Effective Communication- Empathy

Case Study

Near the end of Carl Rogers’ life, he wrote a sarcastic article noting that his conceptualisation of empathy had little to do with the popularised notion of empathy that had become known as 'reflection of feelings'. Rogers may have been particularly angry because there were some fictional stories circulating about his work with clients. One of them goes something like this:

Rogers is seeing a client in his office on the 10th floor of a building. The client tells Rogers that he is really depressed, and Rogers says, “Sounds like you’re really depressed." The client goes on to say that he is thinking of killing himself, and Rogers responds, “You’re so depressed that you’re even thinking you might take your life.” This 'reflection' goes on and on for quite a while until the client eventually declares, “I’m so depressed I’m thinking I might jump out of that window.” Rogers again reflects back, almost verbatim, what the client just said, at which point the client goes over to the window, opens it and says, “I’m so depressed, I’m going to jump out of this window.” Rogers says, “You’re so depressed you might jump out of that window.” Exasperated, the client stands on the ledge, and the last thing out of his mouth as he jumps is, “Ahhhhhh!” Rogers, left in the office alone, repeats, “Ahhhhhh.”

You can understand why Carl Rogers, the person who popularised empathy in the 20th century, was pretty upset by this distorted image of his work. In fact, his actual definition of empathy was much more nuanced than 'reflection of feelings'. Rogers suggested that empathy is the ability to understand another person’s experience in the world, as if you were that person, without ever losing the 'as if' sense. He also noted that empathy entails letting the person know that you understand his or her experience. However, he never suggested that one should rely solely on reflection of feelings to show this understanding. In fact, he implied there were many ways to show your clients that you have understood them.

Source: Creative and novel approaches to empathy. Ed Neukrug.

The narrative above looked at how Carl Rogers was mocked for his technique of 'reflection of feelings'. Carl Rogers admitted that being empathetic required more than merely paraphrasing. It requires the ability to understand and sense another’s feelings and communicating this to the other person.

Empathy

Being an effective career development practitioner requires the practice of empathy. This is a difficult skill to acquire. To experience empathy, career development practitioners have to put themselves in the client’s place and try to feel what the client is feeling. If the practitioner’s empathetic responses are accurate, it will be evident in the client's response. Once this is achieved, effectiveness in communication is greatly enhanced. 

Empathy is the foundation of functional interpersonal relationships. It forms the basis for successful marriages, partnerships, friendships and parental relationships, as well as in work contexts such as managerial, professional-client, student-teacher and peer relationships. Absolutely everyone can benefit from having the skill of being empathetic, although it is a technique most often used in counselling sessions.

Being empathetic to the situations of others can promote trust, leading to open and honest communication, thereby allowing resolution of interpersonal conflicts and constructive change.  

Empathy allows one to connect with others and allows practitioners to identify with another person’s situation. It is both an emotional and intellectual process which makes it easier to understand and help others solve their problems. Empathy can be further broken down into two parts namely: ‘feeling’ the way another person feels and ‘understanding’ how someone else feels. 

The Virtue of Being Empathetic

Practitioners realise that empathy is firstly a state of mind and not a character trait or disposition and secondly being aware and in touch with their own feelings which will allow empathy to flow to others. If practitioners embrace the way they feel, they will be able to extend that to others.

It is important for practitioners to master their practice of empathetic responding or active listening.

Here are a few examples of empathetic responding:

• You feel anxious because you are writing an exam.
• You feel depressed because your grades have come down.
• You feel angry because you did not get the job you expected.

Another technique that the practitioner could use to engage in conversation is called solicitation. Solicitation responses are used to encourage  clients to explore their feelings further. This is a technique of questioning and is of an empathetic nature as well. Note that these focus on the 'feelings' and why the client feels the way that he/she does.

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Kindly attribute as follows:

Beukes, C. J., Mahadave, K., & Kanhai, K. (2022). Professional Development Portfolio for Career Development Practitioners (1st ed.). CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 ZA, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/za/