empathic listening
a simple way to strengthen your relationships and improve your mental health
Think about some of the most difficult things you face on a weekly basis…
Got it?
Odds are, a major aspect of the difficulty you face in those situations revolves around relationships in some way, shape, or form. Whether it is with co-workers, your partner, your family, or with yourself, relationships are quite possibly the most difficult thing we face in our lives on a consistent basis.
There may be a number of different reasons you want to work on relationships. Maybe you want to feel more comfortable in social situations. Maybe you want to learn how to deal with conflict, or not feel like you’re crumbling inside when surrounded by difficult people. Maybe you want to feel closer to others. Or maybe you feel like you are constantly misunderstood. There is a tool that can help improve the health of your relationships, while giving you the additional benefit of improving your own mental health.
It’s called Empathic Listening, and it is a powerful tool for improving your relationships with others by helping them feel heard. It’s especially useful when you want to improve your mental health by being more compassionate toward yourself and others.
The Difference Between Empathy and Sympathy
You might be wondering, “What is empathy?” The short answer is that empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and feel what they’re feeling. Empathy can help us understand others’ feelings better, which helps us connect with them on an emotional level and build stronger relationships.
There are some important differences between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy usually looks like simply feeling sorry for someone else—it doesn’t necessarily require you to actually imagine what that person is going through; you just need to feel bad (or good) about their situation. That can be useful (we all deserve sympathy at the least), but it may not always be the best way of relating emotionally with other people. An Empathic Listener tries, instead, to imagine themselves in the other person’s situation. While sympathy results in a simple feeling good or bad for someone, good empathic listening can lead to a complex and deep experience for the listener resulting in new and insightful depth in relationships they may have not felt before.
How Empathic Listening Can Help Your Relationships
We all have the ability to empathize and some people start out better at it than others, but the good news is that it is a skill that can be learned and improved on! Empathy is important for good relationships because people who are able to understand their partner’s experience feel more connected and loved. In fact, research suggests that couples who experience higher levels of empathy tend to be happier in their relationship overall.
Some people seem naturally empathetic, but anyone can learn how to improve their empathic abilities with practice and patience. So if you think your empathy skills could use some work or if you just want them tested out before a big date or meeting with friends, try this exercise:
Improving Your Empathic Abilities – Step 1: Grow Your Emotional Vocabulary
If you want to be a good empathic listener, you need to be able to understand a wide spectrum of emotion. We need to expand our emotional vocabulary and get beyond the typical happy, mad, sad, tired, and hungry. Trust me, when you throw out a couple, “wow, you must have felt exposed…” or, “you were probably over the moon about that! Ecstatic!” the people on the receiving end will truly feel heard and cared for by you, because you were really listening to them. Needless to say, your relationships will improve.
You can do a simple internet search for things like, “list of feeling words,” or “list of emotions.” There is also something called a “feelings wheel” which has been helpful for many people to grow their emotional vocabulary.
Step 2: Practice on Yourself
Take that feelings wheel and start by growing your understanding of your own internal experience. Pay attention and become aware of your own feelings. Maybe write them down, or have a couple minutes in your day where you take that list and reflect on a situation or two that you recently experienced. Think through what you felt and the things you were thinking and see if you can identify some emotions that you were experiencing in that time. With a little practice, you’ll have more emotional intelligence than the average joe and you will begin connecting with people in ways you may have never thought possible.
How Empathic Listening Improves Your Mental Health
Empathy is a critical part of mental health. Research shows that it can help people cope with stress or trauma, maintain good mental health, and recover from negative experiences (like bullying).
Empathy can help you improve your mental health in other ways too. Studies show that those who are more empathetic tend to have lower rates of depression and anxiety than people who aren’t as sensitive to others’ emotions or needs—and may even have better overall physical health because they’re less likely to be stressed out about what’s happening around them!
All of this, in addition, to improved connection in your relationships is a great way to move toward health in your life. When you are feeling good relationally, you’re probably feeling pretty good emotionally and mentally. When you feel good mentally, you tend to make better decisions and the sky is the limit for you in what you want to do with your life.
It all starts with some good listening.
I hope this article has helped you out in some way! If you’re interested in learning more about topics on mental health be sure to check back as I will publish posts like this consistently.
Change starts with you!
