7 More Reasons It's So Darn Hard To Earn The Empathy Gold Cup

The challenge of learning empathic skills

Are you are at a point that you can see the value of learning empathy skills and practicing them in your daily life? Great.

So here comes my plea for perserverance. Because even when someone has learned that empathy is the single most important relational gift to give and get (and, yes, that includes your relationship with your self), there are still some really hard things to master.

After all, if empathic skills were so easy to develop, more people would have done it already.

So even if you are convinced about the effectiveness of practicing of empathy, learning empathy skills can be very difficult. Why is that?

1. Many people have the limiting belief that talking to others should just come naturally, without effort. These people will often groan when they see a list of steps to go through to foster mutual empathy. Often they will initially think something like, "Well, if we have to talk about how to talk to each other, what's the use? We're ruined already."

2. Many people experience difficulty slowing themselves down when they have been used to free wheeling though sometimes unprofitable verbal expressions.

Some people idealize what they call "spontaneity" so much, that they feel inauthentic when they have to actually think about how to speak and listen in order to maximize mutual understanding.

These people confuse spontaneity and authenticity with mindlessness and reactivity. They are often experiencing agitation and fear and the going so fast helps them think that they can just jump over those feelings.

If there was over control in one's childhood, a person can learn to develop patterns of rebellion, submission, or withdrawal to protect themselves from having to follow a structure for communicating.

3. The person who found that rebellion was the best strategy in their early circumstances will probably react with resentment and resistance: "Nobody can tell me how to talk!" "I'm not going to follow somebody else's rules for talking!" or "Rules, rules, rules. Who needs them?"

4. Others may feel as if they are submitting when they temporarily put their own biases aside to see another point of view. When a partner is angry they can feel that if they don't attack back that they are giving up on themselves-which they are sick of doing.

5. The person who uses withdrawal patterns may go through the motions of the structured exercise, but internally be uninvolved and unsoftened by the process. They may even be privately fantasizing revenge or other things.

6. To master the art and skill of empathy requires practice, sometimes a lot of practice. Heaven knows, I'm still learning after 17 years. People who expect themselves to learn things without an actual learning process of misunderstandings, confusions, and mistakes and corrections can initially have a hard time. People who identify themselves as perfectionists would be in this group.

7. For most people, it is frustrating making the inevitable mistakes in the learning process. Some people are not willing to experience frustration in the pursuit of a goal.

But in the end, It's worth every second spent learning empathy skills.

Dr. Bolton gives popular workshops on assertiveness topics and leads "The Artist's Way Plus" workshops. To learn more about her work, visit her websites at: www.DrJaneBolton.com and www.FreedomFromShame.com.