Friends, Isn't it fascinating how relationships bring us immense joy but also profound heartache? There are dance of emotions yet how often do we truly, deeply, consciously invest in the relationship we have with ourselves and loved ones? That investment, that time and that energy is the most powerful gift in you could ever bestow upon yourself and those you love.
As life didn't give us a manual on handling emotions and communication challenges, we also weren't taught the art of building romantic ties or how to deeply love and value ourselves. But I'm here to share more life affirming, relationship enhancing wisdom with you all. And now you can also find this transformational content pouring onto YouTube and Instagram. Dive into the show Notes to connect with all the magic. Here's for growth, love and endless learning. Hi and welcome.
I'm Nicola Beer and I'm going to be talking to you today about empathy how to show and express your empathy to enhance your relationships Empathy is the capacity to feel and understand another person's emotions as if they were your own. It involves connecting to someone's emotional state on a deeper level, allowing you to sense what they might be experiencing emotionally and respond with compassion.
Unlike cognitive empathy which focuses on intellectually understanding someone's perspective, emotional empathy requires tuning in to their feelings in an authentic, heart centered way. This type of empathy enables a person to to share in both the joy and pain of others, often fostering a sense of closeness and trust. Emotional empathy is a fundamental building block in building strong relationships as it allows people to feel genuinely seen, supported and valued.
It's important to remember that empathy is not just about understanding someone's feelings intellectually, it's about connecting with them emotionally. For example, you may understand why someone is feeling unsafe intellectually, but struggle to show them that you truly get what they are experiencing. The natural adult reaction when seeing someone in distress might be to immediately try to help them out of their situation.
This is where a lot of couples end up creating distance and disconnection where one person shares their emotions and the other has a tendency to go in and want to fix the problem or issue or to help fix the person and this can bridge a gap and make communication feel unsafe. As no one wants to be fixed, we want to be understood and shown love and care. We seek not only to be heard, but to be felt, to be understood and need our emotions to be validated, witnessed and cared about.
Often what happens in a lot of couples that I see is one person is speaking from their heart and looking for a heartfelt reply back and their partner responds from their mind, and this creates a disconnect. This happens when a person feels pressured to give the right answer, or doesn't feel comfortable with emotional expression, or isn't in tune with their emotions. So they get stuck analyzing what to say and then come from a place of intellect or anxiety in their mind.
A simplistic way of looking at this is to just imagine that an adult is in front of you in distress, crying, upset. And the instinct when you see an adult in distress lying on the floor is to go over, pull them up, say to them what's wrong, offer some practical solutions, trying to fix the situation.
However, what that person needs, especially from someone that they love and care about, that they're being vulnerable in front of, is for you to not just try and get them to pull them up or intellectually try and help them, but to first of all, lie down on the floor with them and show them, I'm here for you. I'm here to go through what emotions you're going through. I see you. This is often what we really need. So it's a heart to heart communication rather than a heart to head communication.
So rather than trying to pull someone out of their uncomfortable feelings, the best way is to show empathy and to support them and to sit or lie in it with them to offer your presence and understanding before you offer your hand to help them up. This act of joining someone in their emotional state is the essence of empathy. Empathy is often seen as a fundamental human trait, an essential element in forming meaningful relationships, understanding the emotional state of others.
However, not everyone finds it easy to show empathy. Understanding why some people struggle with empathy can help us approach them with more compassion and patience. Whether it's due to a lack of early exposure to empathy, difficult connecting with their own emotions, experiences of emotional overwhelm, a tendency to overanalyze, or a fear of vulnerability, these barriers are often unconscious and deeply ingrained.
By recognizing these factors, we can create spaces where empathy can be nurtured and developed, helping everyone to connect more deeply with themselves and with others. So in this episode, we're going to explore why some people struggle with empathy, delving into the psychological, emotional and experiential factors that may contribute to this challenge. By understanding these reasons, we can approach those who struggle with empathy with more compassion and insight.
I'm then going to provide some practical tips to help you expand your ability to show empathy. So let's look at the reasons why people struggle to show empathy. First is lack of exposure to empathy in childhood. This is one of the most Significant reasons that people struggle to show empathy that they haven't been shown empathy or compassion themselves, particularly in their formative years.
If a child's parent or caregivers didn't model empathetic behaviour, perhaps being more focused on discipline or practicality than on emotional connection, the child may grow up without a strong foundation in understanding or expressing empathy. Sarah grew up in a household where emotions were rarely discussed. Her parents were primarily practical, factual and logic orientated, often dismissing emotional displays as weaknesses.
If she was angry, sad or afraid as a child, they would tell her to stop being silly. When she was sick, they told her to just get on with it and that life's hard and you just need to go to school and get on with things, even if you're physically struggling. When she was a teenager and displayed her emotions, they told her that she was a drama queen and not to be so dramatic. Sarah learned that displaying emotions isn't a positive experience.
She wasn't given any empathy and now she doesn't know how to give that to her partner. When her friends share their feelings with her, she doesn't know what to respond with. She prefers to escape and avoid emotional conversations. She doesn't know how to support them. It's not out of a lack of caring, but she simply doesn't know how to handle or deal with other people sharing their emotional pain. And she definitely isn't able or wasn't able until we started working together to offer empathy.
This was causing problems in her romantic relationship as well. When her partner Samuel expressed his emotions, she found herself saying the same things that her parents would say to her, like cheer up or it's not that bad or let's have a drink and watch a movie that will take your mind off it. Samuel felt dismissed when she did that and he tried to explain to her many times what he needed, but it wasn't getting through.
So they came for couples communication and empathy sessions to turn things around. It's really obvious when you think about it. How can you give someone something that you've never been given or you don't even know what it is? Key was helping Sarah to understand empathy and how to feel comfortable and safe being with her own emotions and then with others emotions. Another common barrier to empathy is difficulty connecting with one's own emotions.
If someone struggles to identify or process their own feelings, they'll naturally have a harder time relating to the emotions of others. This disconnection can stem from various sources such as past trauma, cultural norms that discourage emotional expression or personal tendencies towards emotional Suppression. John had a strict upbringing where his parents viewed feelings as irrelevant distractions, like a nuisance that they didn't want to deal with.
As a result of this and another traumatic bullying incident, he learned to suppress his feelings, focusing on logical analysis and problem solving. He would often say, I don't do emotions. He avoided deep conversations as he didn't understand how to respond. In his relationship, he often appears detached or uninterested when his partner expresses emotions. Not because he doesn't care, but because he finds it difficult to connect emotionally even with himself.
Through working together, we realized that when people close to him express their emotion, he blocks it out. He feels numb, often he feels nothing. He had learned to do this with his own emotions and he is able to do this with others emotions. In fact, John was able to block any feeling if he wanted to. And so in my individual Breakthrough program, we explored where that came from. When did he learn as a coping mechanism to just block out other people's emotions or his own emotions and go numb?
Well, it went back to when he was six years old. He was walking with his eight year old sister on the way back from the park and some teenagers pulled a knife on them and asked them to strip naked, which they both did. And then the kids ran away. He felt shame, humiliation, anger, fear and guilt for not standing up for his sister. Ever since then, he saw himself as weak and attacked himself for being a coward.
It was indeed a breakthrough for him as he was able to see why and when he decided emotions were too much to handle and blocked them. Of course, to a six year old, such a traumatic experience with so many intense mixed emotions was too much to cope with. Him and his sister never said anything to anyone and never spoke about it again, which highlights another trauma, that he was already detached and not close enough to his parents to tell them or trust that telling them would help or be safe.
He couldn't remember why he didn't tell them specifically about that event when we talked about it. But he shared that he knew from a young age not to talk to them about his feelings or needs because they didn't understand or support him.
Whenever we feel unable to talk about our experiences as a child, when we don't feel comfortable talking to a parent, it highlights a disconnection in the relationship that on some level we know we can't quite trust our parents with the information or we need to protect them. And we've already gone into a slight role reversal in some respects where as children we're trying to protect and care for the emotions of our parents.
Some children hold back because they don't want to burden or upset their parents. And this as I mentioned, reflects that role reversal where the child senses that they must take care of their parents emotional well being. And there's so many people that go through that and don't realize that that is a form of trauma for a child. Because handling life's ups and downs and struggles as a child is a massive deal and it takes on a massive emotional toll.
And in such cases, the unspoken message that the child receives is that they're responsible for helping their parents rather than the other way around. So that's the second reason why some people find it difficult to show empathy because of previous trauma and events where they learnt to block, to numb and to avoid emotions of others. And one similar, the third one is an emotional overwhelm and shutdown.
And this often comes from when people have been overwhelmed by someone else's emotions, leading them to shut down emotionally as a defense mechanism. So it's very similar to the one we've just talked about. And this could stem from a parent who was very emotional, very angry parent, a very sad parent, a very depressed or anxious worried parent. And if you go through that when you're young, you may need to as a survival to shut down.
Because as a child trying to cope with such emotions in others is really difficult. We know how difficult it is to manage our emotions now as adults imagine that's like 50 times more intense for a child who doesn't have the life experiences, doesn't have their, their brain fully developed and doesn't have that emotional life understanding. And who can't just take themselves out and go and get some help or put themselves in a new environment.
They don't have the power or the, the knowledge to say, right, I need some time exercising or in the garden or to listen to a meditation. They don't have any tools, so that's why it's so intense. And that's why our childhood affects us so much now as adults. Also it can be in adult relationships as well. It doesn't have to be in childhood. An adult seeing another adult in emotional distress on a regular basis can also be regular, really overwhelming.
So in order to handle it, our subconscious mind can block and shut down our emotions and our responses in order to survive and also to ignore and block others, which is what we just talked about. In fact, it's believed that one of the causes of ADHD is where a child feels so overwhelmed, so unsafe, so doesn't want to be in their body, that they escape into their mind and distract and daydream as a way to avoid and a way to escape.
And it can cause people to also disassociate with their emotions, disassociate or not feel. And this can be a real struggle for couples in a relationship where a partner can easily go into another place, disassociate from their body, disassociate from the situation, and escape into their mind, or just to completely go blank. Blocking out intense emotions is definitely a form of self protection.
And in adult relationships, if someone has been blamed for another person's emotional reactions, they may unconsciously close down to avoid conflict or further emotional burden. Emily's mother was often emotionally volatile, swinging between anger and deep sadness. As a child, Emily learned to shut down emotionally to protect herself from her mother's unpredictable moods.
She would tune out when her mother was emotional, forgetting what her mother was saying and found herself thinking and daydreaming often. At school, she was known as the daydreamer and often got into trouble for not paying attention. Now, as an adult, she finds it difficult to show empathy to her husband or others. She doesn't know what to say when people share how they feel great or how they feel really bad. She doesn't feel comfortable talking about emotional things.
When her husband shares about how frustrated or worried he is about something, her mind would just go blank. She would sit there and stare at the floor when he spoke, looking at her feet. It was almost as though it took her right back to being a child. When where she tried to escape by looking at the floor and hoped to be somewhere else. I helped her to first understand and have compassion for her automatic responses.
These were coping mechanisms to disassociate when she felt overwhelmed by emotion. Having a depressed or aggressive mother as a child is a lot to handle and it was a survival strategy because the emotions were too painful for her to carry at that age. However, to realize that now she is safe, she doesn't need to escape emotions, she doesn't need to escape her husband's emotions.
And after doing some healing work on releasing the childhood trauma, we then focused on how to express empathy, what to say, what people in general often need when they open up, and how to stay present, how to make that person feel safe.
Then we went through some more specific situations that occurred with her husband and she learned how to validate his emotions, how to stay in the present, how to give him her presence, eye contact, care, attention, how to come from the heart and the confidence to say that she didn't know what to say in certain situations when she didn't, and to be comfortable with that, sometimes that's the best thing you can say to people is really sorry, but I'm, I'm not sure what to say in this moment.
And then she was also had the confidence to ask a few questions and if she felt overwhelmed, to ask for a few moments to breathe or to take a short break. When the feelings of overwhelm were triggered. Emily really wanted to be supportive. And before now she had felt that there was something wrong with her. She felt like she was defective when it came to emotions and expressing herself.
And now with the right tools and understanding and releasing that past pain, she's easily able now to, to give and to show her husband that empathy. And the fourth reason that people struggle to express empathy is because they're coming from a purely intellectual standpoint. They're over analyzing the situation.
They're trying to show empathy by analyzing the situation logically, thinking of the right thing to say, offering practical solutions, thinking about what they can offer in a practical way to help the person. And whilst their intentions are really caring and often positive, the approach can come across as detached or like the person isn't really feeling the other person. And it can lack that emotional warmth that true empathy requires.
And again, this can be because the person is overwhelmed or they're panicked. When they hear emotions, they feel like the pressure's on them to say the right thing, to do the right thing, to fix it. And sometimes it can be just because a person's natural way of being is to think logical, factual, rational and to come up with solutions. And it might not be due to any panic or overwhelmed with emotions, just a way that a person thinks. Dan is a natural problem solver by nature.
And when his partner expresses sadness, his first instinct is to find the root cause and fix it. He asks questions, offers advice and tries to reason through the problem. However, his partner often feels that Dan is not really listening or understanding. And Dan focuses on the logic saying, okay, there's no reason to feel this way because of this and this. And when he does that, he misses the opportunity to connect empathetically, leaving his partner to feel unsupported.
He wanted to be more flexible in his approach and so he wanted to come to, to learn how to be more empathetic because she was often feeling uncared for or unloved and emotionally unsupported. And whilst it didn't come natural to Dan, he realized, I've got To change this and I want to change this. And also they were planning to have children and he wanted to have those skills so that he could pass on this to his children and be emotional with his children.
He, like John that I mentioned, said that he doesn't do emotions and when we explored it, he does actually do emotions. But he was so used to squashing his emotions down because earlier on in life being angry got him into a lot of trouble with a willingness to learn and a bit of coaching. Dan can now support his girlfriend with her emotional highs and lows and is beginning to see the value of talking through some of his stresses with her.
He actually is finding that he needs emotional support, whereas before he never thought that he needed any form of emotional support. Another reason that people can fear showing empathy is because they have a fear of vulnerability. Empathy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It involves opening oneself up to another person's emotions, which can be uncomfortable or even frightening.
For some people who fear vulnerability may shy away from showing empathy because it requires them to lower their emotional defenses. This fear can be rooted in past experiences of betrayal, rejection or emotional pain leading to an avoidance of deep emotional connections. Or it can be witnessing a very vulnerable person and being scared to be like them. Tom has always been cautious about letting people get too close.
He he's been hurt in the past and as a result he has built up walls around himself. He doesn't ask for help from anyone. As a self protection mechanism, he has become needless, which is okay for most areas of life. It's okay to be self sufficient and highly independent. However, for true romantic intimacy, there does need to be some vulnerability where you allow your partner in. Tom came to me because he was struggling to find a stable relationship. He was attracted to unavailable women.
He enjoyed chasing them and was so into these women until they liked him back and then he would instantly go off them and retreat. He was too scared to be intimate and vulnerable, so he had a string of short term relationships. He longed for the deep connection. He longed for a lasting, loving partner. But he was so afraid of it, so afraid of commitment, that he kept running.
And while he cares deeply about people, his fear of being vulnerable, being seen, fear of being abandoned, was preventing him from not only showing empathy, but also from having meaningful relationships. Expressing emotions and showing empathy are vital for building strong and healthy relationships.
For those who struggle with these skills, there are more practical tips that I'm going to share with you now to help you become more comfortable and effective in sharing your feelings and empathising with your partner. So the first tip is to understand your emotions yourself. So take time to reflect. Reflect on your own feelings. Ask yourself questions like how am I feeling right now? And what might have caused these feelings?
Journaling can also be an amazing way to help you explore and understand your emotions. Another tool is mindfulness practices. So engaging in mindfulness practices such as meditation or deep breathing exercises, even walking mindfully, these can help you to become more aware of your emotions as they arise. Another important thing that you can do to help you is to identify triggers. Notice what situations or interactions tend to trigger certain emotions.
Perhaps a work email that comes in from your boss, perhaps you may feel stressed or anxious. Or having a message sent to you by a loved one with lots of heartfelt words and emojis might make you feel elevated, seen, happy. So understanding your triggers and your perceptions, your emotions, can help you to anticipate and manage your reactions, as well as to have that deeper level of understanding.
And another thing that you can do to help you express empathy and to understand your own emotions is to expand your own emotional vocabulary by learning and using new words to describe your feelings. This can help you to articulate your emotions more clearly and as well as interpret those that you care about. So if you get my Relationship Reconnect Toolkit, which is available to download on my website, in there there is a list of 100 different feeling words.
So you can look at that and you can think, okay, what am I feeling today? And you can look at the list and get to really understand, okay, what emotion is it? Because there's so much more emotions than you know. Anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt. There's so many. And so this can really. If you know those big emotions that we all know about aren't really how you feel, then this can be really, really good.
And it can be a good learning tool, especially if there's words that your partner's saying and you're not really sure how you feel about them, or you're not surely sure you understand them, then you can research them as well. So it's available in my Relationship Reconnect toolkit, which you can go to the gifts page on my website and download. Also in that toolkit are tools for how to reconne how to avoid the silent treatment.
There's conversation prompts, there's connection tools, other communication tools, and it's absolutely free. So go there and download that. If you've already downloaded it and you've already got access to my Relationship Reconnect Toolkit, you will find now that this 100 different feeling words has been added inside the Relationship Toolkit membership area.
So when you click into the toolkit you'll see a heading hundred different feeling words and you can go and use that to enhance your expressions. Another thing that you can do if you do find it difficult to express your emotions is to start really small. Begin by sharing your feelings in low stake situations. For example, talk about how a movie made you feel or your reactions to a book you're reading. Another tip in expressing your emotions is to use I statements when expressing your emotions.
You can say I feel upset when this happens instead of you make me upset. When you use ICE statements, you're more connected to your feelings. You're taking ownership for your feelings. When expressing emotions is also good to be honest and direct. Being honest about your feelings direct in your communication, not expecting your partner to guess how you're feeling, to guess what you're wanting. This can make it confusing.
In fact, one of the biggest troubles that I see a lot of relationships get into is after being together for a while, people expect their partner to know what they need, how they feel, and it's a recipe for disaster because we all have 70,000 thoughts a day going through our head.
Some people more and if you're having 70,000 thoughts a day of your own thoughts, and 90% of our own thoughts are on repeat, the likelihood of you knowing what your partner needs, what your partner's thinking, what your partner's wanting you to do, and say how they want you to be, it's just really unrealistic. So even though it might be tiring expressing ourselves or asking for things, it's really important. Practice active listening as well.
Showing that you're listening to your partner's feelings, really important. This can encourage them to be more open and creating a more balanced exchange. So really listening and not trying to fix, as we mentioned, and really trying to understand. And active listening is where you're really focusing on their words, reflecting on what you hear and responding thoughtfully. So you can always say, let me take a moment to think about that.
And if it's a really big thing that your partners have shared to you, just say, I really don't know what to say. I'm gonna need to think about this. And that's perfectly fine. It's perfectly a good thing to do. I have to do that sometimes because I'm an introvert and I like to think about things and process things and I can't respond straight away. I'm like, well, let me just think about what you've said there and I'll come back to you. I think that's being authentic.
And as long as you do go back to the person, that's the key. If you're just trying to avoid and then you don't bring it up again because you're scared or because you, you don't want to go there or because you forget, then your partner is going to get really hurt.
So if you do pause to reflect or you do say that you need time, make sure that you decide when you're going to talk to them about it again and follow through on that, you take the lead in initiating that conversation back Empathy skills is about putting yourself in the other person's shoes. So I recommend trying to imagine how your partner feels, how would you feel if that same thing happened? And trying to also put yourself in their shoes and think, okay, how would they feel?
Knowing what you know about them, what might they be experiencing? What might they be thinking? What might they might be feeling? And this mental exercise can enhance your empathetic understanding. Also ask questions. Show interest in your partner's feelings by asking open ended questions like how did that make you feel? What was that experience like for you?
Taking time to really understand why a person feels a certain way is a great way of showing you care and then validating feelings, acknowledging your partner's emotions without judgment, saying phrases like I can understand why you feel that way or yeah, it's totally natural and okay to feel like that or I'd feel that way too if that happened to me if I was in your situation. These can be very validating. When we feel validated, we feel understood, we feel cared for and we feel important.
And this fosters connection. You can also demonstrate empathy through small gestures, compassionate gestures like a comforting hug, a kind note, or simply being there for somebody, simply holding their hand, sitting there with so I'm going to share with you today a few exercises that you can do to practice your empathy skills and hopefully deepen your connection. So one is the emotional sharing exercise. So sharing an emotion each day.
So choose a calm time each day, perhaps after dinner or before bed. Set aside five to 10 minutes and share one significant feeling that you felt that day. Encourage your partner to do the same and share their own experience right after. Allowing space for each other to express your feelings without interruption or any judgment or any attempt to fix.
Could be something like I feel really worried today because I've got a really important meeting tomorrow and I'm not prepared for it and so I'm feeling, yeah, just anxious and stressed about, is the meeting gonna go okay tomorrow? And I've kind of been feeling it on and off all day when I think about it. In fact, I can feel it now when I'm talking to you about it. You could say something like that.
And this is really good because the partner can really listen, give you that eye contact, practice that act of listening, maybe hold your hand or compassionately just, you know, make a gesture so that you felt heard and listened to and then letting each other respond. So it's one expressing, practicing the emotion and also practicing the empathetic response, listening and responding. And this can help you both feel more comfortable in sharing emotions in this safe way.
The fact that it's in a routine where, you know, okay, this is our time where I can be vulnerable and I know you're going to listen and not be on your phone or not walk away or try and fix it because we're practicing empathy. So that can really help.
And if you feel, okay, Nicola, that sounds a bit cringy to sit there and do this exercise every day, then I would challenge you and say, well, if you really want to build your connection and you really want to emotionally support each other, then, you know, put yourself out of your comfort zone and make it a habit. Although some people do say, okay, it's not sustainable long term. And okay, I get that.
But if you're really keen to expand your skills, then maybe you could just make a pact with yourself. Like, I'm going to express my emotions to three people today, or when people express their emotions to me, I'm not going to give any advice, I'm not going to give any practical tools. I'm just going to listen and express to them that I understand what they're going through or I can, I want to understand what they're going through and I can feel what they're feeling.
So you can make that a pact with yourself if you don't want to have a, a set time every day. Another exercise that you could do, which I really love, is taking on each other's day, like swapping routines, swapping daily responsibilities.
Often a lot of couples argue because they feel like they're doing more in the relationship or their tasks are harder in the relationship or their partner doesn't understand how difficult it is to maybe get the children ready for school, or they don't understand how tiring it is to do all the financial admin or cooking all the meals for the whole week, buying all the food, preparing all the food, making sure everybody has their different foods that they like or how to handle the in laws and
things like that. So yeah, role playing in this way, putting yourself in each other's shoes practically can bring a lot of awareness, a lot of insight. It can really help the connection and empathy. It's quite difficult to explain more exercises in this episode, so if you want and enjoy exercises that you can do as a couple, then definitely check out the relationship toolkit that I mentioned earlier.
It's got plenty of exercises with simple instructions to help you enhance your communication, your connection and have that really loving, close bond. And when you focus on empathy, when you focus on compassion, when you focus on emotionally supporting one another, then many people find that all areas of their relationship get better. They give each other more attention, their physical intimacy gets closer and more engaging, more exciting and they have more fun. There's more peace in the home.
So never underestimate how far compassionate listening and showing empathy can really be. So I hope you found something useful in this episode today. If you're considering a more personalized approach or even a couples retreat to nurture your relationship, then feel free to check out my website where you can learn more about my programs, working with me one to one and my couples retreat. Thank you so much for listening. Wishing you an amazing week ahead. From my heart to yours.
Take great care of yourself and each other. Dear listeners, today I celebrate you. You are among the few who actively nurture their love journey. It's an act of courage, an act of self love and if today's episode resonated with you, be a beacon for others. Subscribe, rate and Review. Let's spread this love and wisdom far and wide. Craving more? Discover the free [email protected] you can also find the links to helpful gifts in the show Notes.
Do also join our Relationship and Wellness Facebook Group. It's a haven where we uplift, support and journey together towards richer, deeper love stories. Remember, you have the power to craft the love story you deserve. Thank you for being with me today and until next time. Keep shining and loving with all your heart.