Tips for Listening..

1. Give the person your full attention.  Maintain eye contact.  Do not fidget or attempt to multi-task.  You cannot really hear what the person is feeling if you are trying to fix something that also commands your attention.  Listening is important.  If the person is worth talking to they are worth listening to.
2. If you can’t give the person your full attention, tell them.  “You caught me at a bad time, I need to take care of this now.  Is it something that can wait until lunch?”
3. You are not obligated to listen to everyone who wants you to.  Some people are takers.  They want you to listen to them, but don’t return the favor.  This may feel okay or it may not.  It may be all right for a while and then you grow tired of it.  You always have the right to not listen.  Your time is of value to you.  You don’t have to give it away if you don’t want to. 
4. Ask questions to open up the conversation or show interest in the other person.  Do not ask questions to control the discussion.
5. It’s okay to share a similarity at times, “that reminds me when that happened to me.” However if you do this more than once in a while you are not sharing you are dominating the conversation while you are pretending to listen.  It’s not about you.  When you are listening it’s about the other person.
6. Don’t finish sentences for people.  If you do this you are anticipating what they are going to say.  That isn’t fair.  Show courtesy.
7. Find ways to show sincere appreciation or compliments for what the person has done, said or feels.  You don’t have to promote yourself to feel better.  When you support others they will tend to think more positively about you and this will have a positive ripple effect.  It doesn’t take away from you to give credit to another; in fact it’s a way to feel good inside.
8. You do not have to agree with the other person.  Showing empathy is acknowledging their feelings, it doesn’t mean you agree.  Stay in integrity with yourself.  You can understand that someone feels hurt even though you would feel differently in the same situation. Stay true to yourself while remaining a good listener.
9. If you have a time limit let the person know, rather than frequently checking your watch.
10. Be respectful to everyone.  Children, the elderly, a homeless person on the corner.  Treat others, as you would want to be treated.  If you say you will do something do it.  It doesn’t matter if the person has Alzheimer’s disease and may forget or it’s a small child.  This is your integrity.  You can’t turn it on and off as it suits you, you have to live it. 

Treat yourself well.  Other people treat you the way you treat yourself.  You set the tone.  If your relationships are one sided, don’t tolerate them.  If people are not listening to you, let them know what you would like. Develop and keep relationships that support you and are positive. Don’t stay involved with people who are toxic to you, no matter what the relationship or situation.  Show compassion for others and show compassion for yourself. 

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Sympathy and Empathy

Sympathy and empathy are separate terms with some very important distinctions. Sympathyand empathy are both acts of feeling, but with sympathy you feel for the person; you’re sorry for them or pity them, but you don’t specifically understand what they’re feeling. Sometimes we’re left with little choice but to feel sympathetic because we really can’t understand the plight or predicament of someone else. It takes imagination, work, or possibly a similar experience to get to empathy.

Empathy can best be described as feeling with the person. Notice the distinction between for and with. To an extent you are placing yourself in that person’s place, have a good sense of what they feel, and understand their feelings to a degree. It may be impossible to be fully empathetic because each individual's reactions, thoughts and feelings to tragedy are going to be unique. Yet the idea of empathy implies a much more active process. Instead of feeling sorry for, you’re sorry with and have clothed yourself in the mantle of someone else’s emotional reactions.

It is fairly easy to feel sympathetic to someone else’s difficulties. We can definitely pity others who have lost a loved one, undergone significant trauma, or faced terribly difficult times. Those of us who watched the terror of the 9/11 attacks could certainly sympathize, but could we empathize? Actually, many of us could, though few of us can lay claim to really knowing what it might be like to either be in that attack or lose loved ones in it.

All Americans shared in the common ground that America had been attacked. People with no relationship to any person affected by the attack were stunned, shocked, saddened, in grief. We were not just sympathetic, and many arose to express empathy; if we did not know with surety, we could imagine how horribly difficult this was for the many directly affected. Even newspapers around the world felt with Americans, as the French newspaper Le Mondefeatured the headline “We are All Americans.”

This is perhaps the best example of how empathy differs from sympathy. Sympathyexpressed to a person in grief suggests that person is alone in their grief. Empathy suggests you’re in it with them, you can imagine what it is to be in their shoes, and you are together with them in emotional turmoil and loss. Even the best people in the world may have a hard time expressing true empathy. A person who suffers a significant loss may have a hard time talking to his/her family because what is being expressed is condolences or pity, which may not be very helpful.

The need for true empathy gives rise to many groups of people who are encountering huge losses. There are numerous “therapy” groups for battered women, rape victims, parents who have lost children, people undergoing divorce, children with significant illnesses. In such groups, people often have the opportunity to talk to others experiencing things in a very direct way.

In these settings, those suffering don’t get the sympathy of others, but instead get the empathy of others. There is often an implied understanding since all people in such a group are similarly circumstanced. Frequently, what a person in grief really needs to hear is “I’ve done that too," "I totally get what you’re saying," or "I had the exact same thoughts," from someone else: all expressions of empathy. What they tend not to want to hear is “I’m so sorry for you,” an expression of sympathy that makes them feel alone and isolated in their grief.

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