The Art of Empathy (18 page)

In my work, I've taken apart meditative practices in order to understand their underlying purpose, and I've added to them an awareness of the purpose of emotions. In my version of a mindfulness meditation that welcomes your emotions (rather than treating them as problems in and of themselves), you'll calm yourself and work with your breathing, you'll focus yourself and become aware of your responses, you'll observe your emotions without valencing them, and then you'll turn toward your emotions and ask them what they're doing. You'll work as a partner and a friend to your emotions, and you'll use your Einfühlung capacity to enter into a deep empathic relationship with your own emotions.

But you'll be doing all of this calmly, with skills, and with support. This isn't going to be a bad acting class; I'm not asking you to
become
your strong emotions or to go on an emotional bender. That's not empathic, nor is it mindful. That kind of either/or thinking is a function of one of the central problems that create emotional confusion—that is, you can either
repress
and extinguish an emotion or
express
it and go on a rampage. But these are not your only choices. Remember the process of channeling. There is a middle
path, and these empathic mindfulness skills will help you learn how to enter that path and become emotionally adept—and therefore empathically skilled.

As I explain these skills, I'll intersperse pieces that I wrote about them in
The Language of Emotions.
⁴⁰
However, I'm continually tinkering with these skills to make them simpler and more focused; therefore, these descriptions will relate specifically to developing your empathic skills.

GETTING GROUNDED

Grounding is a simple breathing and focusing practice that helps you connect to your body and focus yourself in an intentional and calming way. Intentional body awareness supports your intrapersonal skills and helps you become more aware of yourself and your unique responses. Self-awareness is a primary empathic skill, because you have to know how you feel so that you can regulate your own emotions and identify differences between yourself and others (this really helps with Perspective Taking). However, as Richard Davidson points out, there is such a thing as being
too
self-aware. Some people are so aware of tiny shifts in their emotions, sensations, and sensory inputs that they become overly self-focused or even overwhelmed. For these people, empathy can be hindered, because they have too much going on internally to be able to effectively take the perspective of others. My grounding practice helps in both instances.

Grounding, which helps you feel calm, centered, focused, relaxed, and awake, helps you turn your focus inward in a simple and calming way. In Getting Grounded, you don't have to be isolated, immobile, or merely observational; you can be out in the world and interacting freely. Grounding is a highly portable skill that helps you focus internally as you center and calm yourself. You can ground yourself in a few seconds and restore your focus, even during tense interactions, or you can turn grounding into a luxurious and solitary meditative practice whenever you have the time.

Let's look at the specific emotional skills involved in grounding and focusing yourself.

THE GROUNDING PROCESS:
Welcoming the Gifts of Sadness

Take a deep breath and fill up your chest and your belly so that you feel a little bit of tension—not too much, just a little. Hold your breath for a count of three. As you breathe out, let your body slump a little bit and relax yourself intentionally.
Let your muscles go slack, drop your head if that feels good, and just loll. Breathe normally for a few breaths as you maintain this state of simple relaxation.

Now, breathe in again, expand your chest and your belly until you feel a little bit of tension, hold for a count of three—and then breathe out with a sigh as you let go. You're a ragdoll. Let it go.

Now, breathe normally and check in with yourself. If you feel a bit softer and calmer, and maybe even a little bit tired, thank the emotion that helped you release some of your tension and restore some of your flow: thank your sadness. That's what the soft form of healthy, flowing sadness feels like, and that's what it does—it helps you let go of something that isn't working anyway, and it helps you bring ease and flow back to your system. In this short exercise, I created something that didn't work—I created a bit of tension by having you breathe in an uncomfortable way, and then I had you evoke the gifts of sadness to let go of that tension. You didn't need that tension; it wasn't working anyway. Sadness to the rescue!

Each of your emotions has this soft, free-flowing state that brings you specific gifts and skills. Knowing this will help you access your emotions intentionally when you need the gifts they provide. It's important to realize that you don't have to cry or move into a sad mood in order to access the softening, relaxing, rejuvenating gifts of sadness; you can just relax and let go. Sadness is about releasing things and relaxing into yourself—and you can do that intentionally by working with your sadness as a skill.

Take a moment to notice how aware you are of your body. Sadness brings you back to yourself and makes you more aware of your interior state. Sadness brings flow back to you, it calms you, and it helps you release uncomfortable things you've been grasping onto—like tension, fatigue, or disappointments. It's necessary to let go regularly,
before
everything piles up into identifiable emotional distress, pain, or misery, and sadness is the emotion that helps you let go. Other emotions do other things, and they're necessary in other situations. But when you need to let go, refresh yourself, and regain your flexibility, you need the relaxing gifts of sadness.

Whenever you need to, you can consciously welcome your sadness and restore a sense of flow to yourself by breathing in and gathering any tension, and then breathing out gently as you yawn or sigh. It's that simple. To channel your sadness, just relax and let go of things that aren't working anyway.

THE FOCUSING PROCESS:
Welcoming the Gifts of Fear

Now let's work at a very subtle level with an emotion that helps you focus yourself. Return to that sadness-resourced sense of relaxation and inner focus, and find a quiet place where you can perform a simple listening exercise.

When you've found your quiet place, lean your body forward a little bit and try to hear the quietest sound in your area. Keep your shoulders down and away from your ears (good posture helps your hearing). You can also open your mouth a little (relaxing your jaw creates more space in your ears) and gently move your head around as you pinpoint the quietest sound and filter out the more obvious ones. Keep your eyes open, but rely upon your ears for this exercise.

When you've located this quiet sound, hold still for a moment. Stand where you are and try to locate the sound with your eyes; then move toward it, recalibrating as you near the sound. Time may seem to slow down somewhat, your skin may feel more sensitive (almost as if it's sensing the air around you), and your mind may clear itself of anything that isn't related to your quiet sound. When you pinpoint that sound, thank the emotion that helped you find it. Thank your fear.

Healthy, free-flowing fear helps you access your sensory skills, your instincts, and your intuition. When you need it to, your fear focuses all of your senses, scans your environment, and increases your ability to respond effectively to novel or changing situations. When your fear arises at this soft, subtle level, you'll feel focused, centered, capable, and agile; you won't feel agitated or obviously fearful. This soft focusing ability is one of the gifts of fear.

If you can access this subtle, curious form of fear when you're confused or upset, you can access the information you need to calmly figure out what's going on. You don't need to
feel
afraid in order to access the gifts that your fear brings you, just as you don't need to cry to access the gifts of sadness. This soft level of fear helps you focus on your instinctual knowledge as it connects you to your surroundings. This focus helps you stand upright, lean forward a bit, and bring your instincts and your intuition to the present moment.

Whereas the gifts of sadness focus you inward on what you need to release in order to relax, the gifts of fear bring you a forward, listening, sensing capacity that will help you interact with your environment and other people. If you can rely on fear's calm, listening, sensing stance, you will be able to
read people and situations empathically. It's a wonderful emotion—but, then, all of them are! They're like an amazing toolkit, full of magic, which is why it's so bizarre that we've been taught to distrust our emotions.

What Grounding Will Do For You.
Getting Grounded is an intrapersonal skill that supports the following aspects of empathy:

Emotion Contagion—grounding can help you calm yourself when you're in the presence of intense emotions

Empathic Accuracy—grounding can help you focus yourself so that you can identify emotions and your empathic perceptions more accurately

Emotion Regulation—grounding and focusing can give you the internal stability you need to organize and work with your emotions intentionally

All of these aspects will give you an excellent foundation for clearer Perspective Taking, Concern for Others, and Perceptive Engagement

In regard to your emotional style, grounding supports your Resilience by giving you the internal resources you need to recover quickly when you need to and to slow down and take your time when it's important to stay present with difficult issues. Grounding also supports your Outlook by helping you down-regulate from any kind of intense emotional activation, so that you can focus more calmly on your situation. It will also help you increase your Self-awareness, as you learn to manage your arousal and relaxation and become more able to tune in to yourself; develop fluid Sensitivity to Context, so you can tune in to others by focusing outward or tune out by intentionally turning your focus inward; and increase the precision of your Attention.