Helpers listen to clients both to understand them and their concerns and to respond to them in constructive ways. The logic of listening includes, as we have seen, tuning in to clients both physically and psychologically; listening actively; processing what is heard contextually; and identifying the key ideas, messages, or points of view the client is trying to communicate—all in the service of understanding clients and helping them understand themselves. Listening, then, is a very active process that is at the heart of understanding.

Respond Skillfully to What Clients Say Verbally and Nonverbally

Helpers do not just listen; they also respond to clients in a variety of ways. They respond by sharing their understanding, checking to make sure that they have gotten things right, probing for clarity, summarizing the issues being discussed, and helping clients challenge themselves in a variety of ways. Of course, this is not a one-way street. Helpers respond to clients and clients respond to helpers in the give-and-take of the therapeutic dialogue.

The value of inclusive empathy (Clark, 2003; Elliott, Bohart, Watson, & Greenberg, 2011; Pedersen et al., 2008;) and the other values discussed in Chapter 3 should permeate all responses to clients. Counselors use the responding skills of empathy, probing, summarizing, and facilitating client self-challenge described in Part II, Chapters 4–7 not only to help clients tell and explore their stories but also in every stage and task of the problem-management framework covered in Part III. That is, helpers use all the communications skills outlined in Part II to help clients explore possibilities for a better future, set goals, develop plans for achieving goals, and turn all this planning into problem-managing and opportunity-developing action.

We said earlier that the communication skills in helping situations are not special therapeutic skills. Rather they are skills that should characterize everyday interactions of ordinary people, even though, unfortunately, this is not the case. The ability to express empathy, the topic of this chapter, is important because we all want to be understood and we function better when we are understood. In day-to-day conversations, responding with empathy is also a tool of civility. Making an effort to get in touch with your conversational partner’s frame of reference sends a message of respect. Therefore, empathic responses play an important part in building relationships.

Use Empathy as a Communication Skill to Develop Your Relationships

In everyday life, understanding does not necessarily have to be put into words. People establish empathic relationships with one another in which understanding is communicated in a variety of rich and subtle ways without necessarily being put into words when given enough time. A simple glance across a room as one spouse sees the other trapped in a conversation with a person he or she does not want to be with can communicate worlds of understanding. The glance says, “I know you feel caught. I know you don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. I can feel the struggles going on inside you. But I also know that you’d like me to rescue you as soon as I can do so tactfully.” The signaling discussed in Chapter 4 plays an important role in the communication of empathy.

People with empathic relationships often express empathy in actions. An arm around the shoulders of someone who has just suffered a defeat expresses both empathy and support. Pam, a retired economics professor, excitedly ran for a seat on her local city council but lost in a close race. Her husband, Rory, knowing she would be disappointed, rounded up friends, their children and grandchildren, and even some colleagues and former students to greet her when she got home. She was welcomed to a large ovation and a banner strewn across their front porch that said “We Are Proud of You Pam!” Rory was there to give her a big hug and say, “We will get ’em next time.” The blow she received was lightened.

On the other hand, some people enter caringly into the world of their relatives, friends, and colleagues and are certainly “with” them but do not know how to communicate understanding through words or feel the need to do so. When a wife complains, “I don’t know whether he really understands,” she is not necessarily saying that their relationship is not mutually empathic. She is more likely saying that she would appreciate it if he were to put his understanding into words from time to time in order to feel understood.

The therapeutic alliance should be an empathic relationship. The skill and practice of communicating empathy to clients should not be a means to an end, but rather should be an integral part of the therapeutic relationship that is found throughout the helping process. What Pedersen and his associates (2008) call “inclusive cultural empathy” mentioned in Chapter 3 should permeate every facet of the dialogue between helper and client. This is not heroic but human. The “technology” of communicating empathy outlined in this chapter is humanized through the relationship. Empathy is a two-way street (Messina, Palmieri, Sambin, Kleinbub, Voci, & Calvo, 2013). Clients must be willing to reveal themselves and helpers must be ready to understand. Here is another way of looking at the fullness of empathy. At one level there is, ideally, a verbal dialogue as described earlier between client and helper. But at another level, there should also be an ongoing social-emotional dialogue between helper and client. This makes the relationship real and genuine. Goleman and Boyatzis (2008) in an article on social intelligence and the biology of leadership put it this way:

The salient discovery is that certain things leaders do—specifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods—literally affect both their own brain chemistry and that of their followers. Indeed, researchers have found that the leader-follower dynamic is not a case of two (or more) independent brains reacting consciously or unconsciously to each other. Rather, the individual minds become, in a sense, fused into a single system (p. 76).

Both the Goleman and Boyatzis and the Messina and colleagues articles use neuroscience to flesh out our understanding of empathy. In some non-hokey sense my being is communing with yours and yours with mine when we engage in empathic dialogue. This affects the quality and substance of the words we use. While it is possible to learn the skill and technology of responding with empathy, the exercise of that skill is hollow outside a genuine and caring relationship. The process of communicating empathy as described in this chapter must be seen through this lens.

Take a Wide View of Empathy as a Communication Skill

Empathy, we are told, is back in favor in academic circles (Bayne & Hayes, 2017; Elliott et al., 2011; Stueber, 2010; Watson et al., 2014). Hopefully in the helping professions it has never been out of favor. Some now see empathy not just as a value and skill, but also as a mode of treatment in itself (Slattery & Park, 2011). Empathic responding, in the view taken in this book, is based on empathic listening and involves sharing with clients your nonjudgmental understanding of what they are thinking and feeling. Rogers (1980) described empathy in this way (as quoted in Elliott et al., p. 133). Empathy is

the therapist’s sensitive ability and willingness to understand the client’s thoughts, feelings, and struggles from the client’s point of view. [It is] this ability to see completely through the client’s eyes, adopt his frame of reference … (p. 85) … It means entering the private perceptual world of the other … being sensitive, moment by moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person … It means sensing meanings of which he or she is scarcely aware…. (p. 142)

We will revisit Rogers’ last sentence in Chapter 6 when we talk about helping clients get in touch with these “meanings.” That said, empathy is not an interpretation, but is derived from the client’s frame of reference. You may initially believe that a person’s struggle with depression is, based on your logic, related to being unemployed. It may or may not be that simple. Rushing in to provide your reasoning belies the process of being empathic. Empathy signals your desire to understand how clients see themselves, others, and the world. It is a way of checking the accuracy of the listening and thoughtful processing mentioned in the previous chapter. It also signals your wish to put clients first and collaborate with them in their efforts to manage the problem situations of their lives. In short, empathy is critical to the helping process. Norcross (2010) puts it this way: “Empathy is linked to outcomes because it serves a positive relationship function, facilitates a corrective emotional experience, promotes exploration and meaning creation, and supports clients’ self-healing” (p. 119).

Arthur Clark (2007) devotes an entire book to empathy in counseling and therapy. In Part 2 of his book, he outlines the important role empathy plays in 13 different methods of treatment. He has also come up with a wider view of empathy (2010a) that possibly affects the purism of the concept outlined above. He describes three kinds of empathy: subjective, interpersonal, and objective. In his view, subjective empathy “enables a counselor to momentarily identify with a client through intuitive reactions and fleetingly imagine and experience what it is like to be a client” (p. 349). This kind of understanding of the client comes from the understanding of oneself and one’s exposure, in reality or in imagination, to experiences similar to those of the client. When a client discusses an issue, such as struggling with perfectionism, the helper briefly recalls his own struggle. The counselor is not necessarily distracted by what he or she experiences. Rather it adds something to his or her understanding of the client. Objective empathy arises from what a counselor has learned from various sources, including his own experience or from reputable theories and research findings. As Rema, a counselor, listens to Benjamin’s story, she begins to see the outline of an obsessivecompulsive disorder. This, tentatively, adds to her understanding of Benjamin. Both subjective and objective empathy provide the counselor with some kind of understanding of the client, but it is usually not the kind of understanding that is shared either immediately or directly with the client. Rema is hardly going to say, “Ah-ha, a classic case of obsessive-compulsive disorder!”

The kind of empathy described and illustrated in this chapter is interpersonal empathy, the ability to get inside a client’s frame of reference and understand what the client is thinking and feeling together with the ability to communicate this understanding without prejudice to the client. If the client feels understood, he or she is more likely to “move forward” in the helping process in a number of ways. It can lead to such outcomes as the strengthening of the therapeutic alliance, a deeper understanding of self, a better grasp of the problem situation, and a clearer idea of what the desired outcome of the problem-management process should be. That said, both subjective and objective empathy could either contribute to and facilitate interpersonal empathy or, conversely, stand in the way. When a counselor, let’s say Jeff, is personally struck by what Susan is saying, this can help him get inside Susan’s frame of reference or cause him to be distracted from her story. When Clarissa realizes that Ted’s story fits in with the findings of a research project she is conducting, this, too, can complement what Ted is saying about himself.

Consider this example. A counselor, Sacha, has his first meeting with a client, Mariah, who has just lost her husband. He had a heart attack while driving and either the heart attack or the crash killed him. She has two teenage sons. The meeting takes place about a week after the funeral. Here is part of their conversation.

SACHA: First of all, I’d like to express my sorrow for your loss. So sudden. I lost my wife like that three years ago.

MARIAH (pauses): My loss. Well … (she says this very softly, pauses, and then sitting up straight, she leans forward and continues in a stronger voice). Tragic? Of course. His loss? Yes. But it wouldn’t be right to call it my loss. The last years have not been very nice.

SACHA: The two of you were not getting along … at all.

MARIAH: At all … I don’t know when our marriage died. I’m sure he blamed me. But for the last three years he has been going out with other women. Gambling. There’s no use going into all of it. He still supported us, financially, that is. It’s been a nightmare, but it’s over. Fate intervened.

SACHA: You’re relieved…. Maybe more than relieved?

MARIAH: I am totally relieved. But just saying it straight out like that makes me feel … What’s the word I’m looking for?

SACHA: Sounds like you don’t want to say “guilty.”

MARIAH: No I don’t … I’m more than relieved. I’m free. There’s something like hope in the air. I still feel that I’m trampling on his grave … No, that’s not it.

SACHA: Well, you are free to reconstruct your life. Perhaps the hope part means that’s what you want to do.

MARIAH: That’s just what I want to do. There’s a lot of hard work ahead of me.

Sacha makes two mistakes. One relates to objective empathy. He reverts to the “grieving widow” stereotype in his first statement. The other relates to subjective empathy, also in his first statement. He compares her loss to his. Catching himself, he takes his mind off himself and listens intently to what she has to say. She responds to his brief empathic responses by telling her story, expressing emotions that she feels, and looking toward the future.

This hardly means that subjective and objective empathy are always out of order. Rather they should be complementary to interpersonal empathy, not central. The literature on empathy is infuriatingly rich. There is no such thing as one pure approach to empathy. The approach taken in this chapter is based primarily on having the needs of the client drive the helping process. If we remember that clients and their concerns are of primary importance, we can learn to instinctively relate elements of both subjective and objective empathy to the kind of interpersonal empathy that immediately serves the needs of the client. Or we can let our own experiences together with the theories and research findings of our profession distract us from what the clients needs. But that would not be professional. This chapter highlights the importance of empathy but keeps the focus on the client. Again, the power of the basics.

Become Adept in the Three Dimensions of All Responding Skills: Perceptiveness, Know-How, and Assertiveness LO 5.2

Before we begin our exploration of empathy as a communication skill, here is a caution that applies to this and to the rest of the chapters of this book. There will be a kind of anatomy lesson in each chapter. For instance, in this chapter we are going to take the process of responding with empathy apart and look at the pieces. There will also be anatomy lessons in probing, summarizing, facilitating client self-challenge, goal setting, action-plan design, and implementation. The purpose of the anatomy lesson is to give you a deeper understanding of the processes involved in helping. Of course, the parts will be reassembled to give you a feeling for the skill-in-action. This process of breaking a skill down into its component parts is hardly restricted to counseling. People do this in learning how to fix an automobile engine, design a dress, swing a golf club, analyze a company’s balance sheets, give a talk, or get in touch with fundamental particles that make up the universe. Learning bit-by-bit is not always “fun,” but it is often the price to pay for competence.

The communication skills involved in responding to clients have three dimensions: perceptiveness, know-how, and assertiveness. Although empathy is an extremely important responding skill, it is not the only one. Helpers respond to clients by asking questions, providing information, asking for help to understand the points clients are making, providing examples, inviting clients to challenge themselves—and the list goes on. Perceptiveness, know-how, and assertiveness are essential for all forms of responding. In this section, however, we focus mostly on responding with empathy.

Develop Perceptiveness as the Foundation of Responding Skills

Know what is going on. “Feeling empathy” for others is not helpful if the helper’s perceptions are not accurate. Indeed, empathy in terms of feeling what other people are feeling—anger, anxiety, desperation, horror, lonely, pain of any kind— can, according to some (Bloom, 2016, 2017), be harmful. But empathy, as used here, is much more than a feeling for the other person; therefore, accuracy is more complicated than one would first think. Ickes (1993, 1997; Mast & Ickes, 2007) defined “empathic accuracy” as “the ability to accurately infer the specific content of another person’s thought and feelings” (1993, p. 588). According to Ickes, this ability is a component of success in many walks of life.

Empathically accurate perceivers are those who are consistently good at “reading” other people’s thoughts and feelings. All else being equal, they are likely to be the most tactful advisors, the most diplomatic officials, the most effective negotiators, the most electable politicians, the most productive salespersons, the most successful teachers, and the most insightful therapists. (Ickes, 1997, p. 2)

The assumption is, of course, that such people are not only accurate perceivers but they can also weave their perceptions into their dialogues with their constituents, customers, students, and clients. Helpers do this by sharing empathic responses with their clients. An empathic response involves accurately communicating one’s understanding of another person from that person’s point of view. Clinically, however, it is accurate only if it is perceived to be accurate by the client (Hodges, 2005; Reese et al., 2016). The understanding, the communication of that understanding, and the client’s view of the accuracy are all components. Accuracy is a relationship thing that is subject to all the uncertainties involved in the relationship.

From one point of view, your responding skills are only as good as the accuracy of the perceptions on which they are based. Consider the difference between these two examples.

Beth is counseling Ivan in a community mental health center. Ivan is scared to talk about an “ethical blunder” that he made at work. Beth senses his discomfort but thinks that he is angry rather than scared. She says, “Ivan, I’m wondering what’s making you so angry right now.” Because Ivan does not feel angry at the moment, he says nothing. In fact, he’s startled by what she says and feels even more insecure. Beth takes his silence as a confirmation of his “anger.” She tries to get him to talk about it.

Beth’s perception is wrong; and therefore, disrupts the helping process. She misreads Ivan’s emotional state and tries to engage in a dialogue based on her flawed perception. Contrast this to what happens in the following example.

Tomas is a Latino male and a new accountant in a medium-sized accounting firm. He reluctantly seeks the counsel of his assigned mentor, Zoe, a senior partner in the accounting firm, because he feels overwhelmed and stressed as a new professional in the firm. He is thinking of quitting. Zoe knows that feeling overwhelmed is not uncommon for new accountants in the firm, but she is careful not to assume how Tomas feels or to provide such clichés such as “it will get better” or to convince him to stay. Instead, Zoe listens to Tomas’ story. She notices that as Tomas shares his concerns of feeling overwhelmed and not feeling good enough, he also noted feeling more than uncomfortable when the office hosted a Cinco de Mayo party and several people dressed in fake sombreros and mustaches. Zoe knew he had performed well and that his concerns seemed to be about feeling uncomfortable, and at times unwelcomed, as a Latino, the only Latino, in the firm. Zoe, who is White, engages in active listening and after working to understand his story said, “Being a new accountant here is tough enough, but it also seems like you have to deal with the added stress of feeling a bit like an outsider, especially with the cultural appropriation you witnessed with Cinco de Mayo.” Tomas quickly says, “Exactly! I feel like an outsider even though people have treated me well, but it still seems like I am not accepted in the same way as my White colleagues who are new.” This opened the door for Tomas to share how he felt and to discuss how the firm could create a more positive work environment for professionals of color.

Zoe’s perceptiveness and her ability to listen carefully and be culturally responsive helped her firm to retain an excellent young accountant and lay the groundwork for the firm to provide a better, more inclusive work environment.

The kind of perceptiveness that is required in order to be a good helper comes from basic intelligence, social intelligence, experience, reflecting on your experience, developing wisdom, and, more immediately, tuning in to clients, listening carefully to what they have to say, and thoughtfully and objectively processing what they say. Perceptiveness is part of social-emotional maturity. Finally, empathic accuracy is important, but it is not a thing in itself. Rather it is something you do with the client. The effort to be accurate may not always lead to perfect accuracy but it can lead to a collaborative discussion with the client that produces the kind of shared understanding, which, in turn, helps the client move forward.

Learn the Basic Know-How of Responding Well

Once you are aware of what kind of response is called for, you need to be able to deliver it. For instance, if you are aware that a client is anxious and confused because this is his first visit to a helper, it does little good if you do not know how to translate your perceptions and your understanding into words. Let’s return to Ivan and Beth for a moment.

Ivan and Beth end up arguing about his “anger.” Ivan finally gets up and leaves. Beth, unfortunately, takes this as a sign that she was right in the first place. The next day Ivan goes to see his minister. The minister sees quite clearly that Ivan is scared and confused. His perceptions are right. He says something like this: “Ivan, you seem to be very uncomfortable. It may be that whatever is on your mind might be difficult to talk about. But I’d be glad to listen to it, whatever it is. But I don’t want to push you into anything.” Ivan blurts out, “But I’ve done something terrible.” The minister pauses and then says, “Well, let’s see what kind of sense we can make of it.” Ivan hesitates a bit, then leans back into his chair, takes a deep breath, and launches into his story.

The minister is not only perceptive but also knows how to address Ivan’s anxiety and hesitation. It is as if the minister says to himself, “Here’s a man who is almost exploding with the need to tell his story, but fear or shame or something like that is paralyzing him. How can I put him at ease, let him know that he won’t get hurt here? I need to recognize his anxiety and offer an opening.” He does not use these words, of course, but these are the kind of sentiments that instinctively run through his mind. This chapter is designed to help you develop the know-how needed to communicate accurate empathic understanding.

Be Assertive in Responding to Clients

Accurate perceptions and excellent know-how are meaningless if they remain locked up inside you. They need to become part of the therapeutic dialogue. For instance, if you see that self-doubt is a theme that weaves itself through a client’s story about her frustrating search for a better relationship with her estranged brother but fail to share your hunch with her, you do not pass the assertiveness test. Consider this example.

Whitney is a new student at a middle school after moving because her mother was transferred for her job. She is a great student who was initially excited about a new adventure, but became the target of bullying after a group of students saw her high test grades and noticed that she was placed in the Gifted and Talented Program at the school. Whitney’s grades, especially on her tests, dramatically dropped. She was referred for counseling to work on “test anxiety.” Howard, an intern counselor, tried to help her formulate a well-organized and thorough plan using cognitive-behavioral strategies to deal with upcoming tests. Whitney, however, does not seem engaged in the relaxation and study strategies and passively participates. Howard suspects that something else is going on—she has never had trouble on tests before and seems evasive and uncomfortable when talking about her relationships at school. Howard rightfully believes there is trouble on the peer front. Whitney, fearful of retribution if she tells a school official, is reluctant to share what is going on. At the end of their third session, Howard asks for feedback from Whitney about how she thinks the sessions are going. He hopes she takes the offer to talk about how what is really going on with her. Whitney simply says, “Ummm … okay I guess.” Although Howard has a strong hunch this was not accurate he ultimately responds, “Well, if something is not okay I hope you know you can tell me.” As a result, Whitney will continue to be victimized and suffer in silence; and ultimately decide that she does not need to go to counseling anymore.

In this case, perceptiveness and know-how were present. Howard observed that something was amiss in the sessions. Whitney avoided talking about her social life at school (typically of great importance in a middle school student’s life). He also demonstrated know-how by following this hunch and soliciting feedback to discuss the source of her lack of engagement in the sessions. Howard, however, lacked the assertiveness in this situation to share his perception of what seemed amiss. This is not to suggest that assertiveness is an overriding value in and of itself. To be assertive without perceptiveness and know-how is to court disaster. You have to be thoughtful and pick your spots. These three dimensions of responding skills apply to all the communication skills discussed in Part II and their use in all the stages and tasks of the problem-management helping process.

Become Competent in the Know-How of Communicating Empathy LO 5.3

Although many people may “feel empathy” for others—that is, are motivated in many different ways by the value of empathy described in Chapter 2—the truth is that few know how to put empathic understanding into words. And so responding with empathy as a way of communicating understanding during conversations remains, unfortunately, a relatively improbable event in everyday life. Perhaps that is why it is so powerful in helping settings. When clients are asked what they find helpful in counseling sessions, being understood gets top ratings (Swan & Heesacker, 2013; Swift & Callahan, 2010), in part because so many of them have an unfulfilled need to be understood. They do not find it in their everyday life.

Start with the Basic Formula for Communicating Empathy

Some say that trying to teach counselors how to respond with empathy is “rigid and wooden.” I believe that empathy can be taught, but all communication skills come to life, are personalized, and become part of one’s interpersonal relationship style only through genuine day-to-day use. The communication of basic empathic understanding can be expressed in the following stylized formula:

You feel … [here name the correct emotion expressed by the client] because … [here indicate the correct experiences, thoughts, and behaviors that give rise to the feelings].

For instance, Kenny is talking with a helper about his arthritis and all its attendant ills. There is pain, of course, but more to the point, he cannot get around the way he used to. At one point the helper says:

“You feel bad, not so much because of the pain, but because your ability to get around—your freedom—has been curtailed.”

Kenny replies:

“That’s just it! I can manage the pain. But not being able to get around is killing me! It’s like being in jail.”

They go on to discuss ways in which Kenny, with the help of family and friends, can get out of “jail” more often—that is, become more mobile—together with ways of coping with both the pain and the boredom of his “jail” time.

The formula—“You feel … because … ”—is a beginner’s tool to get used to the concept of responding with accurate empathy. It focuses on the key points of clients’ stories, points of view, intentions, proposals, and decisions together with the feelings, emotions, and moods associated with them. The formula is used in the following examples. For the moment, ignore the fact that it might sound a bit stylized. Ordinary human language will be substituted later. In the first example, a divorced mother with two young children is talking to a social worker about her ex-husband. She has been talking about the ways he has let her and their kids down. She ends by saying:

CLIENT: I could kill him! He failed to take the kids again last weekend. This is three times out of the last 6 weeks.

HELPER: You feel furious because he keeps failing to hold up his part of the bargain.

CLIENT: I’m not even sure that he’s taking our “bargain” seriously. I just have to find some way to get him to do what he promised to do. What he told the court he would do.

His not taking the kids according to their agreement [an experience for the client] infuriates her [an emotion]. The helper captures both the emotion and the reason for it. And the client moves forward in terms of thinking about possible actions she could take.

In the next example, a woman who has been having a great deal of gastric and intestinal distress is going to have a colonoscopy. She is talking with a hospital counselor the night before the procedure.

PATIENT: God knows what they’ll find when they go in. I keep asking questions, but they keep giving me vague answers.

HELPER: You feel troubled because you believe that you’re being left in the dark.

PATIENT: In the dark not just about my body. It’s my life! If they’d only tell me! Then I could prepare myself better.

They go on to discuss what she needs to do to get the kind of information she wants. The accuracy of the helper’s response does not solve the woman’s problems, but the patient does move a bit. She gets a chance to vent her concerns. Once she feels understood, she says why she wants more information. This perhaps puts her in a better position to ask for a more open relationship with her doctors.

Respond Accurately to Clients’ Feelings, Emotions, and Moods

In keeping with the basic formula, “You feel … because,” let’s start with emotions. The importance of feelings, emotions, and moods in our lives was discussed in Chapter 4. Helpers need to respond to clients’ emotions in such a way as to move the helping process forward. This means identifying key emotions the client either expresses or discusses (helper perceptiveness) and weaving them into the dialogue (helper know-how) even when they are sensitive or part of a messy situation (helper courage or assertiveness). Do you remember the last time you, as a consumer, got a problem resolved with a good customer service representative? She might have said something like this to you: “I know you’re angry right now because the package didn’t arrive and you have every right to be. After all, we did make you a promise. Here’s what we can do to make it right for you….” Rather than ignoring the customer’s emotions, good customer service reps face up to them as helpfully as possible. Here are some guidelines:

In responding, use the right family of emotions and the right intensity In the basic empathy formula, “You feel … ” should be followed by the correct family of emotions and the correct intensity.

Family. The statements “You feel hurt,” “You feel relieved,” and “You feel enthusiastic,” specify different families of emotion.

Intensity. The statements “You feel annoyed,” “You feel angry,” and “You’re furious” specify different degrees of intensity in the same family (anger).

The words sad, mad, bad, and glad refer to four of the main families of emotion, whereas content, quite happy, and overjoyed refer to different intensities within the glad family.

Distinguish between expressed and discussed feelings Clients both express emotions they are feeling during the interview and talk about emotions they felt at the time of some incident. Consider the exchange below between an adolescent client whose mother died of cancer 8 months ago and his counselor.

CLIENT (with little emotion): I don’t know, I usually feel down when I get home from school; my mom was usually home then.

HELPER: You feel especially sad then because it is a powerful reminder of your relationship with your mom.

The client is not particularly sad right now. Rather, he is talking about when he feels most sad. Now consider how the following example—a woman is talking about one of her colleagues at work—deals with expressed rather than discussed feelings.

CLIENT (enthusiastically): I threw caution to the wind and confronted him about his sarcasm and it actually worked. He not only apologized but also behaved himself for the rest of the trip.

HELPER: You feel great because you took a chance and it paid off.

Clients do not always name their feelings and emotions. However, if they express emotion, it is part of the message and needs to be identified and understood.

Read and respond to feelings and emotions embedded in clients’ nonverbal behavior Often helpers have to read clients’ emotions—both the family and the intensity—in their nonverbal behavior. In the following example, a North American student comes to you, sits down, looks at the floor, hunches over, and speaks haltingly:

CLIENT: I don’t even know where to start. (He falls silent).

HELPER: It’s pretty clear that you’re feeling miserable. Maybe we can talk about why.

CLIENT (after a pause): Well, let me tell you what happened …

You see that he is depressed and his nonverbal behavior indicates that the feelings are quite intense. His nonverbal behavior reveals the broad family (“You feel bad”) and the intensity (“You feel very bad”). Of course, you do not yet know the experiences, thoughts, and behaviors that give rise to these emotions.

Be sensitive in naming emotions Naming and discussing feelings and emotions threaten some clients. Cultural sensitivities and personal sensitivities within a culture differ widely. If this is the case, it might be better to focus on experiences, thoughts, and behaviors and proceed only gradually to a discussion of feelings. The following client, a single man in his mid-30s who has come to talk about “certain dissatisfactions” in his life, has shown some reluctance to express or even to talk about feelings.

CLIENT (in a pleasant, relaxed voice): You won’t believe it! My mother is always trying to make a little kid out of me. And I’m 35! Last week, in front of a group of my friends, she brought out my rubber boots and an umbrella and gave me a little talk on how to dress for bad weather (laughs).

COUNSELOR A: It might be hard to admit it, but I get the feeling that down deep you were furious.

CLIENT: Well, I don’t know about that. Anyway, at work….

Counselor A pushes the emotion issue and is met with some resistance. The client changes the topic.

COUNSELOR B (in a somewhat lighthearted way): So she’s still playing the mother role— to the hilt, it would seem.

CLIENT (with more of a bite in his voice): And the hilt includes not wanting me to grow up. But I am grown up … well, pretty grown up. But I don’t always act grown up around her.

Counselor B, choosing to respond to the “strong mother” issue rather than the more sensitive “being kept a kid and feeling really lousy about it” issue, gives the client more room to move. This works, for the client himself moves toward the more sensitive issue—his playing the child, at least at times, when he is with his mother.

Some clients are hesitant to talk about certain emotions. One client might find it relatively easy to talk about his anger but not his hurt. The following client is talking about his disappointment at not being chosen for a special team at work.

CLIENT: I worked as hard as anyone else to get the project up and running. In fact, I was at the meeting where we came up with the idea in the first place…. And now they’ve dropped me.

COUNSELOR A: So you feel really hurt—left out of your own project.

CLIENT (hesitating): Hmm…. I’m really ticked off. Why shouldn’t I be? …

Here is a client with a lot of ego. He does not like the idea that he has been “hurt.” Counselor B takes a different tack.

COUNSELOR B: So it’s more than annoying to be left out of what, in many ways, is your own project.

CLIENT: How could they do that? … It is more than annoying. It’s … well … humiliating!

Counselor B, factoring in the client’s ego, sticks to the anger, allowing the client himself to name the more sensitive emotion. Contextual listening—in this case listening to the client’s emotions through the context of the pride he takes in himself, his accomplishments, and their relationships at work that have gone wrong—is part of social intelligence. However, being sensitive to clients’ sensitive emotions should not rob counseling of its robustness. Too much tiptoeing around clients’ “sensitivities” does not serve them well. Remember what was said earlier. Clients are not as fragile as we sometimes make them out to be.

Use variety in responding to clients’ feelings and emotions Because clients express feelings in a number of different ways, helpers can communicate an understanding of feelings in a variety of ways.

By single words. You feel good. You are depressed. You feel abandoned. You are delighted. You feel trapped. You are angry.

By different kinds of phrases. You are sitting on top of the world. You feel down in the dumps. You feel left in the lurch. Your back is up against the wall. You are really on a roll.

By what is implied in behavioral statements. You feel like giving up (implied emotion: despair). You feel like hugging him (implied emotion: joy). Now that you see what he has been doing to you, you almost feel like throwing up (implied emotion: disgust).

By what is implied in experiences the client is discussing. You feel you are being dumped on (implied feeling: victimized). You feel you are being stereotyped (implied feeling: resentment). You feel you are at the top of her list (implied feeling: elation). You feel you are going to get caught (implied feeling: fear). Note that the implication of each could be spelled out: You feel angry because you are being dumped on. You resent the fact that you are being stereotyped. You feel great because it seems that you are at the top of her list.

Because ultimately you must discard formulas and use your own language— words that are yours rather than words from a textbook and words that make sense to the client—it helps to develop a variety of ways of communicating your understanding of clients’ feelings and emotions. It keeps you from being wooden in your responses.

Consider this example: The client tells you that she has just been given the kind of job she has been looking for over the past 2 years. Here are some possible responses to her emotion.

Single word. You’re really happy.

A phrase. You’re on cloud nine.

Experiential statement. You feel you finally got what you deserve.

Behavioral statement. You feel like going out and celebrating.

With experience, you can extend your range of expression at the service of your clients. Providing variety will become second nature.

Neither overemphasize nor underemphasize feelings, emotions, and moods Some counselors take an overly rational approach to helping and almost ignore clients’ feelings. Others become too preoccupied with clients’ emotions and moods. They pepper clients with questions about feelings and at times extort answers. To say that feelings, emotions, and moods are important is not to say that they are everything. The best defense against either extreme is to link feelings, emotions, and moods to the experiences, thoughts, and behaviors that give rise to them.

Respond Accurately to the Key Experiences, Thoughts, and Behaviors in Clients’ Stories

Key experiences, thoughts, and behaviors give rise to clients’ feelings, emotions, and moods. Of course, they are important parts of clients’ stories in themselves. Remember: helpers must work at understanding clients through their experiences, thoughts, behaviors, emotions, feeling, and moods. The “because … ” in the empathic-response formula links all of these elements together. In the following example, the client, a graduate student in law school, is venting his frustration.

CLIENT (heatedly): You know why he got an A? He took my notes and disappeared. I didn’t get a chance to study them. And I never even confronted him about it.

HELPER: You feel doubly angry because not only did he steal your notes, but also you let him get away with it.

The response specifies both the client’s experience (the theft) and his behavior (in this case, a failure to act) that give rise to his distress. His anger is directed not only at his classmate but also himself.

In the following example, a man who was assaulted and robbed has been talking to a social worker to help cope with his fears of going out. Before the assault, he had never worried about being unsafe in the city. Now he sees danger everywhere.

CLIENT: This gradual approach of getting back in the swing of things seems to be working. Last night I went out without someone going with me. First time. I have to admit that I was scared. But I think I’ve learned how to be careful. Last night was important. I feel I can begin to move around again.

HELPER: You feel comfortable with the one-step-at-a-time approach you’ve been taking. And it paid off last night when you regained a big chunk of your freedom.

CLIENT: That’s it! I know I’m going to be free again…. Here’s what I’ve been thinking of doing….

The client is talking about success in implementing a course of action. The helper’s response recognizes the client’s satisfaction and also how important it is for the client to feel both safe and free. As observed, empathy is not simply repeating or rephrasing what has been said. Empathy provided understanding and clarity, a form of support that can reinforce emotions and behaviors, which can help clients move on. In this example, the client moves on to describe the next phase of his program. He is moving forward.

Another client, after a few sessions spread out over 6 months, says something like this about the progress she is making in rebuilding her life after a devastating car accident. She is back at work and has been working with her partner at rebuilding their relationship.

CLIENT (talking in an animated way): I really think that things couldn’t be going better. I’m doing very well at my new job, and Thomas isn’t just putting up with it. He thinks it’s great. He and I are getting along better than ever, even sexually, and I never expected that. We’re both working at our relationship. I guess I’m just waiting for the bubble to burst.

HELPER: You feel great because things have been going better than you ever expected—and it seems almost too good to be true.

CLIENT: Well, a “bubble bursting” might be the wrong image. I think there’s a difference between being cautious and waiting for disaster to strike. I’ll always be cautious, but I’m finding out that I can make things come true instead of sitting around waiting for them to happen as I usually do. I guess I’ve got to keep making my own luck.

This client talks about her experiences, attitudes, and behaviors and expresses feelings, the flavor of which is captured in the helper’s response. The response, capturing as it does both the client’s enthusiasm and her lingering fears, is quite useful because the client makes an important distinction between reasonable caution and expecting to worst to happen. She moves on to her need to make things happen, to become more of an agent in her life.

In another example, the client, who is hearing impaired, has been discussing ways of becoming, in her words, “a full-fledged member of my extended family.” The discussion between client and helper takes place through a combination of lip reading and signing.

CLIENT (enthusiastically): Let me tell you what I’m thinking of doing…. First of all, I’m going to stop fading into the background in family and friends’ conversation groups. I’ll be the best listener there. And I’ll get my thoughts across even if I have to use props. That’s how I really am … inside, you know, in my mind.

HELPER: Sounds exciting. You’re thinking of getting right into the middle of things … where you think you belong. You might even try a bit of drama.

CLIENT: And I think that, well, socially, I’m pretty smart. So I’m not talking about being melodramatic or anything. I can do all this with finesse, not just barge in.

HELPER: You’ll do it in a natural way…. Draw me a couple of pictures of what this would look like.

The client comes up with a proposal for a course of action that will help her take her “rightful place” in conversations with family and friends, thus setting her agenda. The helper’s response recognizes her enthusiasm and sense of determination. They go on to have a dialogue about practical tactics.

When clients announce key decisions or express their resolve to do something, it is important to recognize the core of what they are saying. In the following example, a client being treated for social phobia has benefited greatly from cognitive-behavioral therapy. For instance, in uncomfortable social situations he has learned to block self-defeating thoughts and to keep his attention focused externally—on the social situation itself and on the agenda of the people involved—instead of turning in on himself.

CLIENT (emphatically): I’m not going to turn back. I’ve had to fight to get where I am now. But I can see how easy it could be to slide back into my old habits. I bet a lot of people do. I see it all around me. People make resolutions and then they don’t follow through.

HELPER: Even though it’s possible for you to give up your hard-earned gains, you’re not going to do it. You’re just not.

CLIENT: But what can I do to make sure that I won’t? I’m convinced I won’t, but ….

HELPER: You need some ratchets. They’re the things that keep roller-coaster cars from sliding back. You hear them going click, click, click on the way up.

CLIENT: Ah, right! But I need psychological ones….

HELPER: And social ones….What’s kept you from sliding back so far?

This client is in the implementing-the-action-program stage. In a positive psychology mode, the counselor focuses on his successes. They go on to discuss the kind of “ratchets” he needs to keep him from backsliding.

Adopt Useful Tactics for Responding with Empathy

Here are some hints regarding behaviors that will help you deliver empathy more naturally and with improved quality.

Give yourself time to think Beginners sometimes jump in too quickly with an empathic response when the client pauses. “Too quickly” means that they do not give themselves enough time to reflect on what the client has just said in order to identify the core message being communicated. Watch video clips of competent helpers. They often pause and allow themselves to assimilate what the client is saying.

Use short responses As I have said before, I find that the helping process goes best when I engage the client in a dialogue rather than give speeches or allow the client to ramble. In a dialogue, the helper’s responses can be relatively frequent, but lean and trim. In trying to be accurate, the novice helper is often longwinded, especially if he or she lets the client go on and on before responding. Again, the question “What is the core of what this person is saying to me?” can help you make your responses short, concrete, and accurate.

Gear your response to the client, but remain yourself If a client speaks animatedly, telling you how he finally got his partner to listen to his point of view about a new venture, and you reply accurately but in a flat, dull voice, your response is not fully empathic. This does not mean that you should mimic your clients, go overboard, or not be yourself. It means that part of being with the client is sharing in a reasonable way in his or her emotional tone. Consider this example:

12-YEAR-OLD CLIENT: My teacher started picking on me from the first day of class. I don’t fool around more than anyone else in class, but she gets me anytime I do. I think she’s picking on me because she doesn’t like me. She doesn’t yell at Bill Smith, and he acts funnier than I do.

COUNSELOR A: This is a bit perplexing. You wonder why she singles you out for so much discipline.

Counselor A’s language is stilted, not in tune with the way a 12-year-old speaks. Here’s a different approach.

COUNSELOR B: You’re mad because the way she picks on you seems unfair.

On the other hand, helpers should not adopt a language that is not their own just to be on the client’s wavelength. An older counselor using “hip” language or slang with a young client can backfire; it can sound ludicrous.

Respond Selectively to Core Client Messages

It is impossible to respond with empathy to everything a client says. Therefore, as you listen to clients, make every attempt to identify and respond to what you believe are core messages—that is, the heart of what the client is saying and expressing, especially if the client speaks at length. Sometimes this selectivity means paying particular attention to one or two messages even though the client communicates many. For instance, a young woman, in discussing her doubts about marrying her companion, says at one time or another during a session that she is tired of his sloppy habits, is not really interested in his friends, wonders about his lack of intellectual curiosity, is dismayed at his relatively low level of career aspirations, and resents the fact that he faults her for being highly ambitious.

COUNSELOR: The picture you paint doesn’t look that promising, but the mismatch in career expectations is especially troubling.

CLIENT: You know, I’m beginning to think that Jim and I would be pretty good friends, even because we’re so different. But partners? Maybe that’s pushing it.

In this example, the counselor’s empathic response helps the client herself to identify what is a core issue. The counselor follows her lead. In the spirit of inclusive empathy, the counselor believes that she can take the lead in exploring her relationship. After all, it is her relationship. His summary empathic response at the end allows her to question the direction in which she and her friend are headed. Of course, because clients are not always so obliging, helpers must continually ask themselves as they listen, “What is key? What is most important here?” and then find ways of checking it out with the client. This helps clients sort out things that are not clear in their own minds.

Responding to what is key sometimes means focusing on experiences or actions or feelings rather than all three. Consider the following example of a client who is experiencing stress because of his wife’s poor health and concerns at work.

CLIENT: This week I tried to get my wife to see the doctor, but she refused, even though she fainted a couple of times. The kids had no school, so they were underfoot almost constantly. I haven’t been able to finish a report my boss expects from me next Monday.

HELPER: It’s been a lousy week all the way around.

CLIENT: As bad as they come. When things are lousy both at home and at work, there’s no place for me to relax. I just want to get the hell out of the house and find some place forget it all…. Almost run away…. But I can’t…. I mean I won’t.

Here the counselor chooses to emphasize the feelings of the client because she believes that his feelings of frustration and irritation are uppermost in his consciousness right now. This helps him move deeper into the problem situation—and then find a bit of resolve at the bottom of the pit.

At another time or with another client, the emphasis might be quite different. In the next example, a young woman is talking about her problems with her father.

CLIENT: My dad yelled at me all the time last year about how I dress. But just last week I heard him telling someone how nice I looked. He yells at my sister about the same things he ignores when my younger brother does them. Sometimes he’s really nice with my mother and other times, too much of the time, he’s just awful—demanding, grouchy, sarcastic.

HELPER: The inconsistency is really getting to you.

CLIENT: Absolutely! It’s hard for all of us to know where we stand. I hate coming home when I’m not sure which “dad” will be there. Sometimes I come late to avoid all this. But that makes him even madder.

In this response, the counselor emphasizes the client’s experience of her father’s inconsistency. It hits the mark and she explores the problem situation further.

Respond to the Context, Not Just to the Words

A good empathic response is based not just on the client’s immediate words and nonverbal behavior. It also takes into account the context of what is said, everything that “surrounds” and permeates a client’s statement. This client may be in crisis. That client may be doing a more leisurely “taking stock” of where he is in life. You are listening to clients in the context of their lives. The context modifies everything the client says.

Consider this case. Jeff, a White teenager, is accused of beating a Black youth whose car stalled in a White neighborhood. The beaten youth is still in a coma. When Jeff talks to a court-appointed counselor, the counselor listens to what Jeff says in light of Jeff’s upbringing and environment. The context includes his family, the people he interacts with in his neighborhood, the racist attitudes of many people in his blue-collar neighborhood, the sporadic violence there, the fact that his father died when Jeff was in elementary school, a somewhat indulgent mother with a history of alcoholism, and easy access to drugs, the “cultural voices” he has listened to with regards to African Americans, and the cultural voices he has listened to at school and at church. Jeff is what he is in part because of all the cultural influences in his life. The following interchange takes place.

JEFF: I don’t know why I did it. I just did it, me and these other guys. We’d been drinking a bit and smoking up a bit—but not too much. It was just the whole thing.

HELPER: Looking back, it’s almost like it’s something that happened to you rather than something you did, and yet you know, somewhat bitterly, that you actually did it.

JEFF: More than bitter! I feel so ashamed … so stupid. I’ve screwed two lives, that kid who did nothing to deserve what happened and my own. It’s not like I got up that morning saying that I was going to bash someone that day.

The counselor’s response is in no way an attempt to excuse Jeff’s behavior, but it does factor in some of the environmental realities. Later on, he will help Jeff challenge himself to decide whether he is to remain a victim of his environment in terms of the prejudices he has acquired, gang membership, family history, and the like or whether he has the convictions, the will, and the guts to do something about it.

Learn How to Recover from Inaccurate Understanding

Although helpers should strive to be accurate in the understanding they communicate, all helpers can be inaccurate at times. You may think you understand the client and what he or she has said only to find out, when you share your understanding, that you were off the mark. Therefore responding with empathy is a perception-checking tool. If the helper’s response is accurate, the client often tends to confirm its accuracy in two ways. The first is some kind of verbal or nonverbal indication that the helper is right. That is, the client nods or gives some other nonverbal cue or uses some assenting word or phrase such as “that’s right” or “exactly.” This happens in the following example, in which a client who has been arrested for selling drugs is talking to his probation officer.

HELPER: So your neighborhood makes it easy to do things that can get you into trouble.

CLIENT: You bet it does! For instance, everyone’s selling drugs. You not only end up using them, but you begin to think about pushing them. It’s just too easy.

On the other hand, when a response is inaccurate, the client often lets the counselor know in different ways. He or she may stop dead, fumble around, go off on a different tangent, tell the counselor “That’s not exactly what I meant,” or even try to get the helper back on track. Helpers need to be sensitive to all these cues. In the following example, Ben, a man who lost his wife and daughter in a train crash, has been talking about the changes that have taken place since the accident.

HELPER: So you don’t want to do a lot of the things you used to do before the accident. For instance, you don’t want to socialize much anymore.

BEN (pausing a long time): Well, I’m not sure that it’s a question of wanting to or not. I mean that it takes much more energy to do a lot of things. It takes so much energy for me just to phone others to get together. It takes so much energy sometimes being with others that I just don’t try.

HELPER: It’s like a movie of a man in slow motion—it’s so hard to do almost anything.

BEN: Right. I’m in low gear, grinding away. And I don’t know how to get out of it.

Ben says that it is not a question of motivation but of energy. The difference is important to him. By picking up on it, the helper gets the interview back on track. Ben wants to regain his old energy but he does not know how. His “lack of energy” is most likely some form of depression. And there are a number of ways to help clients deal with depression. This provides an opening for moving the helping process forward.

If you are intent on understanding your clients, they will not be put off by occasional inaccuracies on your part. If the relationship is solid, clients will read your intent and not just the degree of your accuracy. In a sense, there is no such thing as perfect accuracy or the right kind of accuracy or the right degree of accuracy (Biesanz & Human, 2010; Lewis & Hodges, 2012). Fig 4-1 suggests a way of recovering from a failure to understand the client accurately, but recovering from inaccuracy is something that you and your client do together. It can be a relationship building interaction, part of the give-and-take of therapy.

Use Empathy Wisely to Achieve a Number of Therapeutic Goals LO 5.4

Empathy is not just a value translated into a communication skill. It is also a tool for achieving a number of therapeutic goals. Here are three of them. See if you can think of others.

Use Empathy throughout the Helping Process

Responding with empathy is a mode of human contact, a relationship builder, a conversational lubricant, and a perception-checking intervention. It is always useful. Driscoll (1984), in his common sense way, referred to empathic responses as “nickel-and-dime interventions that each contribute only a smidgen of therapeutic movement, but without which the course of therapeutic progress would be markedly slower” (p. 90). Because empathic responses provide a continual trickle of understanding, it is a way of providing support for clients throughout the helping process. It is never wrong to let clients know that you are trying to understand them from their frame of reference. Of course, thoughtful listening and processing can lead to empathic responses that are much more than “nickeland- dime” interventions. Clients who feel they are being understood participate more effectively and more fully in the helping process. Because responding with empathy helps build trust, it paves the way for the helper to use stronger interventions, such as inviting clients to engage in self-challenge.

While responding with empathy is an excellent tool for building the helping relationship, it also acts as a stimulus at every stage and step of the process. When clients are understood, they tend to move forward, however “moving forward” is defined. Responding with empathy helps clients move forward early on if it helps clients explore a problem situation or an undeveloped opportunity more realistically. Later empathy helps clients identify and explore possibilities for a better future, craft change agendas, or explore their degree of commitment to an agenda. Once goals are set, empathy helps clients clarify action strategies and set of an action plan. In the action phase, helpers use empathy to help clients identify obstacles to action, overcome them, and accomplish goals.

In the following example, a young woman visits the student services center at her college to discuss an unwanted pregnancy.

CLIENT: And so here I am, 2 months pregnant. I don’t want to be pregnant. I’m not married, and I don’t even love the father. To tell the truth, I don’t even think I like him. Oh, Lord, this is something that happens to other people, not me! I wake up thinking this whole thing is unreal. Now people are trying to push me toward abortion.

HELPER: You’re still so amazed that it’s almost impossible to accept that it’s true. To make things worse, people are telling you what to do.

CLIENT: Amazed? I’m stupefied! Mainly, at my own stupidity for getting myself into this. I’ve never had such an expensive lesson in my life. But I’ve decided one thing. No one, no one is going to tell me what to do now. I’ll make my own decisions.

After the helper’s empathic response, self-recrimination over her lack of selfresponsibility helps the client make a stand. She says she wants to capitalize on a very expensive mistake. It often happens that empathic responses that hit the mark put pressure on clients to move forward. So responding with empathy, even though it is a communication of understanding, is also part of the socialinfluence process.

Use Empathic Responses as a Mild Social-Influence Process

Because helpers cannot respond with empathy to everything their clients say, they are always searching for core messages. They are forced into a selection process that influences the course of the therapeutic dialogue. So even responding with empathy can be part of the social-influence dimension of counseling mentioned in Chapter 3. Helpers believe that the messages they select for attention are core primarily because they are core for the client. But helpers also believe, at some level, that certain messages should be important for the client. Positive psychologists, for example, suggest the use of positive empathy “a type of empathy response that focuses on a client’s hidden message of desire for a better life” (Conoley, Pontrellie, Oromendia, Del Carmen Bellow, & Naagata, 2015). Consider an example of a father who has been continually beating himself up over how he is dealing with his son’s poor academic performance.

CLIENT: I am a terrible parent. I lose my temper and blow up when my son tells me he had another bad report card.

HELPER: Could it be that you’re being too hard on yourself? If I read you right, you really value being levelheaded and want to be a good father to your son.

CLIENT: I never thought about it that way. I guess I am being too hard on myself the same way I am being too hard on him.

Such an empathic response can help clients focus on their desires and to focus on approach (being a better parent) than avoidance (quit losing my temper) goals. Research is clear that approach goals are more effective (Goetz, Robinson, & Meier, 2008). The helper empathizes with the client, albeit from a different more positive vantage point. The helper’s identification of this perspective helped refocus the session and push things forward. The response breaks the client’s chain of thinking focused on self-loathing. Of course, helpers need to be careful not to put words in a client’s mouth.

Use Empathic Responses as a Way of Bridging Diversity Gaps

This principle is a corollary of the preceding two. Empathic responses based on effective tuning in and listening constitute one of the most important tools you have in interacting with clients who differ from you in significant ways. Responding with empathy is one way of telling clients that you are a learner, especially if the client differs from you in significant ways. Scott and Borodovsky (1990) referred to empathic listening as “cultural role taking.” They could have said “diversity role taking.” In the following example, a younger white male counselor is talking with an elderly African American woman who has recently lost her husband. She is in the hospital with a broken leg.

CLIENT: I hear they try to get you out of these places as quick as possible. But I seem to be lying around here doing nothing. Jimmy [her late husband] wouldn’t even recognize me.

HELPER: It’s pretty depressing to have this happen so soon after losing your husband.

CLIENT: Oh, I’m not depressed. I just want to get out of here and get back to doing things at home. Jimmy’s gone, but there are plenty of people around there to help me take care of myself.

HELPER: Getting back into the swing of things is the best medicine for you.

CLIENT: Now you got it right. What I need right now is to know when I can go home and what I need to do for my leg once I get there. I’ve got to get things in order. That’s what I do best.

The helper makes assumptions that might be true for him and some people in his culture, but they miss the mark with the client. Her personal culture has no place for just lying around. She’s taking her problems in stride and counting on her social system and a return to everyday household life to keep her going. The helper’s second response hits the mark and she outlines some of the things she wants. Box 5-1 summarizes factors that go into effective empathic responding.

Review the Case of Alex, the Client, and Doug, the Helper LO 5.5

Here is an example to bring use of empathy to life. The case is based on a real client, but many aspects of the case have been disguised and simplified. It is not a sessionby- session presentation. Rather, it illustrates ways in which one client was helped to ask and answer for himself the four fundamental questions outlined above. The client, Alex, is voluntary, verbal, and, generally, cooperative. Here is the background.

Alex, age 20 years, is a single, Asian American, cisgender heterosexual male who presented at a university counseling center because he indicated being “depressed.” He noted that he had few friends and felt lonely. He desired increased social relationships and also wished he had a romantic relationship. Academically a junior, he was uncertain of his chosen major, Business Management. His grades, although solid (3.5 GPA), have started to slip. What prompted his going to the counseling center was a professor noticing a drop in his grades and “looking sad and withdrawn” in class recently.

Alex was born in the United States and his parents emigrated from Thailand about 5 years before he was born. Alex has a 25-year-old sister. He also has extended family on his father’s side located in the San Francisco, California area. His parents settled in the Southeastern part of the United States in a small-to-midsize city (population about 70,000) that consists of little racial or ethnic diversity. Alex lived in the same house his entire childhood, an area that could be considered middle class. Alex’s parents own a fairly successful buffet style Chinese restaurant that consumed a large amount of their time. Alex and his sister both worked at the restaurant growing up. She graduated from a local university with an accounting degree. She now lives in a large southern city, is single, and works for a Fortune 100 company. Alex has an “okay” relationship with his sister but does not see her often.

His parents spoke only English in the home believing that would help Alex and his sister adjust easier in the home. Alex has never been to Thailand. Growing up, he was often called Chinese and has encountered racism both in his hometown and at college.

When Alex goes to the university counseling center, he has an intake session with a counselor to evaluate his concerns and determine what services he needs. Alex met with Doug, a White male, age 30 who is a doctoral intern. Doug is married and has one child. He grew up in a city similar to Alex’s hometown. It is about the same size and lacks racial and ethnic diversity. Alex likes Doug immediately and asks to have him as his counselor. He likes how Doug listens to him, makes him feel “important" in some way. He also likes that Doug said he would work collaboratively with him. And he appreciated the fact that Doug described the collaborative process (the approach taken in this book), a process that includes Doug’s asking for feedback every session about his progress and their relationship. All of this is very new for Alex. He has never talked to anyone like this.

Doug quickly recognizes that Alex lacks self-confidence and that he does not feel “comfortable in his own skin.” He assumes that the racism he has encountered growing up and in college and the lack of a strong social support system are central to his problem situation. Doug appreciates Alex’s earnestness and his wry sense of humor.

Below is an excerpt from their first session. Alex is describing his concerns— depression, lack of motivation in school, and an unsatisfactory social life.

DOUG: Sounds like things have really been difficult for you lately, especially since the semester started.

ALEX: Definitely. I feel stuck in a rut. I just feel invisible at school, like I don’t matter. And when I am noticed it is because I am different.

DOUG: Tell me about feeling invisible.

ALEX: I hardly have any friends and no one seems interested in talking to me.

DOUG: And you think a lot of this has to do with you being different?

ALEX: Absolutely! Almost everyone is White here and most don’t seem to want to hang out with an Asian. I just wish I were White. (Heavy sigh)

DOUG: That’s a rather big statement, Alex. You feel left out and you believe you are excluded simply because you are not White.

ALEX: I don’t know if it’s that big. Life would be so much easier. I would be judged on who I am and not what I look like. Although I think it is unintentional for a lot of people, I get stereotyped and people here don’t think of me as someone they would date or hangout with … I just thought when I got to college, well, I thought things would be different.

DOUG: Sounds like a very lonely place to be. Especially because you thought college would be different. All you want is for people to see you for who you are. It’s more than just disappointing.

ALEX: I’m angry. I resent being tagged. The list goes on (voice rising). Sorry … I don’t normally talk so negative, but I have just kept it bottled up for so long (voice rising again). I’m just sick of it!

DOUG: So you have to deal with all of this now, tackling a system that seems to be stacked against you.

ALEX: Yes, now. I am just so tired of feeling this way. But how can I take on a system?

DOUG: Just one person against a system doesn’t seem fair.

ALEX: But I don’t want to feel helpless either. You know, like a wimp.

At this point Doug wants to help Alex get away from the negativity that’s pervading the conversation. So he turns to the issue of friends.

DOUG: You say that you are lonely or that you are alone in some sense of the word. But can I assume that you do have some friends?

ALEX: Well, yes. There’s Jake … And maybe Adri. Adri is from Colombia. Jake? I think he’s from New Zealand.

DOUG: Am I right in assuming that you haven’t shared any of this with either of them?

ALEX: Of course, you’re right. They don’t seem to have the problem I have.

DOUG: So even though they are international students, they’re still White? So you wouldn’t expect them to have your kind of problem.

ALEX: Well, Adri’s brown, but very pretty. And Jake. Well, he’s White, but he talks with a heavy accent. Or it sounds heavy to me.

DOUG: So in a way they’re different from most students. But not the same way you’re different. In what ways are they different from you?

ALEX: They are different mainly because they are totally accepted, part of the group.

DOUG: And right now for you, that’s the main difference. Any other differences?

ALEX: Hmmm … Well, they are certainly more social. I see them a lot with other people. Sometimes I see them with each other. And then I feel good about joining them.

DOUG: So they get more involved than you. It sounds like they don’t think a lot about being different. They just join the group.

ALEX: : I think I see where we’re headed. Are you saying that because I’m not the kind of guy that pushes himself? … Maybe “pushes” is the wrong word. Adri and Jake just join the group. They involve themselves with others. They don’t even think of being different or being excluded.

ALEX: I don’t mean to “head” anywhere. I guess I’m trying to get both of us to see the bigger picture. You know, look at things from different angles. A significant difference is that they are not Asian.

ALEX: : They both “pass” for White. I don’t come close.

Doug remained empathic throughout and allowed Alex to express the strong emotions he was having and that he had kept bottled up. But how can Doug help Alex, one person, take on an unfair system? The entrepreneur in Doug is thinking about a lot of things. How do you stop being just one person? Where do you find partners? How do you crack a system? How can a system crack itself? The questions go on and on, setting the tone for the rest of their encounters. But one thing is uncertain: Alex, helped by Doug, has to start NOW. This is the way Doug starts:

DOUG: Alex, if you had the life you thought you were going have here at the college, what would it look like? What would be going on that is not going. Describe it to me. I’ll help you do it.

So even in their first meeting, Doug helps Alex move to Stage II of the helping process. Describing a better future is a way of letting a little fresh air into the room.

Explore the Shadow Side of Responding LO 5.6

Some helpers are poor communicators without even realizing it. Many responses that novice or inept helpers make are really poor substitutes for accurate empathic responses. Consider the following example, which includes a range of such responses. Rami is a middle-aged man who has been caught up in an economic collapse. His immediate problem is that his house if being foreclosed. His wife, who until recently did not work outside the home, works as cashier in a supermarket. He has one son in college and another who is about to graduate from high school. His extremely constrained financial condition means that the older son will have to transfer to a state school or even drop out of college. His younger son has no chance of going to the college of his choice. This is his second visit to a counselor in a mental health clinic. In the first session, he said he wanted to “talk through” some issues relating to the “financial transition” he was going through. He was in very difficult financial straits, but appeared to be managing fairly well under the circumstances. In this session, after talking about a number of transition issues, he begins speaking in a rather strained voice and avoids eye contact with the counselor.

Something else is bothering me a bit …. More than a bit. It’s driving me crazy. The reason I’m in such a desperate position is that a partner of mine, seeing the crash coming, robbed me blind. And I mean blind. I didn’t see it coming. He manipulated the finances of our partnership and without going into the details I found myself high and dry. (He pauses) I trusted him. I thought we were more than partners. I thought we were friends. To make things worse, everything he did to defraud me was either impossible to prove or legal. He’s ruined me. Worse. He’s ruined my family. But I think I’ve found a way of getting back at him. It won’t get my money back. But the honor of my family will be restored. Right now that’s all I can think of. I wasn’t born or raised here. Back home I’d probably be bound to hunt him down and kill him. That I wouldn’t do. But I’ve hunted him down financially and found ways of doing him in. And I wouldn’t be doing anything illegal. No one will know who did it.

Rami pauses and looks at a piece of art on the wall. What would you do or say? The following are some possibilities that are better avoided.

No response It can be a mistake to say nothing, though cultures differ widely in how they deal with silence (Sue & Sue, 1990). In North American culture, generally speaking, if the client says something significant, respond to it, however briefly. Otherwise, the client may think that what he or she has just said does not merit a response. Do not leave Rami sitting there stewing in his own juices.

Distracting questions Some helpers, like many people in everyday life, cannot stop themselves from asking questions. Instead of responding with empathy, a counselor might ask something like, “Are you sure there is no way to get your money back?” “Did you confront him?” Responses like this ignore Rami’s key messages and the feelings he has expressed and focuses rather on the helper’s off-target agenda to get more information.

Clichés A counselor might say, “Given the greed that has crept into our culture, I’m not at all surprised that things like this happen.” Or “The workplace these days is so competitive. It’s not uncommon for things like this to come up.” This is cliché talk. It turns the helper into an insensitive instructor and must sound dismissive to the client. Clichés are hollow. The helper is saying, in effect, “You don’t really have a problem at all because a lot of this stuff goes on.” Clichés are a very poor substitute for understanding.

Interpretations For some helpers, interpretive responses based on their theories of helping seem more important that expressing understanding. Such a counselor might say something like, “Rami, have you ever thought that revenge will cure nothing and probably make things worse? Revenge is a way of selling yourself short.” Here the counselor fails to respond to the client’s feelings, sounds moralistic, ignores key messages (such as the meaning of revenge in Rami’s culture), and is dismissive.

Advice In everyday life, giving unsolicited advice is extremely common. It happens in counseling, too. For instance, a counselor might say to Rami, “Hey, focus on your financial and family concerns. Do what you probably do best. It’s a business problem. How many different ways can you solve it?” Advice giving at this stage is out of order and, to make things worse, the advice given has a cliché flavor to it. Furthermore, advice giving robs clients of self-responsibility. That said, in some cultures clients expect helpers to give advice. Expecting to get advice may also be part of any given client’s personal culture. In these cases, there are ways of giving advice that elicits the client’s collaboration. I say something like this: “let’s see. If I was in a situation like yours, here are a couple of things I might do.”

Parroting Responding with empathy does not mean merely repeating what the client has said. Such parroting is a parody of responding with empathy. Reread what Rami said, and then evaluate the following response.

COUNSELOR: So, Rami, your so-called friend read the economy right, devised his dirty little plan, and pulled it off before you even began to realize what was happening. As you looked at the whole mess, you realized there was little you could do financially. You and your family were already done in. And in the culture you come from that kind of rotten behavior calls for a strong response. You don’t want to get into more trouble than you’re already in, but there’s one thing you can do. You can get your revenge. That’s not going to save you financially, but somehow or either it will put things back in balance, at least some kind of social balance. And there’s some satisfaction to that.

Most of this is accurate, but it sounds awful. Mere repetition or restatement or paraphrasing carries no sense of real understanding of, no sense of being with, the client. Real understanding, because it passes through you, should convey some part of you. Parroting doesn’t. To avoid parroting, tap into the processing you’ve been doing as you listened, consider what is key, come at what the client has said from a slightly different angle, use your own words, note the emotion, but don’t say too much. Remember the saying: “The person who says too much says nothing.”

Sympathy and agreement Being interpersonally empathic is not the same as agreeing with the client or being sympathetic. An expression of sympathy has much more in common with pity, compassion, commiseration, and condolence than with empathic understanding (Clark, 2010b). Although in many cultures these are fully human traits, they are not particularly useful in counseling. Sympathy denotes agreement, whereas empathy denotes understanding and acceptance of the person of the client. At its worst, sympathy is a form of collusion with the client. Note the difference between Counselor A’s response to Rami and Counselor B’s response.

COUNSELOR A: Boy, I can see that it’s really hard to tell a story like this. As a successful businessman, you’re probably saying to yourself, “How did I ever let this happen to me?” I know I’d feel awful. It’s even worse for someone who is as self-confident as you usually are.

Rami (pauses): I guess so.

Rami does not respond very enthusiastically to collusion-talk. He’s struggling. He wants some help. The helping process does not move forward. Counselor B takes a different approach.

COUNSELOR B (pauses): I’m trying to think what I would do. I think I’d be torn between getting my family back on track and seeing justice done.

RAMI: I am torn. I’ve got clashing emotions. But the need to get even is so strong right now. I never thought of it as taking something away from my family. Thought of giving up on my family seems awful.

Counselor B’s response hits a key issue and helps Rami look at both issues that are tearing him apart. Give a critique of Counselor B’s response and then formulate your own.

Faking it Clients are sometimes confused, distracted, and in a highly emotional state. All these conditions affect the clarity of what they are saying about themselves. Helpers may fail to pick up what the client is saying because of the client’s confusion or because clients are not stating their messages clearly. Or the helpers themselves have become distracted in one way or another. In any case, it is a mistake to feign understanding. Genuine helpers admit that they are lost and then work to get back on track again. A statement like “I think I’ve lost you. Could we go over that once more?” indicates that you think it important to stay with the client. It is a sign of respect. Admitting that you are lost is infinitely preferable to such clichés as “uh-huh,” “um,” and “I understand.” On the other hand, if you often catch yourself saying that you do not understand, then you had better find out what is standing in the way. In any case, faking it is never a substitute for competence.

If you catch yourself making any of these mistakes, then find a way to recover. Helpers are not immune from mistakes. In her book Learning from Mistakes in Clinical Practice, Carolyn Dillon (2003) categorizes common mistakes and demonstrates how helpers can learn from them. She describes the “signals” clients send to helpers indicating a mistake is being or has been made. Effective helpers recognize these signals and act on them.

Some Final Words

Duncan (2010) sums this chapter up well: “Empathy, therefore, is work. You can’t take it for granted; instead you have to sort out what the client finds empathic, what engages the client in the work. But it is really worth the effort” (p. 134). Extensive practice in all facets of empathy can be found in Chapter 5 of Exercises in Helping Skills, the manual accompanying this text.

Finally, note that all approaches to problem managing and opportunity finding and developing—including design thinking and action learning—see empathy not only as an important first step but also as a value that should permeate the entire process of consulting and helping.