“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” Meryl Streep
If you are like most people, and interact with several if not hundreds of other human beings every day, you will experience moments when you don’t know what to say. I believe that these are incredible openings for something more real to happen than can be expressed with words.
In that silence, profound connection can happen, at any age. The human face—especially the eyes and the mouth, and the tilt of the head, along with something invisible, called the limbic system, as well as the arms and hands that extend out from the heart, can express the deepest empathy that reaches into another person’s soul.
What is this powerful force called empathy?
Brene Brown says that empathy fuels connection, whereas sympathy drives disconnection. Think of it—-your friend Debby’s husband dies, and you want to support her in her grief. If you are triggered at the possibility of such a loss happening to you, it will be difficult to truly convey empathy for your friend, and you are likely to keep an emotional distance, and experience sympathy, seeing her as “poor Debby.” You may unconsciously avoid the feelings that would allow you to resonate with Debby’s pain, possibly because you have ungrieved emotions from losses in your own life. There would be no fuel for connection, no limbic resonance which is the capacity for sharing deep emotional states arising from the limbic system, which includes the brain and the heart.
On the other hand, if rather than avoiding it, you consciously imagine the pain of loss in your own life, you will be able to feel into your friend's experience, and put yourself in her place. You may feel the actual physical pain of heartache, as mirror neurons in your limbic systems resonate with your friend’s shocked limbic system. Even without words, she would feel held in your presence and you would be able to empathize and convey compassion, which means “to suffer with.” As Brown says, “Empathy doesn’t require that we have the exact same experiences as the person sharing their story with us. Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or circumstance.”
An even higher order of empathy is required in families and intimate partnerships where the opportunity to hurt one another is at play. A wife may feel blamed when her husband says he is disappointed that there was not more celebration of his birthday, when she is doing her best being a working mom and raising three children while her husband travels a great deal. Besides, she asked him and he said he didn’t know what he wanted, and she assumed a cake and candles would do.
She could easily withhold empathy due to becoming triggered and taking on his disappointment, and feeling shamed. But if she remembers to feel into what he is trying to express, and reflects on her own disappointment birthdays, or on the fact that it is a big deal for him to admit it and she has asked him to be more vulnerable, she could drop her own hurt story and connect to the love she feels for this man. Byron Katie says that without our stories, we are pure love.
The capacity for empathic connection is such a gift of our amazing mammalian brains, that allow us to feel joy, grief, anger, fear, shame, and an infinite range of nuanced emotions. It makes so much sense to get to know these emotions well, rather than numb out through busyness or substances. Raising emotionally literate children who become emotionally masterful adults is one of the most important tasks that today’s parents face.
This exchange of limbic resonance does not happen when we text. Emogis are awesome, and I use them all the time, but the human face and the sound of the human voice, and human touch cannot be replaced.
Look for a moment today, in your life, where a reach of your hand or a gentle gaze of understanding might connect you with someone in a deeper way. It could be your partner, a co-worker, the frustrated mother at the check-out counter, or the guy at 7-Eleven who sells lottery tickets.
This subtle and beautiful sharing of empathy is the very energy our world needs right now.
It transcends race, age, social class, and even political differences. Because it doesn’t require words, there is no language barrier. It returns us to our original innocence and our common humanity.
If you cultivate it, you will know what to do when you don’t know what to say.
