Listening with Empathy

Understanding Another Person’s Inner World through Listening

As I have pointed out in the previous edition of the Seminary’s Newsletter, a care provider must respect and understand the life experiences of his or her care recipients. A care provider develops his or her own empathetic understanding of the care recipients’ experiences, being different from and perhaps even strange to the provider, by entering into the recipients’ deepest level of experience. In other words, a care provider applies the abilities of listening, understanding, and communicating in the practice of providing caring ministry by entering into the recipient’s world of experiences.

But how do we enter into another person’s world of experiences?

Empathetic “understanding” calls for thinking and acting based on different points of view. Such an understanding requires us to not only understand through a series of logical and structured questions but to also discern and sense by “listening” to the feelings of care recipients as if we were in the same situation.

What is listening? According to the definition of Donald Capps, the former William Harte Felmeth Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton, … listening involves an intention to hear. When we are “intentionally” present, we will be able to hear. Therefore, listening is an engaged and conscious effort that carries with it a purpose or an intent.

So, what is empathetic listening? Empathetic listening is the listener hearing the inner voice of others as if it were the listener’s own voice; and it is the listener feeling others’ joy, anger, fear, and excitement as if it were the listener’s own experience. To listen with empathy, the listener must adjust his or her own emotions in order to sense the inner world of another person who should feel the respect as well as understanding of the listener.

Therefore, empathetic understanding can be described as a relational process. Such an understanding can bring about emotional bonding between different individuals. The bonding, like a covenantal exchange and an interactive correspondence, includes a care provider opening up to a care recipient and receiving feedback from the recipient. Empathetic understanding requires compassion and respect while getting to know another person’s life story and their experiences.

Intentionally Listening to the Needs behind the Feelings

Empathetic listening is a kind of focused listening using sincere “attention”. Sincere attention implies that in listening to another person we can be in touch with our own soul, our own intent for listening, and stay focused on the other person’s experiences. When a listener gives full attentiveness, the listener stands by the person while listening and is completely focused on that person. The listener focuses on the other person’s story. S/he listens attentively to the person’s feelings, hears the needs out of the person’s expressed feelings, and senses some of the needs that have not been clearly articulated. In addition to understanding the needs of the person, the listener should work to enable the person to understand his or her own needs.

A care provider, to be able to hear the needs behind the care recipient’s feelings, must accurately receive the content of the recipient’s sharing. The care provider as a listener must be able to mentally recreate the story told by the care recipient by identifying the repeated themes in the story, the pattern of the descriptions about what is meaningful to the recipient, the particular details of the story, and if possible, implied meanings embedded in the vocabulary used by the recipient. The listener must then communicate the recipient’s ideas conscientiously and accurately by using the listener’s own description in concrete terms of the recipient’s needs behind the feelings.

Thus, a care provider must temporarily set aside his or her own presuppositions so that s/he can remain in the care recipient’s world, sense sharply the recipient’s otherness, and attempt to understand the recipient’s point of view. The care provider exercises discernment in his or her attempt to identify the person’s traits by taking note of the person’s non-verbal behaviors such as the rhythm of their breaths, vocal tones, rhythm of speech, facial expressions, and physical gestures. The care provider will then use his or her own words to reiterate what s/he has heard, summarize the contents of the conversation that has taken place, and deduce the recipient’s state of emotions. The purpose of the said approach to the reception of messages is to affirm the recipient by the care provider hearing the recipient’s voice and understanding the recipient’s needs behind the feelings.

Discerning through Asking Questions

To further ascertain the needs behind expressed feelings, a care provider asks both open-ended questions and close-ended questions. An open-ended question is one that is able to elicit more sharing from a care recipient whereas a close-ended question aims at clarification. Open-ended questions invite the care recipient to determine the contents of a conversation so that the care provider can get to understand the recipient’s feelings and needs from the sharing provided by the recipient. Close-ended questions can help the care provider to clarify parts of the sharing and thus to further understand the unique nature of the recipient’s experiences. Asking probing questions for clarification and deduction is how the care provider can attempt to understand another person’s experiences through the provider’s analyses and imagination. These two kinds of questions also serve to aid the recipient to identify his or her own discrepancies in their accounts, which may lead to the recipient’s revision and likely more accurate recounting of his or her experiences. Through asking questions, a care provider can further understand what the needs of the recipient mean to the recipient through his or her own words.

In summary, a care provider acting as a listener will base his or her understanding on the narratives given by the care recipient in summarizing the complex information while giving full attention to the main details of the account and the overall interrelatedness of these details. The listener further identifies the uniqueness in the account, and thus senses the significance of the expressed feelings to the recipient. The listener learns about the recipient’s world of words and tries to understand the recipient’s needs within the framework of this world. It is by observing and considering the recipient and his or her world that the listener can discover the hidden meanings of the recipient’s needs at different levels.

Bonding Lives with a Passion for Living

A listener who has mastered the skills of listening and who possesses empathy is able to cultivate mutual affection with another person and develop mutual trust between the listener and the recipient. When a listener focuses with empathy on the needs and feelings of another person, the other person will feel that they are being cared for. This person will likely begin to trust the listener more and be willing to share more with the listener.

Empathetic listening can generate the zest for life that binds and bonds us together. Once when a care recipient experiences “being heard” he or she will likely sense a surge of energy in life and regain their passion for life. What comes out of the bonding is the anticipation of both the care provider and the recipient to meet and be in touch with each other again. The zest does not create an object for care and love. It does not attempt to pursue mere affirmation of others. What the zest for life does is to sustain one’s active engagement in caring and loving others and the desire to reach out to and interact with more people. We can see that empathetic listening leads to effective caring.

Listening as an Acquirable Skill

For the ministry involved in pastoral care, we must learn to listen with empathy so that we are able to feel as if we were in the care recipient’s situation. We must focus on another person’s story and pay attention to the needs of that person that are revealed in the story. Only through listening empathetically with our hearts can we hear the needs as well as the unexpressed desires behind the feelings. Even if the ability to listen with empathy is a talent, such a talent requires efforts in cultivating for its growth and development. Empathetic listening takes years to develop as an artful skill that involves multiple skills. Listening with empathy is a virtue whereas cultivation of listening is a moral practice.

Perhaps, there are some of us who do not think we will ever become a better listener. But experience tells me that one can become a better listener if one is willing to learn. Improvement can be made for those who are willing to learn. A lot of learners improve the technique of listening through learning from skilled listeners. Listening skills are acquirable except for those who are unwilling to make the effort. On the other hand, even if we do not routinely play the role of a care provider we should still learn the skill of listening. Listening with empathy is necessary for us because we interact with many people during every day of our lives. We should exercise daily to learn to listen within various networks and practice the skill of listening with people on different occasions and from different groups.

Trust in God Who Hears the Outcries of Human Souls

However, I must emphasize that listening with empathy is not only an artistic ability that can be learned. Such listening is also an expression of the listener’s being in Christ. As pastoral leaders who provide care, we should understand that the caring ministry we take part in belongs not to us but to Christ. The good listening ability of a pastor is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift that points to the God who blesses His people with grace. Therefore, pastors must open our souls to God, receive the divine gift from Him with faith, and experience His presence.

We can now witness that a care provider being in the light of God and by His grace can listen to every story told, view the divine drama behind each story, and witness the assurance of the presence of Jesus Christ and how He works with His people in whatever the circumstances may be. Pastoral leaders must listen attentively to God and engage in Christ’s ministry, knowing fully that what we accomplish is not by our might but by Christ Jesus. We can only depend on the petition by Christ Jesus before His Heavenly Father. Only when pastoral leaders give our total trust in Christ can we hear the needs of those in despair and thus walk with them during moments of extreme hardship and burden. In turn we can petition for the needy with the assurance that Jesus Christ will carry our prayers to our Heavenly Father, pleading for us to our Father to grant us the needed Faith, Love, and Hope.

When pastoral leaders minister through listening, we are expressing an important statement of faith: God is the God who listens to and hears the cries of human souls. It is by the grace of God that pastoral leaders care for and listen to the needy—the cries to God by the pastoral leaders are heard by God and these pastors in God’s love turn and listen to others. It is in this love of God that pastoral leaders enable lives to be connected to Christ.

To practice listening is a moral exercise. I deeply desire for teachers and students alike in HKBTS to develop the virtue of listening in the grace of God; to realize and carry out the practice of hospitality in churches and in the Seminary through the learning of empathy and the practice of listening with empathy; and above all, to passionately share with those vastly different from us in the experience of the mystery of God’s grace. May God bless us with all such grace as this!

Dec 2014