The Art of Empathy (34 page)

HOW TO CONSCIOUSLY COMPLAIN TOGETHER

In this two-person practice (which you can quickly teach to a loved one), one of you will take the position of the listener, while the other will complain consciously. Then you'll trade places. Let's make you the first complainer: You can start with some conscious recognition that the complaining needs to happen. In our family, we say, “I don't need you to fix me. I just need to complain.” Then, you're allowed to bring up whatever's stuck in your craw— “Things are just rotten, this situation is bothering me, and things are too hard.”

When you're complaining, make sure that you name out loud any emotion you feel. You may want to have your “Emotional Vocabulary List” (in the Appendix) so you can be very articulate about how annoyed, disappointed, uneasy, enraged, distrustful, or humiliated you feel. Learning to feel and name your emotions will help you become emotionally fluent and will increase your accuracy—but more than that, the act of naming your emotions can help you calm yourself and organize all of the action-requiring programs you have running. So complaining consciously with a partner is also an Emotion Regulation practice.

Your partner's job is to support your complaining with helpful and upbeat
yeahs!
and
uh-huhs!
—no advice, no suggestions, just enthusiastic support. Your partner's job is to create a safe haven for your complaining, which immediately makes it less toxic. Your partner will also get an excellent gift—a chance to practice his or her emotion work out in the open, instead of being an unhappy receptacle for the
unconscious
complaining of other people. Everybody gets a healing in this practice.

An important note:
There's a rule in partner complaining—the complainer can't complain about the
listener,
because that wouldn't be fair. If someone
is willing to provide support for your complaining, then complaining about him or her would be cruel; it would be like taking a hostage. If there's conflict in your relationship, this is not the right tool to use. This complaining practice is suitable when the problems are
outside
the relationship of the listener and the complainer (I offer two practices for trouble inside the relationship later in this chapter).

When you feel done complaining, you end your turn with gratitude: “Thanks! That's been crushing me,” or “I didn't realize I was carrying that much stuff around. Thanks!” Then you get to trade positions: the listener now gets to complain consciously, while you listen and provide support and perform openly acknowledged emotion work. When you're both done, the session is over.

You'll be amazed at how productive (and funny) this complaining technique is. We're all taught to be positive and peppy at all times, which means we have to repress most of our emotions, reduce our Empathic Accuracy, and lose our Emotion Regulation skills. Often, this repression will kick our emotions into repetitive feedback loops, but Conscious Complaining lets us tell the truth and restore our flow. Conscious Complaining is a great all-around stress reliever, but when you can complain with a partner, there's a special set of additional benefits:

1. It teaches you to reach out (instead of isolating yourself ) in a safe, boundary-respecting way when you're in turmoil.

2. It teaches you and your complaining partner new ways to function around pain and trouble.

3. It gives both of you the opportunity for your emotion work to be requested, respected, and performed intentionally.

See if you can find more than one complaining partner to share this practice with. If there's someone you regularly call when you're tense and cranky, they'll probably jump at the chance to perform emotion work in a more intentional way. And if there's someone who regularly complains to you, you'll probably love the chance to bring your own emotion work out of the shadows and create better reciprocity in your relationship.

Consciously complaining with your friends is a wonderful way to clear the air and be emotionally honest in the presence of another, and it sets healthy
behavioral boundaries around a behavior that's usually unconscious and unrewarding. In this practice, each of you takes responsibility for learning how to name and listen to your own emotions, which will add immeasurably to your emotional skills.

Now, let's look at the emotions themselves and explore how to support people empathically—not by doing emotional heavy lifting for them, but by simply listening to their emotions and helping them connect to their own emotional wisdom.

EMOTIONS AS A PREREQUISITE TO TRULY EMPATHIC COMMUNICATION

Since empathy is, first and foremost, an emotional skill, I focused a lot of attention on emotions in the early part of this book. Here, in the communication chapter, let's bring the emotions back and give you some ideas about how to support people and get into empathic communication with them. You can do this by remembering that emotions are action-requiring neurological programs.

As you recall, anger and shame help you set boundaries, fear helps you orient and focus yourself, sadness helps you let go of things that don't work anyway, and so forth. And, of course, emotions do these things for other people as well. As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio points out, emotions are evolutionarily ancient and reliably similar, such that fear is going to behave similarly in me, in you, in a person from Germany or Mali, in a wild horse, or in a housecat. Fear will require the same action-completion processes in every case. Emotions connect us to every living being, and I spent the previous chapters unvalencing, undividing, undemonizing, unglorifying, and demystifying emotions because they're the key to truly understanding others—across differences, across borders, across languages, and across species. Emotions are universal, reliable, and profoundly informative.

With that in mind, let's look at each emotion in terms of how you can empathically support people in taking the actions their emotions require. As we explore emotions, I'll sometimes refer to the second conversation between Rosalie and David, in which he was able to be a real person and not merely a mirror.

ANGER:
The Honorable Sentry

Anger arises to address challenges to the voice, standpoint, position, interpersonal boundaries, or self-image of another. When anger is present, you can support people by simply asking them what they need. Helping people find their voice is a great way to help them restore their boundaries. David did this
with Rosalie, and then he stayed quiet while she found her own solutions and reset her own boundaries. Notice that he acknowledged his own anger at the beginning of the conversation, which helped him intrapersonally, to identify his own state, and interpersonally, to help Rosalie know that anger was okay.

APATHY AND BOREDOM:
The Mask for Anger

Apathy arises when it's not safe or correct for people to be openly angry, and it can give people a needed time-out. I don't generally address apathy openly, because it's a protective mask. Instead, I might express my own anger in the way David did—in a responsible and nonviolent way—to let the person know that anger is welcome between us. If nothing shifts, I back away and talk casually about other topics, or I end the interaction. The masking emotions (apathy and confusion) are ingeniously protective, and people have to decide to unmask on their own—I don't push.

GUILT AND SHAME:
Restoring Integrity

Shame arises to help people amend or atone for their problematic behaviors. However, it can be a very tricky emotion if the shame originated in the toxic and shaming messages of controlling parents, teachers, or authority figures. If people express appropriate shame about a thing they actually did and for which they have the power to atone, then you can help them find self-respecting ways to make amends or apologize. But if the shame is inauthentic or toxic, you can gently question it, as David did when Rosalie was taking all of the responsibility for her terrible workplace. You have to be very gentle when you question toxic shame, because people are already in a world of pain. But those same people can often borrow the concern in your question and turn it toward themselves to ask, “Yeah, why do I believe that?” However, if people in your life are really tormented by toxic shame, give them this book and teach them about Burning Contracts. Shame is a vital emotion, but when it's inauthentic or toxic, it can easily be too much.

HATRED:
The Profound Mirror

Hatred is a very powerful emotion that arises in response to behaviors people cannot accept in themselves and demonize in others. It's a condition of pretty extreme boundary impairment, and it may be that the person just needs to vent in order to reclaim his or her voice and standpoint, calm down, and get grounded again. The problem with listening to this hatred,
though, is that it can break your boundaries and include you in a dishonoring practice that may activate your own shame (let's hope). Hatred can be a doozy, so I have some practices for it: certainly, Burning Contracts with the hated person is necessary, and in
Chapter 10
, you'll learn a skill called Ethical Empathic Gossip, which can be very healing because it sets boundaries around the venting and requires behavioral change once the venting is over. I've also included a list of my favorite books on shadow work in Further Resources; they'll help you work with hatred honorably and uncover the absolute genius inside it.

FEAR:
Intuition and Action

Fear arises to help people orient to change, novelty, or possible physical hazards. When people around me are afraid, I'll often simply ask, “What are you sensing?” because fear is about instincts and intuition. If people simply pay attention to their fear, they'll usually be able to connect with their instincts and figure out what's going on.

WORRY AND ANXIETY:
Focus and Completion

Worry and anxiety arise to help people organize, plan for, and complete upcoming tasks, especially if they're currently procrastinating. Anxiety is about the future, so it can be hard to stay grounded and focused when it's active. You can help by suggesting or implementing tangible plans, such as creating a numbered list, a stack of papers, or a pile of whatever item needs attention. These real-world activities will help people figure out what
really
needs to get done. Writing out anxieties is especially healing, because it's an emotion-specific action that can reduce the activation of the anxiety so that people can find their focus and their resources again. Of course,
Conscious Questioning
helps as well, if people are open to it.

CONFUSION:
The Mask for Fear

Confusion is a masking state for fear and anxiety that arises when people are overwhelmed by change, novelty, or too much input and too many tasks. Confusion can be a lovely vacation from overwhelm, but if it goes on for too long, people can lose their grounding and their focus. The question for confusion is, “What's your intention?” Sometimes people can lift the mask of confusion if you can help them articulate their real needs and preferences again. David did this throughout his conversation with Rosalie.

JEALOUSY:
Relational Radar

Jealousy arises when people sense challenges that may destabilize their connection to love, mate retention, or loyalty. These challenges may come from external sources, from an internal lack of self-worth, or both. Jealousy (and envy) contains some of the intuitive focusing gifts of fear and some of the boundary-setting gifts of anger. You can help by asking people what they're sensing (to access their instincts) and what they need (to help them reconnect to their voice and standpoint). Remember, though, that jealousy is one of the most intensely valenced emotions there is, and people may feel shame (or anger, fear, etc.) about the fact that they feel this essential social emotion. Your understanding of clustered emotions, as well as your gentleness and patience, may be required.

ENVY:
Interactional Radar

Envy arises when people sense challenges that may destabilize their connection to material security, resources, or recognition. These challenges may come from external sources, from an internal lack of self-preservation abilities, or both. Envy (like jealousy) contains some of the intuitive focusing gifts of fear and some of the boundary-setting gifts of anger. You can help by asking people what they're sensing (to access their instincts) and what they need (to help them reconnect to their voice and standpoint). A helpful question to ask an envious person is, “What would be fair?” Envy, like jealousy, is a heavily valenced emotion, and many people react to it as if it's a character flaw rather than an essential part of their social skills. So be on the lookout for clustered emotions. Your willingness to engage and your gentleness can help people uncover the genius in their envy.