Supporting Someone Who Is Working on Their Mental Health, Part 2: Cultivate Empathy
Last week I wrote about the importance of being mentally healthy yourself if you are in a supportive role to someone who is struggling. I touched on the ways we tend to jump into “fixing” instead of “listening.”
This week I want to spend some time on empathy, because it is crucial to being supportive.
Most people think of empathy as just good listening, but I see five components of empathy: listening, curiosity, communication, support, and focus on the other person.
5 Components of Empathy
Empathy is listening to understand and feel with someone.
Empathy is about coming alongside someone, intentionally tuning into what they are saying, and letting yourself feel some of it. You will not be able to feel all of it or feel it the same way your friend does, because you are not actually them. In fact, it is really important that you do not assume you know exactly how they feel, because you can miss how they actually feel when you do that.
Empathy is trying so very hard to understand what life is like for another person.
It’s trying to take their perspective and recognizing that even though you might not feel the same way if you were in that situation, you can see something that makes sense about how they feel.
We all go through things differently, and that is okay.
2. Empathy involves curiosity.
To develop the skill of deep listening, you need to cultivate a sense of curiosity. Curiosity leads you to explore and consider various aspects of the situation. Curiosity motivates you to imagine how you might feel in the situation.
If you are naturally not a very curious person, you might need to be intentional about asking yourself questions as you listen. The 5 w’s can be helpful here: Who? What? Where? When? Why? (and How? – which isn’t a W). Make sure you are tracking the content of what they are telling you, but you also need to track the context. Ask yourself,
“From what I know about this person, why is this a big deal?”
“What meanings might this person be attaching to this scenario?”
“What was the worst part of that for them?”
“What did this situation change in their life, that makes things harder now?”
“What makes sense about how my friend experienced this?”
It is helpful to ask these questions to yourself, in your own head first to inform the questions you want to ask your friend. Instead of assuming you know their answer, it is important to ask your friend for clarification. This leads into my next point…
3. Empathy requires communication
People tend to think of empathy as listening, but what you say is also important because it communicates that you have done the deep listening. You let our loved one know “I get it” by what you say.
Asking follow-up questions is important in communicating that you want to understand. Aside from clarification questions you might ask to keep their story straight, you might want to ask,
“What is the hardest part about that?”
“What was it like for you when so and so said….?”
“What feelings are you having about it?”
There is so much freedom and relief that comes from having someone say, “It makes sense that you feel this way.” If you can’t honestly say that about even just a tiny piece of what they said (I find that hard to believe!), you can always ask them, “What makes sense about that?”
Maybe the best thing you can ask is, “How can I support you right now?”
They might not have an answer, but you are communicating they are not alone, you want to be there, and you want accurate information on what they need.
4. Empathy is being on their side.
Even if they screwed up.
There will be time to point out whatever mistakes they may have made later, when they are not feeling so emotional, but I would challenge you to check yourself on whether you even need to do that. Will pointing out their mistakes help strengthen your relationship? Will it really help them overcome a difficult situation?
Sometimes you do need to speak up because the other person doesn’t realize how their situation impacted others. As a spouse, a family member, close friend, or someone working on a team with that person, their mistake could impact the way the family or team functions.
I am not saying to sweep mistakes under the rug.
I am saying that it is important to communicate your support of them before you focus on the mistakes. Sometimes they already know their mistakes. Sometimes when they calm down they will reflect and identify them. It will be a more powerful “a-ha moment” if they come to it on their own than if you tell them. If not, and it’s important to you, then by all means, circle back later and kindly communicate about the mistakes. For now, just be in their corner.
Because if you love them, you are in their corner, even when they make mistakes.
It doesn’t have to mean you agree with what they did.
You can truthfully say things like,
“Wow, that must have been so hard to decide how to handle that.”
“I love you so much and I hate that was so awful for you.”
“I’m glad you told me.”
5. Empathy is staying with the other person’s experience.
This means you might need to take a break if you become reactive or emotionally agitated.
When we have really big emotions, our brains get flooded. The emotional part of our brains take over and the rational part of our brains go offline. This can happen to anyone, not just people with mental health struggles. When we are aware of our own triggers, we can recognize when this is happening, and take a break.
When I have worked with couples, we work on a “time out” procedure to take a break and come back to the discussion when everyone is calm again (but they have to come back to it).
If your loved one is dealing with an ongoing mental health struggle, there may be predictable, recurring themes that come up in your conversations with them. If one of these themes tends to activate your emotions, be ready for that.
Learn your own triggers and have a conversation with your loved one to normalize taking a break if either of you need one. When we take that break we are acknowledging that the relationship is important and we want to communicate clearly. If one person is emotionally flooded, effective communication will not happen.
You can find ways to empathize even when you communicate your need to take a break.
“I know this conversation is really hard for you. I appreciate that you are speaking up to me. It is hard for me, too, and I need to take a break so my feelings don’t get in the way of my ability to hear and support you.”
You can stray from the other person’s experience when you get emotionally flooded, but it also happens when you turn the story around and make it all about you. It is common to share something that made you feel a similar way, and some of that can be helpful to your friend. You want to watch that you turn it back to your friend quickly so you don’t take the conversation off in a new direction before they had the chance to express what they needed to express. You don’t want to give the impression that what you felt was worse, so they should be thankful they didn’t have to go through what you went through.
Someone else’s tough situation does not negate the pain that your friend is feeling in theirs.
Empathy is about being with someone.
When we love someone who is struggling, we usually feel pressure to give them answers. We think they are sharing with us because they want us to solve it for them. Like I wrote about last week, we want to give solutions because we feel better if we can wrap it up for them. It feels uncomfortable, unsettling, for us to sit with someone else in their mess. If it feels that way for us, who have a degree of separation from the mess, how must it feel to be that person stuck in it?
Lonely.
When we feel alone, shame tends to build. Desperation grows.
When we can empathize with someone else, we are letting them know they are not alone, which, in turn can help keep shame and desperation at bay.
We don’t have to know the answers. We don’t have to get them to look on the bright side. We can acknowledge, “This is hard. I hear you; I understand why you feel this way, and I am here with you.”
Empathy involves listening to understand, curiosity, communication, support, and staying with the other person’s experience so they do not feel alone.
You may be reading this and thinking, “What about ME?”
This is the challenge of supporting someone with their mental health struggle. It very easily can become all about the person with the struggle. I wrote last week that it is important to make sure you are mentally healthy and have your own support while you are supporting someone with their mental health struggle.
If the person who is struggling is also contributing to your difficult life situation, you will need to find a way to communicate about that and maybe set some boundaries. It is important to address the ways their struggle impacts your life. You will need to work together to honor the needs of both people. This is a nuanced situation in which timing and boundaries are super-important. It is a whole different blog post that I will write eventually.
For now, know that it is about you, too. You may need to seek some support that is just about you.
Cultivating empathy is a fantastic start and will help you better understand the problem as you seek accurate help. It creates safety to share, and we all could use more of that in our world.
If you need a safe place to share, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Jennie Sheffe is a National Certified Counselor ™ who helps women find freedom from anxiety and peace in their chaos. She sees clients virtually in the state of Pennsylvania, or in her downtown Carlisle, PA office. She offers Christian counseling and EMDR Therapy.
