Before discussing the topic for today (Thought and Feeling Empathy), David addresses a question submitted by a listener after he heard the introductory podcasts on the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. He questioned the value of the Disarming Technique, and protested that every time he “turned the other cheek” he simply ended up with two sore cheeks!
A great question, and David and Fabrice share their thinking. Many people, including therapists, are afraid of the Disarming Technique, thinking that something terrible will happen if they agree with someone who is criticizing them.
They emphasize the value of questions submitted by you, the listeners, and also suggest giving specific examples when they are having trouble using the Five Secrets. Specifically, if you write down exactly what the other person said to you, and exactly what you said next, David and Fabrice will gladly analyze the interaction and show you what errors you made that caused a bad outcome, as well as how to correct those errors!
David and Fabrice then discuss Thought and Feeling Empathy, the second of the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. The definition of Thought Empathy is repeating or paraphrasing what the other person is saying, so he or she will see that you listened and got the message. Feeling Empathy, in contrast, involves acknowledging how the other person is likely to be feeling, given what he or she just said. You can often follow this with Inquiry, asking if you got it right, and inviting the other person to tell you more about what he or she is thinking.
Although David does not like formulas, they can sometimes help you get started. So here’s the formula:
- Thought Empathy: Let me see if I got what you just said. You told me that A, B, and C. (A, B, and C would be what the person said to you, using his or her words.)
- Feeling Empathy: Given what you just said, I can imagine you might be feeling X, Y, and Z. (X, Y, and Z would be words from the Feeling Words list.)
- Inquiry: Did I get that right? Can you tell me more about what you’ve been thinking and feeling?
These techniques are invaluable in therapy, and go back to the pioneering work of Karl Rodgers, who argued that therapist empathy is the necessary and sufficient condition for personality change. Although subsequent research did not confirm this idea, there is still little argument that empathy is absolutely necessary for good therapeutic work.
In addition, skillful empathy is for everyone, and can greatly enhance your relationships with family members, friends, and colleagues, and strangers as well. For example, if you have a family member or friend who is feeling anxious, down, angry, or depressed, the skillful use of Thought and Empathy will almost always be far more effective than trying to help, rescue, or “fix” that person.
David brings Thought and Feeling Empathy to life with an example of a patient who criticizes his therapist, and then asks listeners, including you, to pause the podcast briefly so you can write down, from memory, what the patient just said. Most therapists who try this end up “forgetting” or editing out important portions of what the patient said. This irritates the other person, because you clearly did not “get it,” and his or her attack or complaining will usually escalate.
David and Fabrice discuss common errors therapists and general public make when trying to use Thought and Feeling Empathy. The most common error involves using the techniques in a robot-like manner, parroting back the other person’s statements repeatedly, without using “I Feel” Statements. They illustrate this error with a humorous example.
Other common errors when using Thought and Feeling Empathy include:
- Helping
- Rescuing
- Giving advice
- Correcting distortions
- Making interpretations
- Failing to acknowledge the other person’s anger
David encourages listeners (that includes you!) to try using Thought and Feeling Empathy three times each day, even in superficial interactions with people in any setting, such as the grocery store, and give examples of how to do this. Although this will not be the deepest application of these techniques, the practice will give you a clear understanding of how these techniques actually work.
David and Fabrice end this podcast with a powerful example of Thought and Feeling Empathy during an actual therapy session in David’s weekly psychotherapy training group. The “patient” in the therapy is a TEAM-CBT therapist named Rhonda who became depressed and anxious after receiving some critical therapy from a participant in a therapy group she was teaching.
Even if you are not a therapist, you can perhaps identify with the “ouch” we all feel when we are criticized by someone, and it hits a vulnerable spot. This is an almost universal human concern. It is so easy to feel hurt, depressed, ashamed, anxious, inadequate, and perhaps even a bit angry!
David invited one of the therapists in the group to empathize with Rhonda, as a part of his training, but he ended up with a less than stellar grade. David, Fabrice and Rhonda explain the errors he made–which actually made her feel worse.
Making errors is totally okay in a training and learning situation, as well as in real therapy sessions–as long as you get feedback and try to correct your errors with humility. This can actually deepen the therapeutic relationship.
David then asked Dr. Jill Levitt to try to model empathy again, and to address Rhonda’s concerns. Jill hits the ball out of the park and gets an A+ on empathy. David and Fabrice explain why her intervention was so effective, and why the Five Secrets have to come from the heart if they are to be maximally effective.
Jill is a master therapist and co-teaches the weekly TEAM-CBT training group, along with David and Dr. Helen Yeni-Komshian. If you would like to hear more of Jill’s fabulous empathy work, make sure you listen to the live therapy podcasts with Mark, the physician who felt like a failure as a father!
Next week, Helen returns for the remaining Podcasts on the Five Secrets!
Fabrice and I hope you enjoy our Podcasts, and also hope you can leave some positive comments for us and some five star ratings if you like what we’re doing!
At least one listener has had problems leaving an iTunes review from his i-phone, so Fabrice has created some simple to follow instructions if you need help.
Dr. Burns, I have been reading the feeling good series for the past 3 years and I absolutely love it! This past November I finally was able to successfully use the five Secrets of communication with my wife after a year-and-a-half of study! Once I finally understood, I had great success disarming, offering empathy, stroking, inquiring, and using I feel statements. However, after using these techniques for about 2 months I noticed that anger was building up inside of me. Although I was using I feel statements, I didn’t feel heard by my wife. Using the other four methods became more and more difficult for me because I felt like I was not being heard. It got to the point that whenever we got into a disagreement I was so angry that I felt it was impossible to use any of the methods. My question is, how do you use the five secrets when you are overwhelmed with anger and frustration. It has gotten to the point where I have even considered medication because the anger seems to be so overwhelming, and I do not feel as if I can engage my wife on any level. From what I understand from what you have written, we need to make a decision whether we want true intimacy or something else. I honestly want true intimacy with my wife, however, I feel blocked by anger that is uncontrollable.
Tried to reply, but had a web problem. Thanks, Don! david
testing again. david (temporary website problem I am fixing) david
Dr. Burns,
I have read many of your books–including Feeling Good Together–many times, because they have had such a positive impact on my well-being. I also relisten to your podcasts from time to time, for the same reason. Recently, I read a book on how to improve your negotiation skills and I was surprised to discover how much it had in common with your communication “secrets.” (I should add that this was not a case of plagiarism, though I have read another book, on a different topic, which did seem to plagiarize your list of ten cognitive distortions.)
The book on negotiation was by Chris Voss, and titled Never Split the Difference. What I discovered was that this book would be much more useful if the reader had first read your Feeling Good Together, because your book is so much clearer and better organized.
That said, I did pick up a useful tactic from the Voss book which others might appreciate. Supposedly, the FBI teaches its hostage negotiators to use, among other things, a specific form of empathy whereby you repeat the most important few words of what the other person just said. You can make it as a statement or with a questioning inflection.
What I like about this is that it is very easy to do. Like any of the five secrets, it seemed awkward at first but it quickly got a lot easier.
For example, around time 23:30, where David talks about the fires, I might reply:
1. right next to the woods, or
2. right next to the woods?, or
3. all kinds of trees, or
4. all kinds of trees?
I hope you don’t think that I am trying to push the Voss book. Yours is much better for the reasons I already stated and because it has more general application. Furthermore, you have elsewhere recounted a story of a woman who had been kidnapped and was negotiating her own release, using your five secrets, not Voss’s similar method. Nonetheless, it’s always nice to find a “hack” and I found this one from Voss helpful for me in situations requiring either thought or feeling empathy. (By the way, the term he uses for it in his book is ‘mirroring.’)
Regards,
Mike
Hi Mike, Thanks for your thoughtful comment Yes, I am plagiarized a lot, I fear! david
Hi Dr Burns,
Mark Manson mentions you in a newsletter on good reading and that’s what led me here, that and Dr. Martin Seligman and my search for positive psychology techniques. Also interestingly, as Mark said, I too feel that hostage negotiation training comes close to communication skill training. I just signed up for a course on hostage negotiation on Coursera to pick up added skills. I feel the difference in hostage negotiation empathy and client empathy is manipulation vs genuine concern. Of course, anything viewpoint is possible, depending on how you interpret it.
One more thing, when we use the 5 secrets, I feel like asking the patient – ‘Did you see how empathetic I was? Did you see that?’ 🙂
Would you say paraphrasing the patient’s comments is similar to parroting? Because I haven’t read of inserting feelings into paraphrasing as you suggest, so thanks for that added tip.
Dr Burns your work makes me want to try to become a better person, and that is pretty rad! Basically, you’re a rebel 🙂
Best,
Preetika
Thanks, I might have some rebel in me at times! Parroting is never effective, but fake. d