Understand your why
Why do you want to empathise with that person? The reason should not be about yourself, it should be about them. Empathising has to be a selfless act. Be honest about your intentions.
Listen
This is the easiest thing to do. Most of the time, people just want to vent out. There have been times when people have talked to me for hours, and I would only occasionally ask something or add-in. And at the end of it, they felt lighter and better. So listen! Don’t interrupt. Learn to be a good listener.
Leave behind your engineer brain
One of the things about humans is that we love to solve problems. And if we run out of problems, we create new ones to solve them! But when you are empathising with someone, you don’t need to solve their problems. They are smart enough to figure out a solution. Giving a solution (advice) is the easiest thing to do. Anyone can do that.
(If people need a solution then they will ask for help from you.)
Ask questions
You may not know the other person’s life story that would have resulted in making the person feel the way they are. You do not know what they are thinking. So ask questions, let the answers fill in the blanks, listen, and have a conversation with them. Just make sure the questions don’t turn into an interrogation.
It is their life, not yours.
Remember that it is their life, and in their life, they are the lead character, not you. So don’t make it about yourself.
Do not judge (do not invalidate their feelings)
Someone is being vulnerable to you, so do not judge. They want their feelings to be validated. When someone is looking for validation, they are looking to be understood. This validation is different from the social media validation that we all seek.
Someone shared with me that despite loving her kid, she wished that she had not given birth to it. Without thinking of her as a bad person or a bad mother, let her continue. And you would know about her struggles as a new mother. Or how her husband did not help her during pregnancy and after the birth, or how she separated from him a couple of months after becoming a mother.
Do not compare your life experiences
Your friend may be heartbroken because their crush did not reciprocrate. And your mind might be going, ‘I have been through two breakups, he clearly does not know what a heart break feels like.’ Remember, it is not your life. Comparing invalidates their feelings.
Leave your life experiences behind
Begin with a clean slate. People say in order to empathise imagine yourself in their shoes, but that is a very limited view. Leave your life behind, imagine yourself in their universe as them, and try to experience what they are going through.
A friend mentioned how they had to work for eighty to a hundred hours a week under extreme stress. But I was not able to keep my life experiences (or the lack of them) behind and said that I had immense respect for them as that is something I couldn’t possibly ever do. To which they said that they were not looking for respect. They knew that their lifestyle was not healthy. All they wanted to hear was that they were doing everything that they could, to the best of their abilities.
Believe in their version of the universe
This helps in you not trvialising an experience that is not trivial to them. Do not doubt them. Do not give the benefit of doubt to anyone else. It is not about facts or the truth, it is about their feelings.
Rememeber the joke: My girlfriend was complaining about Aditi and now even I hate Aditi.? That is believing in girlfriend’s version of the universe. Aditi may be a completely sane and good person but that does not matter here.
Lastly, ask if they need you to support/help them in any way. Did I miss something or get something wrong? Do let me know.
