The Art of Empathy (13 page)

However, I know from past experience that people who attack others have trouble with their own anger and shame, as well as trouble with their own boundaries. Therefore, one thing that needs to be protected in this situation is my mouthy friend's already damaged sense of self. Wow, that's a tremendous amount of social information that my emotions brought to me.

Okay, anger helps me feel empowered and energized, which means I have a third option: I have the strength that I need to be vulnerable without too much danger. I lean over and say something very direct and slightly humorous, but nonthreatening, like, “Whoa, I like your sense of humor, but man, that stings! Why you gotta
be
like that?” I tell him that I see the fun and that I appreciate him, but that he went too far. When I channel my anger appropriately, I have the strength that I need to say, “Hey, that hurt” in a way that isn't brutal. I don't pretend to be invulnerable, because that's not a position of strength—that's just a lie. No one is invulnerable.

When I can complete the action my anger requires, which is to reset my boundaries honorably, then my anger will recede naturally. In this situation, my shame will also recede, because I managed my behavior respectfully and
acted appropriately to protect my friend and myself from excessive social harm. My fear will recede as well, because I oriented myself effectively in regard to possible dangers and hazards.

Where we go from here is completely individual. My friend might hear me and apologize, and this might set him on a path of wondering why he finds it so easy to be cruel. Or he might escalate and get more pointed, at which time I could identify the new emotions that arise and work with each of them to figure out what the heck to do next. But whatever he decides, we'll be in a new place, and I'll have new information about who my friend is in the presence of honesty and vulnerability. By responding empathically to the true emotions that arose, I helped my friend understand exactly who I am and exactly how his behavior affected me. What he does with that information is up to him, but his subsequent behavior will show me true and pertinent things about who he really is.

With anger, the problem of expression (which often damages others) and repression (which often damages us) is a function of how we've all been trained to use anger as strength
over
others instead of strength
within
ourselves. When emotions have been thrown onto the trash heap of negative and antisocial valencing, we're almost forced to take a moral stance for or against the emotions instead of learning how to work with them intelligently. This happens with a great many emotions, but it's most obvious in regard to anger. If anger is about cruelty, then you have to take a moral stand: will you express anger and be cruel when people deserve it, or will you repress all anger and never defend yourself? These simpleminded either/or options flow naturally and tragically from simpleminded either/or valancing and either/or expression and repression.

Had I used
only
emotional expression of my anger in an attempt to dishonor my friend or had I used
only
emotional repression to essentially dishonor myself, our interaction would have been very different, and my friend would have learned very different things about me. When I only know how to repress or express my emotions when a difficult or socially uncomfortable emotion arises, people will become acquainted with whatever emotional training I've ingested in my life. They won't meet me as an individual; they won't meet my true self, my hopes, my dreams, my preferences, my intelligence, my humor, my challenges, and my strengths—no. When my emotional skills are poor, people will meet my emotional reactivity and my problems with whichever emotion has arisen, but they won't meet me.

In a situation in which I have only two rigid choices about how to work with my emotions, a fully empathic exchange is very unlikely, because I'm not even being empathic with my own emotions. But when I can
channel
my emotions and interact with more suppleness and authenticity, people can meet and interact with me as a unique individual—and if they feel able to, they can interact in a more authentic and empathic way with me as well. When I can work with my emotions honestly and in diverse ways, empathic exchanges are far more likely, because they're a natural outgrowth of emotional honesty and availability. Remember that
empathy is first and foremost an emotional skill.
Empathy is also honed in honest, emotionally awake interactions that help you develop deeper and more accurate empathy for yourself and others.

As I said earlier, emotional expression and repression aren't bad in and of themselves; they're actually fine in many situations! When a snake crosses your path,
express
your fear and jump and yell a little! Or when someone trips on the sidewalk and you think it's funny,
repress
your laughter so you won't hurt the person's feelings. When you drop your phone,
express
your shock and anger by swearing. When you feel like crying but you know that the person with you cannot handle it,
repress
your tears until you're in a safer place. Expression and repression are excellent options in many instances, but this third path—this middle path of
channeling
your emotions—gives you infinite options when repression isn't healthy and expression isn't wise.

There are, of course, situations in which your emotions will be out of place or strangely repetitive or dysfunctional in some way. We'll look at those situations in
Chapter 4
in the section “How Much Emotion Is Too Much?” As I like to say:
Emotions are always true, but they're not always right.
We'll learn some simple ways to tell the difference between the two. Learning to channel your emotions will help you manage Emotion Contagion and increase your Empathic Accuracy and Emotion Regulation, which will help you in all areas of empathic awareness and engagement.

THE PROBLEM OF NUANCE

Emotions arise in many different intensities and gradations, but our simplistic emotional training doesn't help us identify or understand emotional nuance. Understanding nuance is a critical part of understanding emotions, but we don't tend to have much training in it, especially if we're taught that emotions should be valenced into very rigid categories. For instance,
all
anger is negative and antisocial; therefore, you should repress
and avoid
all
of it! Or
all
happiness is positive and prosocial; therefore, you should express happiness all of the time in every possible situation,
yay!
But emotions don't work that way. Emotions arise at many different levels of intensity, from the subtlest nuanced attitudes to obvious moods to the most fervent outward expressions. Identifying emotions when they're at the mood level or the very intense level can be quite easy; however, if you only focus on those two intensities of emotion, you can overlook massive amounts of vital emotional information.

Emotions are action-requiring neurological programs, and, as such, they bring you specific gifts and skills that you can identify, even when you're not in an obvious mood state. Emotions are intrinsic aspects of your most basic cognitive abilities and your intelligence, and I can tell right away whether you're good with anger, fear, shame, or a dozen other emotions just by asking questions about your everyday social skills. I even created a short quiz to help people gauge their current relationship with their own emotions.
³²

Take a look at these eleven questions. Even if you can already identify which emotion-based gifts and skills I'm looking for, try to answer them honestly.

1. I feel heard and respected in my interpersonal relationships.

2. I'm comfortable speaking up for myself, even during conflicts.

3. I tend to remain calm and focused in emergencies.

4. I tend to know when new situations and new relationships are going to work out.

5. I can relax and calm myself, and I have reliable self-soothing skills.

6. I'm able to change my mind when I discover better information and ideas.

7. I have a fairly easy time changing problem behaviors or old habits.

8. When I make a social blunder, I'm able to apologize and correct myself.

9. I'm comfortable talking about my talents and my achievements.

10. I'm good at asking for what I want in regard to money, possessions, and recognition.

11. I have good time-management skills, and I follow through on my plans and commitments.

Questions 1 and 2: The Gifts of Anger.
If you don't understand that emotions can be reliably identified as everyday skills and capacities that underlie your more obvious mood states, you might not even connect questions 1 and 2 to the gifts of anger. These gifts help you set and maintain effective interpersonal boundaries. At its subtlest level, anger helps you uphold mutual respect and keep open the lines of communication in your relationships. Sadly, most of us can only identify anger when it gets to the level of a mood. And since most of us were never taught how to take effective actions with our anger, we don't know how to access the skills and gifts that anger brings us.

Questions 3 and 4: The Gifts of Fear.
If you have no understanding of emotional nuance, you might think that the gifts in questions 3 and 4 relate to being focused and intuitive—and you'd be right. However, you'd miss the fact that those are the gifts of fear, which help you orient effectively to change, novelty, or possible physical hazards. If you and your fear are working nicely together, you'll calmly and instinctually identify hazards and safety, though you may have no idea that you're working with fear, because you won't feel obviously afraid. However, all emotions exist at this subtle gift-and-skill level, and identifying them at this soft and flowing stage makes working with their more intense variations much easier.

Questions 5 and 6: The Gifts of Sadness.
These questions may seem to relate to calmness, self-soothing behaviors, and flexibility, but they're actually the gifts of sadness, which help you identify things that aren't working so that you can let go and make room for things that
do
work. It's interesting to note that all relaxation techniques (and many meditation practices) intentionally evoke the relaxing and softening gifts of sadness, though this is not usually stated or even understood. I laugh when I see heavily valenced, emotionpathologizing relaxation techniques that teach you to breathe away pesky emotions (including sadness) by intentionally relaxing yourself with the gifts of sadness. Ha!

Questions 7 and 8: The Gifts of Shame.
These questions may seem to relate to behavioral maturity (and they do), but they're also the gifts of shame, which help you monitor and modify your behavior. (
Note:
I make a very strong distinction between guilt and shame, and I don't actually classify guilt as an emotion at all.
³³
) When your shame is working gracefully, you
won't feel it. For instance, you'll floss because you like clean teeth (and not because you've been shamed into obsessive dental hygiene), you'll avoid larceny and abusiveness because they don't feel right (and not because you've been shamed or terrorized out of them), and you'll manage your intense emotions skillfully because you respect the basic human rights of others. As I wrote earlier, many of us have a problematic relationship with shame because it was applied to us as punishment when we were young. However, as we saw in Damasio's story about the shameless young woman, shame is absolutely crucial for your social viability. Without your shame, you cannot live independently or safely.

If you and your shame do not work well together, the skill called Burning Contracts in
Chapter 5
will help you reclaim and return your shame (or any other problematic emotion) to its proper functioning.

Question 9: The Gifts of Contentment.
This question may seem to relate to a healthy sense of self-regard, and it does, but it also relates to the gifts of contentment. Contentment is a little bit like happiness, but it brings its own set of gifts to you. Whereas happiness helps you look outward with amusement and delight, contentment helps you turn toward yourself with pride and satisfaction, so you can say, “Hey, good job!” Contentment arises when you've worked hard and well, and it relates to your healthy self-image. This means that it has a close connection to your healthy anger and especially to your healthy shame—and I bet you won't hear that anyplace else, but hear me out.

When you set clear boundaries, behave honorably, and act conscientiously (actions that your healthy anger and shame will help you take), your contentment will arise naturally as a kind of reward—”Good job!” Contentment arises to tell you when you've done good work—not only in your accomplishments but also in your treatment of yourself and others. If you attend to your anger and your shame honorably, you'll naturally feel content and proud of yourself, because you'll have done good work inside yourself and in relation to the people in your life.

If you don't work well with your anger and shame, and if your shame is primarily inauthentic and self-tormenting, your contentment might not arise reliably, and your self-regard and self-image might be pretty low. Accordingly, when you have a problem with self-esteem, you'll often look for ways to increase contentment and happiness first, so that you can feel better about yourself. But it doesn't work that way, because contentment arises for specific reasons, and you can't take a shortcut to get there. If you have low self-regard,
contentment is probably the emotion you'd like to feel, but working on your boundaries (the gifts of anger) and your behavior (the gifts of shame) will actually help your contentment arise naturally. Interestingly, too much self-esteem and contentment can be problematic and can actually be a factor in bullying. We'll look more closely at bullying in
Chapter 9
.