Welcome to Conscious Clips on our time together. Today we're going to talk about
empathy. Empathy is the key skill
needed to handling the fussing and fits in your life, as well as maintaining
connection through conflict.
Now everybody has fits, I had three just yesterday.
We watch baseball players have fits with other team members, with the referee.
We have radio shows where people just call in for the sole purpose of having a
fit.
So what happens? What is a fit? A fit really occurs
when the world is not going our way. It's the general emotional term I use
to describe when we resist what is. So when a
two year old throws a fit because you took the crayons away while they were scribbling
on the floor,
it's not going their way. When a four year old says "I hate you" because they
can't have cookies before dinner,
it's not going their way. When a nine year old slams the door because
they can't have a sleepover,
the world is not going their way and this goes all the way up to a sixty year old
driving down the highway
furious at someone who's got their blinkers on for the last ten miles,
the world is not going our way. So the first step,
since fits occur when we resist what is,
the first step in handling them is to accept what is.
The moment is as it is. So when it
first happens we're going to take a breath and say "The moment is as it is" as
opposed to
"What are you doing? What should you be doing? You should have your shoes by now."
Resisting what is makes it worse. Disappointment and frustration are hard
skills to handle.
So one of the things we want to do is understand that when we do get upset
we get again into the lower centers of our brain and we become defensive,
and we look for blame. So when a child is having a fit or when another person is
having a fit,
they're going to become defensive and attacking. Our job then
is to take a breath and offer empathy.
Now, empathy is not about happy-ing people up.
One mother wrote me and said "Well I tried empathy and it didn't work." She
thought she would say "Oh you seem angry" and the child's going to go "Oh yeah,
ok I'm fine now." Empathy is a skill we offer to children
who are upset or to another person who's upset
to leave them with the ownership
of their upset. And so when a child says
"I hate you", our job is to say "You seem
angry. It's hard when
you don't get the remote when you want it." So our job is to offer empathy.
If we're in a reactive state all we want to do is stop the action instead of offer
empathy,
and we might say stuff like this, "You get me involved in this and you're both going to go
to your room."
Instead of trying to stop behavior, we want to
offer the empathy. Here's some words you can use, "You seem angry,
you sound angry", and then we follow that with, "It's hard when you have to go to bed
when your favorite TV show
is on." "It's difficult when all your other friends get to go
and you don't get to go" and then tag that at the very end with
"You can handle this." And then that's all you do.
Then you walk away. Does it make the child happy? Are they going to go, "Oh thank you mom."
No. Or "Thank you dad." No. But what it does is it leaves them with the
ownership
of their own upset, so they can take personal responsibility
to decide whether they're going to change their mind or change their actions.
By us fussing at people who are upset
they then can justify being upset because it's
our fault. Use empathy
when someone, your spouse, your coworker,
your children, when they get upset take a breath, get out of the lower centers of the
brain that want to stop the behavior,
rise to taking a deep breath, being a Star, to the higher centers,
see from their point of view and say "You seem really
disappointed. You were hoping that you could spend the night with your friends.
You can handle this." So until next time
here's your homework. When you find yourself
or other people upset offer empathy. Here's some phrases to get you started:
"You seem angry. You sound upset."
Follow that with "It's hard" and describe the situation
or "You were hoping that" and describe the situation or "You wanted" and describe
the situation and at the very end say
"You can handle this" and then walk away.
They're still going to grumble and bleed and whine but you've left them
with
personal responsibility.
Until next time, I wish you well.