and how much of it may relate to past childhood
relationships. Because there is more space for feelings, the understanding
can evolve more smoothly.
For example: “ I know you’ve
never hit me. I guess your anger triggers my experience of being hit
by my brother when I was a kid.”
When clarifications like the above can happen, partners
will be more able to increase their capacity for receiving messages
that carry strong emotions, (including anger) from their partner,
without overreacting. The more we build tolerance for feelings, without
responding with defensive blocking techniques such as withdrawal or
blaming, the greater our ability is for closeness and intimacy. Trust
is built through an experience of safety in being able to express
powerful feelings without distorting communication.
When you take the time to listen, you develop a sense
of trust. The experience of being understood cannot
be overestimated in its effect on soothing the other person, enabling
them to then really listen to your experience, explanation or clarification.
This is your best insurance that you will be heard when you begin
to explain your viewpoint and explore what of your partner’s
experience is true, and what is a misinterpretation of your behavior.
These skills are necessary for deepening intimacy throughout the years
of a marriage, and go a long way in beginning to resolve conflict.
Setting aside 15 minutes each evening will be enough
to begin increasing your listening skills with this exercise. You
can take turns alternating days of being the listener with your partner
if you like, so the exercise is easy to do. Even if you think you
are too tired, you may find that receiving empathy can be rejuvenating.
And being able to connect as the listener may give you a feeling of
accomplishment and maturity which deepens your appreciation of not
only your partner, but yourself!
 Go
to: Exercise for "Using I Statements"
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