Empathy is commonly defined as understanding and sharing the feelings of another.
So first, we need to understand what is going on with another. This means slowing down to notice, drop our agendas, and truly listen. Listen for what’s beneath the surface. Can we take ourselves out of our own heads and experiences for one moment and tune in to another? It’s work! Sometimes, at the end of the day, I’m ‘emathy-tired,’ a bit worn out from all of the attentiveness trying to understand others!
Speaking of hard work, did you know, in fact, when we have been through a similar experience as another, we have to work harder for empathy?! Think about it! We get less curious, and more easily distracted by the tape playing of our own experience, what worked and didn’t, how we got through (and yes, I used to listen to cassette tapes on my Walkman).
So what does all this have to do with Motivational Interviewing?
You can have Empathy without the Spirit of MI (remember those juicy Spirit words from last week? Compassion, Partnership, Acceptance…), but you cannot have Spirit without Empathy.
Empathy is foundational.
So I got it, empathy is about understanding another person’s experience. The next question is, how does one display empathy?
The mighty MITI has something to say about it! Are you ready for me to nerd out on MI for a moment?
The MITI is the Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity coding system, one of the coding systems used to measure MI fidelity. (You know, there has to be a measure of MI in order to prove that MI is the factor that is working in all of those delicious evidence-based research trials of MI.) So how do you measure a provider’s empathy?
Really, it’s all about reflections. Yep. Here we go again, I’m on my reflections soap box.
(And if you haven’t had a chance to download my free Complex Reflections guide, join my email community!) How is your reflection practice going, by the way? Would love to hear! There is truly an art to deep reflective listening!
The MITI uses a 5-point scale to measure empathy, with provider “pays little or no attention to the client’s perspective” on the low end (1), and on the high end (5) “provider shows deep understanding of the client’s point of view, not just for what has been explicitly stated, but what the client means but has not yet said.” Dang! That’s some deep listening!
This is the kind of MI nerding out I’m going to do in my upcoming Uplevel: Advanced MI course. We are going to overlay the MITI lens as we comb through lots of examples of MI in practice, and have a chance to look through this lens at our own work.
If you are on the less nerding-out end, enjoy these fun videos on empathy. I loved Brene Brown’s cartoon clip Empathy Vs.Sympathy. And if you’ve been to my training, I often use Phil Dumphy’s empathy clip as a silly example, as well as this one from Everybody Loves Raymond. It’s always a challenge to practice empathy with my kids! (Especially at the end of a long day…)
I hope this message finds each of you well. I know, as helping professionals, we are all feeling BIG feelings right now as we are holding space for others. Take a moment to find someone to practice empathy with you for a little self-care today!
