How to Fight Stress with
Empathy
How many times have you been concerned about
a friend or other loved one and asked if everything’s all right only to be
told, “Oh, I’m just stressed,” as if there’s nothing to worry about?
We often use the words “I’m stressed”
casually in our everyday conversations, with little acknowledgment of the
adverse effects of stress in our lives. But evidence suggests that we should be
much more concerned about our stress levels than we are.
The Center for Disease Control found that 66 percent of American workers say they lie
awake at night troubled by the physical or emotional effects of stress, and
stress has been linked to many health problems, including obesity and heart disease—especially among low-income Americans. Stress not only affects us, but it can impact those
around us, too, especially our children.
Not all stress is bad, of course. Stress can
also be invigorating or lead us to care about the welfare of others, if channeled in the
right way. Nor is it always avoidable—many of us have lives with stressors
beyond our personal control. But, psychologists have identified key variable
that determine whether stress ultimately affects us positively or negatively:
In my experience, many people don’t recognize
the role that their own perceptions, fueled by biases, play in exacerbating
stress. By becoming more aware of our biases in perception, we can learn to focus
on the truthful assessment of situations we encounter without distorting
reality, thereby remaining calm, energetic, creative, and resilient when faced
with highly stressful situations.
As a psychologist, I’ve worked with countless
people who suffer from debilitating stress in their lives, often without
recognizing how it impacts their health, relationships, and work lives. In my
book, The Stress Solution, I provide an outline of the research-based steps I
often give to my clients so that they can learn to manage stress in more
positive ways.
To some extent, we can reduce stress by
simply taking good care of ourselves through getting proper sleep, exercise,
and nutrition. But, to really thrive in the face of stress, we should also work
toward finding meaning or purpose in our work or other activities, and
toward nurturing our positive
relationships using empathy.
Why use empathy? Because when we give and
receive empathy we produce the near magical neurotransmitter oxytocin, which
creates a sense of trust and cooperation—keys to negotiating and resolving
conflict, whether between couples, communities, states, or countries. Leading
with empathy can help those around us to be sources of support in our lives and
reduce the likelihood of interpersonal conflicts.
This essay was adapted from The Stress Solution: Using Empathy and Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy to Reduce Anxiety and Develop Resilience, by Arthur P. Ciaramicoli (New World Library, 2016)
Of course, it may be difficult to imagine
feeling empathic when we are angry or tired. Think of a couple reuniting after
a long day of work. Without first connecting through empathy and love, they may
end up fighting over whose turn it is to do the dishes or simply withdrawing
from each other, depriving themselves of the comfort that closeness brings.
How to avoid this? By practicing empathic
listening with one another instead of falling on our usual patterns.
Too many of us listen to each other with half
an ear, preoccupied and not fully present. We tend to listen with bias, making
up our minds before we hear the full story, or to connect everything the other
person says to our own experience without considering their perspective. We
then make well-meaning comments that do not honor the uniqueness of the other’s
person’s thoughts or feelings, such as, “I know what you’re going through.” Or,
we get distracted by the noise of our internal voices and end up judging or
second-guessing one another, which keeps us from really listening. Without
truly listening, we run the risk of losing connection and making false
assumptions.
What does empathic listening look like? It
requires giving up a self-centered view of the world, focusing and paying
attention, and setting aside biases or distorted thinking to connect with
another person’s emotions. It means coming to your interactions with a true
desire for connection and understanding, rather than winning.
Empathy is easier when we understand some of
the stories we carry inside about who we are and learn to see how it clouds our
reactions and judgments. If we have been humiliated in childhood or starved of
attention, we may have trouble trusting others or feeling comfortable with
intimacy. Couples who fight a lot often carry stories like these about
themselves—perhaps feeling unworthy because of past hurts—that make it hard for
them to be present and more vulnerable to their partners.
But, when people learn to respond with
empathic listening, it can help them to shift from their stories and distorted
ways of thinking. They become less likely to take something done or said
personally, assume that other people hold similar attitudes to one’s own, or
focus only on the negative instead of the positive in a situation.
Here are some of the recommendations I make
to help people enhance their empathic listening and their ability to express
empathy:
·
Reflect what others say to
you by either repeating or rephrasing what
someone has said. It sounds like you had a lot going on today at work,
right?
·
Emphasize the feeling
behind the words and check on the accuracy of your
interpretation. You sound exhausted. Is there something affecting you
at work?
·
Pay attention to body
language. You look tense. What can I do to
help?
·
Ask open-ended questions, to show you are interested in their perspective. How
was your day at the office? Not, Why are you so late?
·
Slow down and take a deep
breath to calm yourself if you are feeling
your buttons being pushed or if you are absorbing someone else’s tension.
Slowing down your emotional reactions can be helpful for truly tuning in to
another person and not being tripped up by your own reactivity. Some people
have found that mindfulness meditation, self-compassion, or compassion training
can help with this kind of emotional regulation.
·
Avoid snap judgments. Empathy means seeing human beings as always
changing and evolving; so you don’t want to judge and shut the person down.
·
Learn from the past. If you are unaware of your own biases and often jump to
conclusions, you will have trouble truly listening to another person and
perceiving them accurately. Know your personal biases and use cognitive
reframing—a technique that involves reconsidering your interpretations of
events, something I describe in detail in my book—to help you reevaluate what’s
actually happening in a given conflict or situation versus what you’re telling
yourself at the time. By engaging your brain in this way, you can rewire it to
be less emotionally triggered and to calm your nervous system.
Learning to communicate with empathy can go a
long way toward building more positivity in your relationships and reducing
your stress. If we all focused more on listening and understanding each other,
the world would be a lot less stressful—and a lot happier—place to live.
By Arthur P.
Ciaramicoli |
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_fight_stress_with_empathy?utm_source=Newsletter+Jan+11%2C+2017&utm_campaign=GG+Newsletter+Jan+11+2017&utm_medium=email
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