Empathizing is meditative
If you ask people how to empathize, outside of Non violant communication, you'll hear a variety of opinions. To be honest, before I learned NVC, I didn't know what empathy was. I think that is pretty common in society because who teaches us about empathy? School doesn't. Most parents don't. Our pals don't. The media certainly doesn't. We have a generic view of what it is. To walk a mile in someone else's shoes. But do we know how to? I would argue that most of us don't. Not because we are all psychopaths, but because nobody taught us.
Empathy is about letting go of control. It's about leaving myself on the shelf. All my knowledge, experiences, and memories. They don't matter when I'm empathizing. Most people think that you must have experienced the same thing to be a good empathic listener, but according to a study I recently read ( sorry, I don't remember where I read it ), it's actually the opposite. People are less effective at giving empathy when they had similar experiences. It makes sense to me because if you had similar things happen to you, you don't leave yourself on the shelf. You apply your story to theirs. You leave their car, and instead start shouting from yours across the street, and tell them what your car is full of. And empathy is about letting them drive the car, with you in the back seat, just observing where they choose to go. Where they drive, is not your business. You are going on a trip in their world.
If I'm present, not triggered or distracted, and at peace ( not possible at all times because I'm human ) empathy is meditative to me. I´m still active, doing empathy guesses and reflections, but I'm mostly silent. But, similar to meditation, I'm not trying to change, direct or control how they feel and think. I just watch their words go by, mirror what I see, and check in if it resonates. The more present I am, the more I trust the person I'm listening to. In fact, when people express gratitude in the end, it's like I can't take credit for it because I wasn't there. I didn't do anything. I just held mostly silent, active space. In meditation you don't advise your thoughts, you don't analyze them, tell them to go this or that way. You feel the emotions that come with them, but you don't try to change them. When I go out of an empathy exchange like this, I feel relaxed and empty. If I go out of an empathy exchange full of thoughts, thinking that I did a good or bad job, the ego has probably been involved whilst giving empathy. But similar to meditation, it takes a lot of practice. Hours of sitting still. Sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding. Depending on my own capacity, if I'm stressed, anxious or calm and happy. Sometimes giving empathy can also be healing for me. Not because of what the other person shares, but because I reboot myself. I put my own problems and worries on zero.
So empathy is not only about walking in somebody else's shoes. It's about walking in somebody else's shoes, going on the same trails, looking through their eyes and not changing anything about it.
