Developing Empathy: A Caregiver’s Understanding

Understanding the Lives of Care Recipients

Every person desires to be loved and cared for by others. There is always the hope within each of us that we will be accepted and treasured. We also desire the events and experiences of our lives to be recognized as authentic and valuable. The above observations describe human nature and our basic human needs.

We have to ask ourselves, “How can we provide care for others which fulfills their basic need for love and nurturing?”

While providing care for others, we must respect and understand the life experiences of each care recipient. To gain this kind of understanding, caregivers must enter into the inner world of each care recipient and connect with the recipients’ innermost thoughts and feelings. Only by doing so can the caregivers achieve empathy and an understanding of the recipients’ experiences—which can be completely foreign to the caregiver’s own thoughts and feelings.

Empathy is the feeling a caregiver has when they are able to identify with another person’s experiences through careful listening, understanding, and communicating. It is not a technique but rather an artful skill acquired through patient learning and practice. This ability to understand others is above all a virtue. Empathy describes our compassionate understanding of another person and his/her world. The focus is on experiential understanding and not experiential explanation. Empathy allows caregivers to enter into another person’s life and their experiential world.

Responding with Empathy

How do we enter into the experiential world of others?

To achieve an empathetic understanding of each care recipient’s situation, caregivers must engage in a process of inquiry, allowing them to feel along with the recipient by asking a series of questions. If and when necessary, the caregiver will repeat or vary the manner in which they ask questions until s/he can comprehend the experience or situation as described by the care recipient. In other words, the caregiver seeks to “sense” the innermost feelings of the recipients through a line of questioning.

The “sense” described above is an intentional and active response to another person’s emotions. To be able to respond to another person’s emotions, a caregiver must employ his or her imagination to enter into the person’s consciousness, to read their body language, and to understand their perceptions, feelings, and thoughts.

The influential psychologist Carl Rogers was the first among his contemporaries to incorporate the term “empathy” into the vocabulary of academic Psychology. Carl Rogers describes a counselor who possesses empathy as one who accepts the inner “frame of reference” of the counselee. Such a counselor senses another person’s private world as if it were the counselor’s own. What Carl Rogers means is that a counselor must perceive the world through the eyes of the counselee. In other words, a counselor seeks to understand the counselee in the same way as the counselee understands himself or herself. A counselor, by entering into the experiential world of the counselee as another person, feels that person’s emotions. According to Rogers, self-abandonment is essential to be able to feel at home with another person’s attitudes, emotions, and thoughts. Achieving a sense of empathy is crucial to psychotherapy.

The Practice of Empathy

Most of us are aware of the differences between the perceptions and experiences of individual persons. So it is not surprising to find that a counselor’s world made of his/her life experiences and beliefs vastly differs from the world of the counselee. Such differences in perceptions and experiences often create tremendous barriers and difficulties that may impede a person’s ability to understand another person. The experience of a counselor entering into the counselee’s world will be similar to the cross-cultural experience of a person who may be confronted with communication barriers and difficulties when immersed in a foreign country or culture. It is not unusual for a counselor to feel overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity of the beliefs and/or languages present in the counselee’s world. However, the said barriers and difficulties can be overcome if empathy can be achieved. Empathy enables us to sense another person’s ideas and feelings in the context of his/her world, which is often alien to a counselor. Empathy is also instrumental when learning other languages and engaging in cultural intermediation in order to understand others’ ideas and feelings.

To understand the counselee’s ideas and feelings, a counselor must temporarily set aside his or her own ideas and feelings. Instead, s/he temporarily believes what the counselee believes; sees what the counselee sees; and treasures what the counselee treasures. That is to say, s/he must attempt to perceive matters with the other person’s presuppositions, to learn about the person’s beliefs, and to adopt the person’s point of view—as if it were the only way to perceive the world.

However, the self-abandonment necessary for empathy does not mandate that a caregiver abandon his or her own presuppositions, beliefs, and values. The kind of self-abandonment necessary for empathy is exercised only as a temporary measure for a certain period of time as the caregiver seeks to genuinely understand the care recipient’s point of view. The caregiver should neither forsake his or her own distinctiveness nor give up the boundaries that define his or her identity. There should not be a total immersion in another person’s world.

Changes in Perception Affect Changes in Behavior

In other words, a counselor must try to see the world from the other person’s point of view without passing judgment. S/he should not attempt to live in the life of the counselee. Instead, the counselor must crossover and enter into the counselee’s distressed world by leaving his or her own world of order and stability. The counselor, after having perceived the counselee’s world, will come out of the counselee’s world and will then communicate her or his perception of the counselee’s world to try to address the issues present. What comes next is the counselor’s reframing of the problems for the counselee. This gives the counselee a different perspective on his/her problems. The exercise of reframing a situation or certain experience requires a change in the frame of reference for the counselee. The counselor will first adopt the counselee’s frame of reference for perceiving the counselee’s problems. Once the counselor thoroughly understands each problem, s/he will put the problems in perspective within a different frame of reference by reordering the facts and restructuring the same situation or experience which is troubling the counselee. Once the counselee can perceive his or her problems in a new way, a change in the counselee’s behavior and his/her response to the problems is likely to occur.

The cultivation of empathy is essential for a caring ministry because empathy can bring about positive changes in the lives of troubled people. Yet, serving with empathy is often an intense and highly challenging task. Empathy is an acquired skill that demands time and patient training to develop. Ideally it will become second nature for all caregivers.

Pastors and Care Recipients Share in Life-Renewing Grace

Therefore, it is necessary for our pastoral leaders to possess empathy so that they can excel in their caring ministry. With empathy, pastors are able to put aside judgments and enter into the worlds of others. Through their imagination and their ability to understand and sense the others’ experiences, pastoral leaders can experience life-renewing grace along with all those who receive pastoral care.

When pastoral leaders and pastoral care recipients share their feelings and thoughts with each other, we can then dedicate our prayers to God. Together we can ask for guidance and assistance from Jesus Christ in order to face grief, fear, doubts, regrets, and mourning—and to embrace joy and thankfulness. We can wait for God’s words and use these words to reframe our own situations and experiences. In this way, we will renew our perceptions of our situations and experiences by adopting God’s perspectives. Such renewed perceptions and meanings could affect a change in our behavior and our responses to these situations and experiences. We will be able to see the manifestation of God’s power within each situation and challenge. We will also see how God leads us through difficulties. In this way, we can experience the faithfulness of God, the comfort of His words, and the Hope given to us through God’s promises.

Developing Empathy through Hospitality

Pastoral leaders must commit to the development of empathy within themselves—even if it means exerting intense self-discipline—for the sake of helping their care recipients. We should realize that empathy is essential to any good moral character. Like the many other aspects inherent in a good moral character, empathy will only become second nature through the practice of self-discipline and nurturing.

I truly hope that the teachers and students of HKBTS will develop empathy and that it will become their second nature. Both the Seminary and the churches will benefit from the learning and discipline of empathy as we continue the practice of hospitality in carrying out the teachings of the Bible and in the every day practice of our spirituality. It is wonderful to envision that we can pray and sing with people who are different from us. We can share together even through our struggles.

I pray to God that He will endow such a great gift on the Seminary.

Aug 2014