Empathy at the Airport

The other day, I read a few stories about empathy at the airport (links below) and it got me thinking; isn't the airport a great place to grow our empathy, because it's full of people? It's a big concrete box bursting with human beings stuck together in one place for a limited time.

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I'm amazed when I consider how many of us could be in the terminal simultaneously. If you are like me, then maybe you only go to the airport to get from point A to point B. We are the travelers; we are the families going to visit other families or if we are lucky, taking a vacation. We are the employees carrying laptops and going to business meetings.

I know that there are other people who love to fly. I see them posting online about their adventures. For these travel experts, I hear that it's simply a joy for them to move so fast and so far and to put their eyeballs and bodies out there in the cosmos.

I can imagine that there are other kinds of travelers that are going on a one-way trip. The guys who are using boarding passes and suitcases to say good-bye for the last time to their home and everything they've ever known, or the gals who are running to a new future in a new town, without looking back.

Rounding out this mass of humanity are the daily airport workers; our brothers and sisters whose alarm clocks and morning coffees are getting them to the big box every day. They are keeping the place moving and shaking by feeding us, cleaning up after us and speeding us on our way. Souls with hearts and minds and fingers and toes are working at the kiosks and cooking in the restaurants and cleaning the bathrooms. People are shunting us like cattle through the security machines or doing a pat-down, and maybe they love their jobs or maybe they don't. I can't leave out the pilots and co-pilots, the flight attendants and all of the other people for whom the airport is their daily commute. There must also be many people I never see or talk to; employees of the airlines and other businesses, the airport administrators, baggage handlers and air traffic controllers.

It's inspiring to have so many people all together in one building at one time. I see this structured system of commercial travel as an opportunity for us empathy builders, because more people means we've all got a higher probability to meet someone new and learn about an entirely different life. Are you going to the airport soon? Perhaps this is your chance to stretch your empathy muscles.

Here are some great airport stories for you to check out:

Realizing empathy blog - Empathy in Ithaca
Empathy at the Delhi airport
Empathy failure in Atlanta

Here's my latest flying story. Please let me know your flying stories in the comments below, I'd love to hear them.

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On a recent business trip, I was flying next to a man who had never been on an airplane in his life. He was older than me, at least in his fifties. I was busy and so we didn't talk until the plane was landing. He was in the middle leg of a three-flight trip, on his way to South Carolina. He wasn't flying direct, he said, because it was cheaper and he had the time to spare.

He told me he was happy, because he was on his way to see his son and 8 week-old grandson. He explained that the flight was a return trip - he had just finished moving everything he and his wife owned to Chicago. It was a long quiet drive on back roads with a big truck, and there were no good radio stations, but it was beautiful. I was confused, and said, "If your family is in Kentucky, why did you move to Chicago?" He told me that he can't stay in Kentucky anymore. He looked a little sad when he said it, like it was a very hard decision for him.

A few years ago, he said he had retired to take care of his wife. Now they were moving to a new town to support his daughter, who was in school in Chicago. He said, "She's in it for the long haul. She'll be spending the next five years studying and doing apprenticeships for her degree, and then once she gets her certification she'll need to look for a job. All of the jobs for her line of work are in Chicago. My son, though, has a career in South Carolina with his wife and family, and they just bought a new house. So I think I'll be flying back and forth for the next ten years, at least."

I looked in his eyes, which held both joy and fear. I said, "It sounds like you are the end of one journey, and the start of another."

He agreed. We were quiet until we disembarked.

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Please tell us your stories!

Janet

A day at the doctor's office

I got a call the other day, telling me I needed to come in for an annual woman's checkup. Since my regular nurse-midwife wasn't there this week, they asked if I'd be okay with seeing one of the other doctors in the office.

I didn't recognize the name. I asked, "Why am I coming in, I don't need a pap, right?" They confirmed that I didn't need a pap, just a standard visit this time. This was a relief since the pap is an invasive and uncomfortable test, and I'd rather not have some stranger doing it to me. So I agreed to see Dr. Lava*.

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At the doctor's office I did the usual dance of filling out forms and handing over identification. I went to go to the bathroom, but it was occupied, so I waited. A person came out and I looked up, she stepped one way, I stepped the other and we pretty much crashed into each other. She was tall, a black woman with a round face, her hair in a bun and wearing red nurse's scrubs. She's squishy, I thought, and I had an odd urge to hug her as we tangled. We laughed, I apologized, she smiled and said, "It's okay" and then I went back to the waiting area.

A few minutes later, I was called in by the very same nurse I had just encountered. This was great, because our earlier run-in made it easy to slide into some friendly chatting. We talked about the weather, she introduced herself as Sheila, she asked me the standard questions. She had just started to pull out the blood pressure cuff when we were interrupted by a knock on the door.

A woman I didn't know poked her head inside. She said to us both in an educational tone, "Hi, Sheila's new, so I'm here to make sure that everything's covered." She didn't introduce herself, just came in and closed the door, then leaned against the wall. Whatever kind of relaxed atmosphere that the nurse and I had been building was now stopped in it's tracks because her supervisor was present. The room got very quiet. Sheila had finished the pre-exam steps and was about to leave when the second nurse told me to get undressed and prepare for my exam.

"But...I'm not getting a pap? What do you mean?" I looked at all of the tools laid out on the counter and thought, are those for me?

"No, you aren't having a pap." She said. "But you still get a pelvic exam. It's part of your checkup."

Then they both left.

I had a few minutes to change into my gown and absorb this new information before the doctor came in. Great, that's unexpected, I thought. Now someone I don't know will be poking around my private bits. Fun-fun-fun, I just hope it's over really quickly.

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Dr. Lava came in. She was a tall woman with dark hair and an uncertain smile that didn't seem to reach her eyes.

She held out her hand and said, "Hi, I'm Dr. Lava, I haven't seen you in a long time." "Um, really?", I said, "Because I don't remember you at all." She insisted that we had met before, a few years ago. I said, "Um, okay." Why are we arguing? Then she asked me to lie down to start the exam.

To clearly paint the picture; I'm wearing a paper gown that opens in the front, held together with ties. So I'm nearly naked, cold in the office air-conditioning and flat on my back on a table about waist-high.

Then there was another rat-a-tat knock on the door, and Sheila came in.  She left the door open behind her as she went to the computer. I'm seeing that door open and I'm thinking, I'm barely covered over here, what's going on, when is she going to close that door? I was about to say something when the mystery-nurse came in and shut it behind her with a snap.

I was a little unhappy before, but now I was really squirming. I was remembering now about another time, during my first childbirth experience at a hospital. Then, a large group of nurses and staff came in to watch the big event; live and up-close. I thought, hey, doctor, I'm not some kind of a circus sideshow to be gawked at, I was a person.

I was vulnerable and a little scared now; with all these feelings and memories running around my head. I made a joke to try to break my own tension, saying, "No, no please, invite some more people in, ha ha."  I started babbling, I think I was talking about my time in the hospital. As far as I could tell, no one was listening to me, or if they did they didn't care, because they didn't say anything.

And that was it. The doctor did her exam, and I was out of there in a few minutes.

I walked out the door relieved that it was over, and feeling like I don't ever want to go back. I don't want to see that doctor again. Next time I'll make a different choice.

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I've had many good, positive experiences with doctors and nurse-midwives over the last ten years. The great ones talk with me, they listen to me. They spend time to build a relationship with me. They treat me like a person, using empathy to build a better connection. This wasn't one of those times, and the lack of empathy in the experience was palpable.

How have your doctor experiences been lately?

If you are a doctor, please tell us about your experiences. Were you trained in empathy, do you see benefits (or lack of benefits) in doing your job?

Janet

*As usual, all names have been changed. 

Practicing empathy with my children - two great ideas

I've heard it from other parents and I say it to myself. My kids drive me crazy sometimes.

"Put away your shoes ," I say. "No" they say back. Or I say, "Please go wash your hands, they are filthy." "No, they're not, I'm gonna go play." Etcetera. Every second of every day, over and over again, most conversations are arguments. The battlefield is our kitchen and every household chore hides a landmine. I'm getting back everything I ever said to my mother and I'm getting it in chorus (from both my girls, as they sing "I don't wanna do my home---work" to the tune of "Do you want to build a snow-man?").

A while ago I asked a friend of mine to write a guest post for us about building empathy in children. I asked her to write for me for two reasons; first, she's an expert with kids and parents. Second; I had no idea how to start building empathy for my own growing children. They were 6 and 2, at the time, and I was totally lost.

Ever since then I've been thinking about it; I've been reading articles and listening to podcasts, all trying to find a way to connect with them and to break the argument cycle. As my kids get older I think, are they ready? Can I try to build some empathy in them, or have empathy for them?

Recently, I came across a quick sequence of podcasts talking about empathy and kids, by Dr. Charles Ray of the Love & Logic Institute*.

RSS Feed for the podcasts.
Or click to hear Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 (each one is about 10 minutes long).

Dr. Fay is a little cheesy but he talks a good talk. He said:

- We lose our patience with our kids
- Losing our patience means we get mad, we get emotional, and
- When we yell, we hurt our relationship with our kids
- Breaking the argument cycle is about having that good relationship, and about building empathy 

I took two thoughts away from the podcast that have really, REALLY helped me to slow down the arguing and fighting. I don't do them all the time, but so far these two have brought a ton of empathy into my house.

"I love you too much to argue." If my child takes the fight to me ("No, I don't want to eat my vegetables.") I can fight back, sure. However, if I do fight back I'm telling them, "Yes, this is a problem between you and me". Instead of engaging them, I should pretend I'm just the messenger of the rule. I have to take myself out of the equation; I'm just the one letting them know what the rules are, and the consequences of those rules. In the end it's their problem to solve. I can help them solve it by having empathy for their situation, but it's not my job to convince them the rule is correct.

The sticky note technique. Let's say I want to remember to have empathy for my kids and not to argue with them. The idea is to pick an empathetic statement, and use it over and over again. If I need to, I can put the phrase on sticky notes and paste them up all around the house. Empathetic statements are things like, "Ohhhh, man. how sad." Or "Ohhhhh. I know." 

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I've been using these two ideas together for about two weeks now, and I've been surprised how well they work.

I saw my 3-year old daughter get up from the table with all of her food left. I said, "What are you doing, you still have food in your bowl." She said, "I'm all done, I don't want anymore." I looked at her and I said, "Ohhhhh, I know. I know you don't want anymore." I just looked at her. She looked back. And miracle of miracles; instead of arguing, she just sat back at the table and ate her food.

Seriously! It worked really well! One empathetic statement cut the fight off at the knees.

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As a parting thought; I know darn well that if I try to do one of these things when I'm mad, or stressed, or tired, I should just forget it. I've talked before about how hard it is to feel empathy when some other feeling is overwhelming me (like anger, or fear). As a result, if I'm already ticked off and ready to explode, this doesn't really happen.  I just know that it's a great tool for my parenting toolbox.

For those of you who are caregivers, do you fight with those you care for? What tools are in your toolbox to stop the arguing? Please add your thoughts in the comments below.

Janet

*Love & Logic is a company, so they ask for money for their services (seminars, videos, etc.). The podcasts are free, and I didn't get any money from them for writing this.

Dear @Shialabeouf I'm sorry I read your interview

Dear @ShiaLaBeouf,

Today I read your interview. It made me sad, and I cried. I'm actually very sorry that I read your interview because it was too personal. I got a very good look inside your head - and as much as I know about you, you know nothing about me - and that doesn't seem fair.

Janet

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If I have empathy for someone I see on TV or read in a book or magazine, is that false? What good does it do for me to build empathy with someone that I'll never meet, and may not even be real? There's a difference between the feeling of empathy (I feel/imagine feeling what you are feeling) and a real connection between two people. What is a 'connection', anyway but a shared knowing and understanding of each other's feelings? If I know your feelings but you don't know mine, then I don't believe it's a real connection because it doesn't go two ways.

In the Shia LaBeouf interview, he expresses a range of feelings; anger, frustration, acceptance, and pain. Through his words (filtered through the interviewer's perspective) I think that I know what Shia is feeling. I am being given exactly what I think I want; the view inside someone else's head. His head. If he's playing a role or he's just being himself, either way the empathy I feel is real.

When I watch a movie, hear a great song or read a story, I get so much more (in most cases) than I ever would in real life. A narrator gives us the background and details. The camera eye follows people around a room, listening to everyone's conversations. It is this omniscience that gives me the false idea that I am connected to them. When I see an actor showing emotions; my mind wants to believe that they are a real person and it's their emotions I'm seeing. I see an actor play a role and go through a tragedy, and I fall into the belief that it's their tragedy.

I know this is just a one-way street. It's not a sharing of feelings; because he's not seeing me as I see him. If my best friend told me a story about how she was attacked by a bear, I would want to help her. I would want her to know that my heart beat with hers, and that I could be there for her if she needed me.

But if someone is on TV and is not a friend, and I see them go through something horrible (or something wonderful) how can I tell them I want to help them (share their joy with them)? They are far away and unreachable. They are not real (and I know they are not real). I crave connection and at the same time, I feel very disconnected and unsatisfied.

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I feel that the best actors are the ones who are able to get their heads inside of the characters they play. They become the people we believe them to be, for the short while they play them. That makes it real - even if it's only for the time that the camera is on and pointed in their direction. There is something real going on; there is a real person in there, expressing real feelings.

Then when the show is done and the microphones are gone; these actors put those characters aside and become themselves again. The fictional character is gone but that doesn't stop me from wanting to keep that feeling alive. I hold on to the moment of belief so that I pretend that the famous actor is still actually the person we think they are. He's still the captain of the Starship Enterprise. [Or maybe he is.] She's still Mrs. Smith [Or maybe she is.]. It's not real; but it feels real and sometimes I want to keep it that way.

Janet

Putting myself in your shoes - staying open

A friend the other day asked me, "What does it mean to put yourself in someone else's shoes, and what does that have to do with empathy? Does it help to put yourself inside someone else's head; and how could you really do that, since you don't know their thoughts?"

We went back and forth, trading ideas and trying to understand each other. In the end, we concluded that by "putting myself in someone else's shoes" I meant that I try to imagine what someone else's life is like. I do this for a specific reason, to leave myself open to building connections with people.

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I (and I think most of us) categorize people automatically. I hear a voice and I think "Oh, that person is black" even if I've never met them.. I see someone dressed in a certain way and I think "Oh, that person is poor" even though I know nothing about them, their life or their situation. I believe that these thoughts are unstoppable; I have them because of experiences I've had, my life, the conversations I've heard and the things I've been taught. I call these "closed" thoughts - if I already know who you are and I already know you are different from me; what else is there for me to know? Why would I be curious about your life? Why would I bother to ask what makes you happy and sad? I already know everything about you from these labels and categories. You are fat. You are sick. You are (insert race/gender/class here).

Being "open" is about knowing I'm going to have these thoughts, but to not let these thoughts stick in my brain. Without them I have the space to make better choices. Sometimes being open is about letting these thoughts go. It's about being calm and relaxed, by using meditation or prayer. When I don't have time for that (which, in a house with kids and a fairly busy life happens more often than I'd like) then I try another way - distraction. Just like waving a shiny toy in front of a crying baby stops the tears; I look at you and imagine as many other possibilities for your life as I can to stop my mind's assumption train in it's tracks.

My point here (and yes, I have one) is that if I'm not closed, I'm open. If I can build a desire in myself to learn about you, I am open to building a connection with you. I'm opening myself up to find out who you really are.

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Today, like some days, I'm watching the people around me and making up little stories about them.

I see two white ladies in their thirties both wearing blue sweaters, ordering their drinks at the local coffee bar. They are talking and seem to know each other. One has very baggy pants and clothing, with short hair and a slightly larger than average jowl line. The other is wearing a more revealing outfit, from this angle I can see the curve of her buttocks as they fill out her jeans. I think "Oh, they are friends, and one of them is the 'neat' one in the relationship, and the other one is the 'sloppy' one."

I hear myself, I catch myself having these thoughts and I try to use distraction to stop it. I start to imagine; maybe, maybe they are sisters on their way to a family event. Or, maybe they didn't come here together, but instead just ran into each other on their way to enjoy a spicy steamed milk and coffee drink, Maybe like me this is an ordinary day of an ordinary week for them, and this is just one step on their morning path.

I'm getting into a groove now, and I push my envelope just a little further outside of what I would consider 'normal'. I pretend something really good; maybe one of them just won the lottery! In that case, they are meeting because this is her lawyer, and she wants to talk about how to spend her winnings. Or, I pretend something sad; maybe one of them is here to tell the other about her mother, who just told them she has cancer. Maybe maybe maybe.

The point behind my exercise is I try to come up with several stories, each one a little more unexpected than the next. Each one a little further away from my first assumption about who they are and what they are doing.

By putting myself in someone else's shoes I'm imagining that their lives could be similar to my own, or I'm imagining that they could be vastly different. It's a way of letting go of categories. It's a way of allowing myself to see all the possibilities in life, and to grow my own curiosity about other people.

Janet

Let's hear a story [part III]; Can empathy help me get along with my Mother-in-Law?

Welcome back - and now I bring you the riveting conclusion! This has been a three-part discussion between us (Growing Empathy, or GE) and our friend MiLP (Mother-in-Law Problem). As always, please share your reactions in the comments section below, or on twitter or facebook.

You can catch up on the first part here, and the second here.

As a reminder, MiL is short for her Mother-in-Law, and DIMT is short for "Dude I'm Married To", otherwise known as her husband.

[GE] I assume that after this conversation you still want to build empathy with your MiL. If not, feel free to ignore the rest of this letter. :)

[MiLP] It's not so much that I want to build empathy with her, it's more that I want to get myself out of the way, so that I'm not preventing my spouse from having a relationship with her that isn't about me and this problem.  And I figure empathy is a way to do it.

[GE] I believe that building empathy means trying to see someone else's perspective. One way to do that, as I've read, is to engage the other person with a curiosity about who they are as people and why they do the things that they do. If you cannot talk directly to MiL and ask her the questions you want to ask; can you talk to DIMT? Would he be willing to help you to understand her perspective? Perhaps talking about the things she's done in her life, the ways she's interacted with people in the past, can help you to see things through her eyes. 

[MiLP] I can't talk directly to my MiL right now.  She's hundreds of miles away, we never talk on the phone, and she's in the middle of a huge move-- it isn't the time.  But DIMT and I talked about it, enacting a conversation in which I'm his new girlfriend and he's telling her what his parents are like.

That was an interesting, and eye-opening, bit of role-playing. DIMT's initial description of his mother made me say, "She sounds kind of awful." All his initial descriptors emphasized the negative: she's bossy, insecure, difficult to deal with, intolerant, she never really listens, etc. (Yes, apart from me, DIMT does have his own issues with his mother.)

Still in character, I replied, "So what you're telling me is that she's horrible and I'll hate her."

DIMT: She's not horrible.

Me: Okay, but that's not what you're telling me.

After that, DIMT started talking about some of the things he actually likes about his mother, her sense of humor, her interest in science, etc.  It made both of us realize that my problem with the whole antisemitism thing really did influence how he feels about her. Not entirely-- she is a difficult woman, very much in the mold of Lady Catherine de Bourgh-- and it makes DIMT not want to connect with her.  But I certainly have poured a fair amount of poison into the well, alas.

That's okay.  Now that we know it happened, we can fix it.

[GE] Something else I've done in the past when I'm having trouble understanding someone else's perspective is to actually pretend that I am them. My friend says something to me, and I don't understand how they are feeling. So I repeat what they just said to myself, in my head, imagining that I just said it. 

Please indulge me for a moment, and let's take what you said above as an example of this. You said, "My MiL's response to this was to tease me, telling me that the restaurant was singling me out, that they were deliberately snubbing me, etc. " Let's say you and I were out at dinner. My tofu lettuce wraps were late, and your pork lettuce wraps came out very quickly. You said to me, "Oh, the restaurant is singling you out, they are deliberately snubbing you." The key is to imagine yourself saying this and asking yourself, why would you say those things?  How would you say those things, what would you be feeling? 

Would you be able to understand her perspective?

[MiLP] No, not via this method.  DIMT and I tried this today, with two examples-- the restaurant one, and one of her actually anti-semitic comments.  And it just didn't work.  I mean, with the restaurant one, I get that she was trying to make a joke because she was uncomfortable because my food was late.  She said as much at the time.  And I would probably have empathy for that with somebody else-- the whole family was clearly really uncomfortable about death, about the fact that my dad had just died, and I get that.  But the whole anti-semitism thing made it impossible for me to give her that kind of break in this regard.

Trying this with one of her actual anti-semitic comments was actually hilarious.  DIMT and I couldn't stop laughing, which was not necessarily a good thing, since we were in a fast-moving car.

It went like this:
DIMT: So give me an example of what my mom actually said.  Play her.
Me:  Okay, so we were sitting on the porch, I was reading or on my computer or something, and she was doing a crossword or something, and she made a passing comment about her nose.  (Some background.  My mother-in-law is obsessed with her nose. It's a genetically dominant trait, DIMT has it, his siblings have it, his uncles have it, his cousins.  When my niece was visiting, she was mistaken for our daughter, because she and DIMT look so similar-- they have the same nose. It's a perfectly nice nose, a bit broad, maybe, but not something you'd notice if my MiL wasn't totally obsessed about it, seriously.  She talks about it a lot as an unfortunate trait, and tends to invent histories whose fault it is.  As you are soon to read.)

Me:  So the thing she says about her nose is this: That the only explanation she has for it is that it must be a holdover from some Russian genetics that got mixed into the purely Swedish genetic stock.  That's where she thinks the nose came from.
DIMT (repeating my original response): MiL, I know a lot of people of Russian descent; I'm of Russian descent; none of our noses look like yours.
Me: Okay, so much for that theory!  (Then we spent a few minutes cracking jokes.)
DIMT: No, you have to say exactly what she said.  That's the point of this exercise.
Me (trying again): Well, maybe you have the wrong kind nose, the wrong kind of ancestry.
DIMT: Okay, so how did you feel when you said that?
Me: I didn't feel much of anything.  A little affronted, I guess.
DIMT: That was probably it.  She hates being argued with (she really does), and just wanted to shut you down as quickly as possible.
Me: By saying something anti-semitic?  That's sandblasting a soup cracker, a bit!

The only thing we got out of it was that my MiL has no filter.  Now, there are people in this world whom I love and adore who have no filter, and it doesn't matter-- I still love and adore them.  My MiL is not among them, and I don't think she ever will be.  She's not an interesting or engaging enough person to make the lack of filter loveable.  

That said, I think I'm done with this exchange.  What I really wanted to get out of it, I've gotten-- I have a clear perception of how I've created distance between DIMT and his mom, which will hopefully give me enough foresight to avoid doing it more in the future.  I don't think that means that DIMT and his mother will be skipping off into the sunset together-- she is a really difficult person and I don't know that they will ever be close.  He just can't really talk to her about the really important stuff in his life, because she can't listen.  That's sad.  The least I can do for DIMT is not add to the distance.  And I think that's where I am.

Thank you for your help!  Couldn't have gotten here without you!

- Mother-in-Law Problem

Let's hear a story [part II] - Can empathy help me get along with my mother-in-law?

Last week we heard from our friend who has a “Mother-in-Law Problem”. You responded, and some of you asked our friend to confront her MiL (Mother-in-Law) directly.

To catch up or revisit last week's post, click here.

As a reminder, DIMT is short for "Dude I'm Married To", otherwise known as her husband.

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[GE] Dear Mother-in-Law Problem,
 Thank you for sending your question. I want to help; so I'd like to start by trying to build empathy for you. :)
 

I can't imagine what you and your DIMT are going through, it sounds like a really difficult situation. You've said that you really want to be able to have more visits with your MiL and the family in general, and you want this because of your relationship with your DIMT. It also sounds like you don't want to be near your MiL, because she might hurt you again. Overall I'm hearing that you are afraid of her; you are scared that being near her will be uncomfortable and even painful. Let me know if that's right.

[MiLP]    So I read this, and it all made sense, until I got to the part about fear.   And that had me scratching my head.  I'm not afraid of my MiL.  She makes me angry.  But the thought of being around her doesn't make me shrink inside, it just makes me roll my eyes.
 

And then I thought, "Are you sure? Maybe you're afraid of her and you just don't want to acknowledge it!" 

So I asked DIMT, and he agreed, I'm not afraid of my MiL. Fear of her isn't a factor here.

This led to a very long conversation between DIMT and I. The upshot of the conversation was this: My relationship with his parents is mediated through him. His relationship with my parents is mediated through me. Neither of us would want to be so close to the other's parents that it would disrupt our marriage, and both of us tend to let the other take the lead in terms of how we, as a couple, interact with one or the other's parents.

As first this realization felt really strange and not good, but then we talked about it some more and realized it was okay.  Neither of us has particularly much in common with the other's parents, and the relationship between DIMT and his mother is way more important than my relationship with DIMT's mother.  That's normal - for us, the opposite would be weird.  If my MiL were my best friend, that would be strange and confusing for DIMT.

This dynamic heavily influences my options, because I am reluctant to do anything that DIMT doesn't want me to do.  He is very, very reluctant to have me directly address the problem-- to "break protocol", as it were.  There is no way of doing that, he thinks, without eliciting a negative reaction from my MiL-- shouting, resistance, upset, etc.  DIMT hates these things, and his mom has a history reacting this way.  (And yes, I recognize that I'm in part agreeing with you, in that this is where the fear in the whole situation lies; it just isn't my fear.) 

Don't be too disheartened that you misidentified the underlying emotion, though.  I hadn't realized what the actual underlying emotion was either, until I started doing this exchange with you!

[GE] Dear Mother in Law Problem,

Wow, I was so glad to read your letter. If just listening to me guess at what you were feeling helped you to have a long in-depth conversation with DIMT, that's fantastic. It sounds like you and DIMT reached some new understandings in how you all relate to each other as a family.

I assume that after this conversation you still want to build empathy with your MiL. If not, feel free to ignore the rest of this letter. :)

I believe that building empathy means trying to see someone else's perspective. One way to do that, as I've read, is to engage the other person with a curiosity about who they are as people and why they do the things that they do. If you cannot talk directly to MiL and ask her the questions you want to ask; can you talk to DIMT? Would he be willing to help you to understand her perspective? Perhaps talking about the things she's done in her life, the ways she's interacted with people in the past, can help you to see things through her eyes. 

Something else I've done in the past when I'm having trouble understanding someone else's perspective is to actually pretend that I am them. My friend says something to me, and I don't understand how they are feeling. So I repeat what they just said, in my head, imagining that I just said it. 

Please indulge me for a moment, and let's take what you said above as an example of this. You said, "My MiL's response to this was to tease me, telling me that the restaurant was singling me out, that they were deliberately snubbing me, etc. " Let's say you and I were out at dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. My tofu lettuce wraps were late, and your pork lettuce wraps came out very quickly. You said to me, "Oh, the restaurant is singling you out, they are deliberately snubbing you." The key is to imagine yourself saying this and asking yourself, why would you say those things? How would you say those things, what would you be feeling? 

Would you be able to understand her perspective?

[to be completed in part III]

Let's hear a story; or Can empathy help me get along with my mother in law?

A few months ago a reader of this blog asked me for advice; she wanted to get along better with her mother in law. I was intrigued, could I do this? Could empathy help?  

I'd like to share our correspondence with you. This will be a multi-part post, because her story is long and deserves a bit more of our attention. So here we go! 

 

Dear Growing Empathy,

I've been reading your blog for a while now, and I really enjoy it. Your method for developing empathy is very different from mine. I tend to construct empathy by imagining a person's circumstances and experience, and how those things might have shaped their choices and the moment they're in. This method has always worked well for me, and it's gotten me through some otherwise empathy-difficult situations in my life.  

But now it's failed me utterly. The problem is my mother-in-law.

I've been married for about 15 years. My in-laws and I have never been close; there is a lot of geographical distance, and we don't really have anything in common. But that didn't prevent my mother-in-law (MiL) and I from having a perfectly lovely relationship in the beginning. My MiL went out of her way to be thoughtful. For example, while the Dude I'm Married To (DIMT hereafter) and I were engaged, we happened to be visiting his parents on my birthday, and my MiL baked me a cake and gave me goofy little presents. It was very nice of her, and I was quite touched.

About 5-6 years ago, she started saying things to me that weren't, um, nice. Sometimes they were anti-Semitic (I'm Jewish; my spouse's family is very nominally Christian). I've been told I have the wrong nose, the wrong ancestry and the wrong upbringing. I always knew my MiL was a little uncomfortable with me being Jewish, but I figured it would vanish over time. That kind of discomfort is not that unusual for a woman of her age and background, and for a long time, her attitude definitively fell into the striving-to-accept track, not the you-are-inferior track.   

Her comments aren't always anti-Semitic. On our most recent trip, for example, we went to a restaurant after our flight landed. For some reason, my order was very late, so that I was still waiting for my food while everyone else at the table had theirs. My MiL's response to this was to tease me, telling me that the restaurant was singling me out, that they were deliberately snubbing me, etc. She went on in this vein for a good half an hour, and by the time my meal finally arrived, all I wanted to do was leave. It doesn't sound like much, but in the circumstances, her callousness shocked me: I was exhausted and hungry, but also seriously shell-shocked; my father had died unexpectedly less than a week before.  

I'd like to get her to stop, but I don't have a lot of options in that regard. I tend to be pretty direct about most things, and ideally, I would just ask her what's going on. But that approach isn't open to me in this case. DIMT thinks it unlikely that she'll admit it's even happening, and asking her would break several of the family's unspoken rules, which might make the situation worse.  

So far, what I've been doing, basically, is duck and cover: I minimize my time in her company, and she and I are never alone. This worked fairly well on our most recent visit but won't help in the long term.

This situation breaks my empathy method because I have no idea why it’s happening. Have I done something to offend my MiL? That's the most obvious explanation, but I don't know what I did, and asking would break protocol.  

I've tried to imagine events or circumstances in her life that might have brought about this reaction.  But since I only noticed the pattern over the course of years, I can't pin down a when, much less a cause.

Here's my question: 

All of this has eroded my empathy for my MiL down to zero, and, as I said, my system to rebuild it has failed. Because I have no understanding of why she's doing this, I have no empathy for my MiL. As a result, I have no desire to visit my in-laws, and so DIMT sees his parents less and less. I don't feel right about that, and I don't think it's fair to him. 

I also think that if I could seize back some empathy for her-- particularly in relation to me-- I would be able to cast her comments in a different light. They wouldn't be any less toxic, but they might bother me less.

So, Growing Empathy, can you help? Can you give me a way of regaining some degree of empathy towards my MiL, so the run up to every family visit isn't suffused with dread? 

-       Mother in Law Problem

Dear Mother-in-Law Problem,

Thank you for sending your question. I want to help; so I'd like to start by trying to build empathy for you. :)

I can't imagine what you and DIMT are going through, it sounds like a really difficult situation. You've said that you really want to be able to have more visits with your MiL and the family in general, and you want this because of your relationship with DIMT. It also sounds like you don't want to be near your MiL, because she might hurt you again. Overall I'm hearing that you are afraid of her; you are scared that being near her will be uncomfortable and even painful. Let me know if that's right.

I saw an interview the other day that talked about how one of the greatest obstacles to empathy is fear. If we are afraid of each other; no matter how much we have in common or how much we might already trust each other - we cannot build empathy. It actually removes any previous connections we have made (reduces it to zero, as you said above). For example, if my next-door neighbor pulls a knife on me, it's really hard to look past the knife and see the person. I'm just scared they are going to kill me. 

If fear is what's going on then I see two ways to look at this; you can try to build empathy (to remove fear) or you can try to remove fear (so that empathy has a chance to grow). It sounds like you've already tried the former, and it hasn't worked. I also think (and this is just my opinion here) if you confronted her directly now, I think the fear would make it really hard to listen to whatever she had to say and to ultimately build a connection. 

Let me know your thoughts on this.

[to be continued]

Errors in conversation - knowing failure when I see it

I'm not the greatest at live conversation. When people complain, when I hear people tell me all about the horrible things in their lives, I become a problem solver. Instead of building up empathy and connecting with their feelings I try to fix their issues. I do this over and over again, but recently I had an experience that was a little different.

-------

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my friend Gina while she had some other people over. Another friend, Sara, was in the kitchen telling a group of us all about her husband who was sick. As she spoke, her head dropped lower and lower. She seemed to be using that tone of voice I've heard when people are trying not to cry; a little choked up, overly high-pitched and false-happy sounding. She was sad, but she did seem to be getting some relief by opening up to both of us about the many fun times her and her husband had together, before the illness. She moved on, describing the very limited life they lived now; they were only travelling short distances, they hadn't seen certain close friends in many years, and they had to carry their medical equipment everywhere they went.

As Sara went on, Gina commented, "Wow, so there's nothing that can be done? Have they tried all the medicines? What about surgery, have they tried that? Which hospital did she go to?" Etc. I was noticing that Gina was doing exactly what I've done so many times - she was trying to fix her problem.

As Gina continued her medical analysis, I realized I was seeing the entire discussion as a spectator, it was like watching a play open up before me. Sara's face had gone blank, and she was numbly answering Gina's questions one after the other. It was clear to me from Sara's reaction to Gina that the 'let's fix you' language was so very wrong; because I could see Sara dropping out of the conversation. She had stopped making eye contact with any of us, and she acted like she wanted to leave the room as soon as she could.

Since I was seeing it a bit detached, I was able to react differently than I've done before. I said, "I can't imagine what that's like for you, how have you been holding up?" I gave her one of my favorite facial expressions - the Curious/Sad face. I use it on my kids sometimes when they are crying but I have no idea why.

It seemed to work - she snapped out of the blank stare, and reacted calmly. She felt her feelings and then moved on, and we were able to move on.

It was clear to me that Sara wasn't asking us to, "Please fix my husband's problem." She was expressing her feelings, saying, "I'm sad, and I want you to tell me that you hear my sadness."

What do you do if someone is complaining to you? How would you have reacted to Sara, or to Gina?

Janet