Catchy title for a real problem. Sometimes it is hard to relate and connect with others. How do we have concern and empathy for people when maybe we don’t want to? Empathy is a teachable, learnable hard skill. We have to choose to care, even if we don’t want to. Listen to Leanne VanBeek, OCL Michigan Chapter Lead, talk with host Adam Salgat about how this can be hard but is so important.
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Adam Salgat:
Hello and welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast. My name is Adam Salgat, and with me today is Leanne Van Beek, the Michigan chapter leader for OCL. How are you doing today, Leanne?
Leanne Van Beek:
I’m doing well, Adam.
Adam Salgat:
Our first topic comes from an alumni who got right to the point and asked, “How do I have empathy for people who suck?” This is a common question during our course and after. And while that’s very attention grabbing and right to the point, the question remains in my mind, what do you think the intent is behind that question?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. I loved the question when it came in and I think we all got a chuckle out of it, but I think the reality of the question, the heart behind that question is saying, what do I do when I really am trying to connect with someone, but I just can’t? For whatever reason, I feel like it is hard for me to understand where they’re coming from. I’m trying to get a connection and it’s just not happening.
Adam Salgat:
Where do you think I would start?
Leanne Van Beek:
It’s interesting with empathy. I have found for me that step one is just acknowledging how hard empathy is sometimes. There are certain people in our lives, I think, that when we interact with them, maybe because of the way they respond in a situation, if it’s different than how I would respond, or if the context is just different and I have a hard time connecting to that, it’s just a difficult thing to do. I have used this analogy for people who are visual, that I feel like empathy is the shop vac in my set of tools. And the reason I say that is I picture myself standing in my kitchen, and if I drop a big glass bowl full of flour and baking soda and who knows what else, I have a giant mess on the floor.
Adam Salgat:
Yeah. Something your dog’s not going to come clean up for you.
Leanne Van Beek:
Right. Right. Exactly. And I have a couple options. I need a tool to help me address this. Very close to me is my closet where my broom is available. It’s easy for me to turn around and grab that, but I’m probably going to spend an awful lot of time trying to sweep up every little scrap of flour, get every piece of glass. On the flip side, I have a great shop vac outside in my garage that I know could take care of that mess in an instant, but it’s going to require me to go out there, maneuver it out from behind the snowblower or the lawnmower, get it into the house, set it up, plug it in. For me, I almost have this mental image of empathy being like the shop vac. It’s going to take me some effort sometime to get the right tool out, but if I do, in the end, it’s probably the most efficient and effective way for me to solve the issue in front of me.
Adam Salgat:
Give me your working definition of empathy because I think some people might get that confused with different emotions.
Leanne Van Beek:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that’s another really good point. If I go back to the class content, for those who are alumni remembering that that clip from Brene Brown, we really define empathy as something that is going to form a connection and empathy is seeing it as they see it and feeling it as they feel it. I think of empathy as almost being more of a place that you have to go with somebody as opposed to a tactic or a tool or something that I’m going to do for them.
Adam Salgat:
That definition really helps me realize it’s not stepping in and taking on their monkeys, as we’ll discuss I’m sure in some podcast, but it’s like you said, going there with them and just being involved. When someone comes to you and you find out there’s a empathetic situation or they’re looking at you to help them, what are your steps? What are some steps that we can do to get into it?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. I think, again, the first step for me is just recognizing that it’s really hard. In some cases, it’s not going to be easy for me to empathize with someone. In others, it might just come naturally. But when I’m in one of those situations where it’s hard, I know then move to that step two of just saying, okay, empathy now for me has to be seeing it as they see it, feeling it as they feel it. And sometimes, it’s helpful for me to also remember that in that moment, if they are really under a lot of emotion, some of the things that they’re seeing or feeling may be completely hyperbolic or very flat out illogical and maybe sometimes even just like blatantly false, but they’re in the midst of something and they’re struggling. I have to be able to be willing to set all that emotion aside to see through that emotion and find something that I can connect to that is really the reality that they’re having.
Adam Salgat:
I’m not going to lie. There are times where… Teenagers are a great example of that, right? But everybody still has these moments where the littlest thing goes wrong and you’re like, my world is over or I hate everything.
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah.
Adam Salgat:
And so, when you step into that situation of empathy, you’re right. You have to look past a little bit of those hyperbolic or over the top statements that they might be making.
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. I love that you hit on… The teenager is just the classic situation. And I think for those who have been in our classes, especially you know, in that parenting role in particular, we almost feel like it’s our job when the kid is hyperbolic and over inflated and really just swinging out there to try to reign them back in. I think it’s really important, we can’t underscore this enough, that when someone’s experiencing an emotion, us trying to logically talk them out of that is just completely inefficient. They’re not going to be able to work through stressful emotions if we’re just fixating on facts and the logic piece of it. Again, we have to get back to that empathy and really trying to form that connection.
Adam Salgat:
Yep. I can tell you personally, step two, something I would need to focus on a little more and just understanding that those hyperbolic or large statements, I can’t logically go through them with them.
Leanne Van Beek:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Adam Salgat:
Once I get through that step two, what is your step three? What are you looking at now?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah, sure. Again, and a lot of this is how I frame this, so I hope I can just reemphasize that just like with our class content, you’re hearing Leanne’s approach here and others may do this slightly differently. But for me, the third one is, again, just trying to really remember that empathy is about connection. And one of our classes, it was absolutely phenomenal. After they watched the Brene Brown video and they’ve watched the section where the bear climbs down the ladder and gets into the hole with the fox and says, “Hey, you’re not alone down here,” they used the phrase for the rest of the class, “Be the bear,” which I loved and I picked up on and have really hung on to. And so for me, I find myself sometimes internally thinking, okay, be the bear. Somehow you have to get down the ladder and let that person know I’m here. And that ties pretty directly into the reflective response that we talk about so much in class. I need to name the feeling that they’re feeling. I have to find something inside of me that can then connect to the feeling that they’re experiencing.
Adam Salgat:
What if it’s something I can’t connect to or have not been through?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. This comes up a lot and I think it’s a very valid question and a valid point. I hope I’m not copping out when I say this, but for me, it’s trying to figure out, even if I haven’t been through that situation, what is the main thing that they’re feeling and have I ever felt something like that? Maybe I have not personally lost my mother, but I have lost someone important to me and can identify with that feeling of just grief or loss. And so, I may not have to have been through exactly the same situation if I can just connect to the very human part of what it is that they’re feeling.
Adam Salgat:
I recently went through a situation that called for that. I clearly had not been through what this person was going through and I just did my best to “be there.” What weight does that hold for someone when you can just be there? I think that’s what you’re talking about when you mentioned be the bear.
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah, absolutely. We use the phrase a lot about just holding space for someone. And I think in our culture today, there’s a lot of times where we’re just moving so fast and a lot of times I think you wonder, does anybody see me? Does anybody care? Does anybody have any clue what’s going on in my head right now or in my life? And so, if we can just find that moment to say, “I see you, I hear you, you’re feeling this and I’m trying to sit here and feel that with you, I’m just going to hold that space for you,” I think that’s one of the most powerful things we can speak into someone.
Adam Salgat:
What about the person who you feel is a constant complainer, or whether you feel that or you just hear people say that about them often? How do you find empathy for someone who’s that type of personality?
Leanne Van Beek:
Sure. You’re talking about the person who’s in my office Tuesday complaining and then in my office Wednesday and Thursday and Thursday afternoon and…
Adam Salgat:
Right. The person that’s potentially difficult to please, but they may have some real emotion going on there that they need some help dealing with.
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. This is interesting. This may almost branch off into something too big for today. There are definitely, I think, different kinds of empathy that we can afford to have for people. There are some people who are going to need us to walk with them for a longer period of time and that’s fine and that’s great, but there’s that wisdom and discernment about, can I stay healthy in that space? Am I the best resource in this space? Should I be connecting them to someone who’s better equipped to maybe walk them through this? I think that’s a pretty big topic. I think my short answer would be if you discern that you are the person who should be walking with them, then you do what it takes to do that. And if it feels like the right thing to sit with them six times in the same week, maybe for weeks in a row, sometimes we do that. I will say, I had a very good friend who when she was going through her divorce, I spent a lot of time just listening to her say sometimes the same things over and over again. But in my gut, that was the right place for me to be.
Adam Salgat:
Right.
Leanne Van Beek:
And there’s been other situations where somebody comes in with something and it is overwhelming in the moment and I can connect with them empathetically and feel for them, but no, I am not the right person to walk this out with them. And in that case, I have to make a wise decision the second or third time they try to come in to say, “You know what? I really care about what you’re going through, but I’m really not the best person to help you. I’m not sure I’m equipped to do this, so how do I get you connected to someone who can?”
Adam Salgat:
Right. And that connection to someone who can might be a medical professional depending on the situation.
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. At times, it absolutely could be.
Adam Salgat:
Leanne, do you have an example of a situation where you felt like someone was in that hyperbolic state, where everything they said just wasn’t that logical?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. I can think of several actually, but I can use one that stands out to me in particular, I think, because it was such a powerful moment for me in terms of realizing that this empathy really does work. And it goes back to my son, Charlie, and an evening when I was tucking him into bed and getting him settled in and he made the comment to me, “Mom, I feel like dad doesn’t love me anymore. He never plays with me at night.” And I sat there quite honestly and my first reaction for anybody in the listening audience who’s like, “Oh, that’s so sad,” was to think, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” He very consistently comes home from work, has supper with us, and plays with the kids every night of the week. My un-empathetic response to him was, “What are you talking about? Your dad comes home and plays with you almost every night of the week.”
And he went on to just repeat the same, pretty much a false perception. “Well, it just seems like he doesn’t care about me as much as he used to.” Here I am faced again with this emotion that makes no sense in the face of all the logic that I have and the data in front of me and I continued to try to use logic. I pointed out friends of his whose parents work for Dow and have to travel frequently and are never home. And midway through this series of me trying to rationalize back and forth with him, I realized that his physical just tension in his body was just getting so pronounced. He’s just hunching up and shifting around and it suddenly hit me in that moment, darn it, I am completely doing the wrong thing. I’m supposed to be just trying to connect to how he’s feeling, even though I can’t for the life of me think how this feeling makes sense. I really had to stop and sit there and just try to think back and say, okay, he feels like he’s not having the time with his dad that he wants.
And I think I said something to him like, “Man, buddy, I’m really sorry. It sounds like you’re feeling really sad tonight.” And instantly he just said, “Yes, I am.” You could just hear it in his voice. And so then of course, I moved to silence in our reflective listening toolkit, but I’ll be honest. It wasn’t necessarily because I was thoughtfully doing it. It was more like, I don’t know what else to say. I still don’t have any good logic for why you’re feeling this way. But in the time that I sat there just rubbing his back and just saying, “I’m sorry that you’re feeling this way. That’s tough,” he finally said, “I guess he does play with me fairly often.” And I said, “Huh, you think so?” And he was able to move forward and say, “Yeah, he did play Legos with me the other night,” and I was like, “You know what? You’re right. He did.” And then the next thing he said was, “And he did play Xbox with me too.”
And at that point I really couldn’t help myself. I had to say like, “Oh yeah, 30 minutes ago? I remember that. He did play Xbox with you.” It was just astonishing though to see this information that he was giving me at the beginning, which I think fits what you’re talking about, just didn’t really connect in reality of what we were living and experiencing. But the emotion was so strong that until I could connect to that and let him know, you’re not alone with that feeling, there really wasn’t a way for him to move past it.
Adam Salgat:
Right. A couple of things happened there. You could have kept pushing and maybe escalated the situation, but instead you found the empathy or just did your best to accept the emotions that he was feeling. And then he came around with the logical, instead of it being forced at him, accepted it too, looked at it and realized there are definitely times that dad is with me, often. And those types of situations are awesome, right? They just make you feel real good about what you’ve done with him.
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. Well, and I love what you say about that I had to just accept his feeling because, and I know I’m making another shameless tie to class here, but we talk about acceptance versus agreement. I didn’t agree with his perception of what was happening, but you’re so right. I had to accept that that was his reality in that moment. And it’s also just interesting because if I’m going to be real, there are also moments where things like that have happened and I can’t find the energy to get into that empathy space. And so sometimes those conversations end with, “You know what? I just think you’re tired. Why don’t you go to bed and we’ll talk about in the morning.” But yeah, when it works, absolutely.
Adam Salgat:
Yeah, it’s awesome. I would say that is definitely a topic that we’re going to discuss maybe in another podcast is what to do when your empathy is on E. E stands for empathy kind of thing because there are times where we may snap, we’ll say something that we don’t mean. And it happens when empathy is low and that could be for a lot of reasons. But like I said, another day, another time. What about a situation where you’re trying empathy and you’re doing your best to connect with them, but they’re really not giving you anything?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah. I think that’s definitely a reality and I can maybe share another example here. One of our alumni works within a volunteer organization and she talked specifically about a situation where one of her friends was bringing her son to volunteer, and the son was having some issues doing that to the level they needed him to perform. And so, she tried to address it and she first tried to dress it with the son and that didn’t go anywhere, and she ultimately realized I’m going to have to confront this parent about her son’s behavior. And listening to her walk through everything that she tried, I thought, man, she really was. She was recognizing how that mom might feel. She was recognizing the awkward position it put their friendship in.
From everything she shared, she was doing all the right things, and for whatever reason that other parent was just really having a hard time hearing her and just couldn’t acknowledge that anything was wrong in that situation. And sometimes the reality of the situation is going to be that’s as far as you get. And who knows? Hopefully, maybe a few weeks down the road, maybe even a month or two down the road, that parent might be able to deal with that and bring it back around. But yeah, sometimes you give it your best shot and it just doesn’t work out.
Adam Salgat:
Leanne, we’ve covered a lot of different areas today. What are some takeaways? What are the big takeaways that you would advise someone who’s hopefully not driving and writing at the same time, but something they could come back to later when they’re at their computer or they have their notepad and jot these down?
Leanne Van Beek:
I like that. Yeah, please do not write and drive. Yeah. I think again, for me, I would circle back to the first step for me is just recognizing that in these certain situations, empathy is hard. If that shop vac analogy works for anyone other than me, I’ll be thrilled. But just trying to mentally remember, I need to get myself geared up to get into that space. I think also just the reminder that empathy is seeing it as they see it, feeling it as that they feel it in that moment, whether I agree with it or not. It can be very helpful to try to just accept where they are and then meet them in that space. And then I would say that the third one again is remembering that empathy is all about making a connection. I’ll go back to that be the bear, but to me, the ultimate goal of empathy is helping them know they are not alone, that I can recognize in what they’re saying something that they’re feeling, and I am willing to step into that space with them and just sit in that feeling.
Adam Salgat:
Thanks Leanne for everything today. Any last comments you have for listeners out there?
Leanne Van Beek:
Yeah, actually. I would like to just throw out there that we’ve got a series of podcasts planned, but we also would love to hear from alumni on topics they’d like us to address in this format, if they want to come on the podcast to talk about specific situations, or if one of our alumni who sent in this question today, if you have a situation or a question that you want to just send into us, that’s great too. We can do that. You can do that by emailing me or just submitting something to our Facebook page, and an administrator will take a look at that and get back to you.
Adam Salgat:
I might be a little biased, but I think this was a pretty good first podcast. We’d love to hear your comments and questions. Like Leanne said, get in touch with us through any format that fits you best. And for all of you alumni out there, don’t forget, you are the message.
