The Art of Empathy (37 page)

EMPATHIC MEDITATIONS FOR RELATIONSHIP CONFLICT

When conflicts pull normally close people apart, the resulting separations can be as painful as a physical injury. Although self-soothing and
resourcing skills will help, the problem isn't about a lack of resourcing skills; it's about the pain of being out of sync with your loved ones. The following meditations can help mates, family members, and close friends come back together. I appreciate them because they focus on repairing the bonds between people rather than on performing conflict mediation. These empathic meditations help people restore their relationships so that the relationship itself can become a sacred space where people can turn toward the conflict together, as partners and not as combatants. I find that if I can repair the bond with my loved ones, we don't usually need a mediator between us, because when we're able to work as a unit again, we can deal with conflicts ourselves.

My mom called these practices Sufi sitting meditations, but I haven't been able to track them to any particular Sufi teacher or lineage. We can call them Sam's Sufi sitting meditations instead.

FOR A COUPLE

Start by sitting opposite your partner with your knees touching, whether you're in chairs or sitting cross-legged on the floor. Place an item that symbolizes your relationship (a candle, flowers, a plant, a photo, etc.) near the two of you. When you're settled in, place your hands on your knees, left palm facing up and right palm facing down. Your left side is generally thought to be your receptive side, so you turn your left palm up to receive. Your right side is thought to be your expressive side, so you turn your right palm down to express.

Reach your hands toward your partner and gently slide your left palm under his or her downturned right palm as you rest your right palm on top of his or her upturned left palm. In this way, you can create a circle of receptivity and expression, which is what healthy relationships
should
do.

Breathe deeply in this position, but don't speak just yet. Relax into the breaths, and you'll soon start breathing together. When you're breathing together, look into each other's eyes (if eye contact is too activating for you, simply turn your face toward your partner and close your eyes, or make small moments of eye contact that feel comfortable). You can then begin speaking and turn toward the conflict as a couple, instead of turning against each other. If you need structure for your conversation, use my mom's three-step empathic process of
listening
first,
reflecting
next, and
sharing
last.

I have a small caveat: your hands may become
hot.
If so, it's fine to just touch each other lightly so you can cool off.

This practice helps you treat your relationship as a sacred trust instead of a burden, and it's a wonderful way to help both of you become calm and centered together. The communications that can occur in this meditation are usually very deep and meaningful, because your conflict is brought into a sacred space instead of just being allowed to fester. Where you go after breathing together is totally individual, but you go there as a couple rather than as fierce combatants.

When you reach clarity or resolution, close your session in some way that's meaningful to you. Then take the item that symbolizes your relationship and move it to a place of honor in your home. This item can become a visual reminder of the significance of your relationship and the work you do to keep it strong.

FOR A TRIO

A variation of this couple's meditation can be used when people just can't come together on their own. If there's too much conflict, the circle can be opened to admit a neutral third person whose job is to mediate and hold the space for the relationship as an entity. A candle, plant, photo, or other meaningful object that symbolizes the relationship should be placed in the middle of the trio.

In this trio, each person sits with his or her right palm over the left palm of the person to the right, and his or her left palm under the right palm of the person to the left. Each person breathes deeply, focusing on the meaningful item at the center of the group. When the trio starts breathing together, the speaking can begin. The hot hands caveat applies here as well; if you all get too hot, perhaps just touch each other's knees or feet. The physical contact is important, but it doesn't have to be uncomfortable.

With a trio, a triangle is created, so it's important for the neutral third person to focus on the relationship as a whole, rather than taking sides. As the couple speak and hopefully find their own solutions, the third person's work is to remind them of the importance of the relationship first and the issues second. If the couple needs help, the neutral person should use my mom's three-step process of
listening
first,
reflecting
next, and
sharing
last.

When the couple reaches clarity or resolution, the trio should close in a way that has meaning for them and then move the symbolic item to a central
location in the home. Using this symbolic item to create a small altar or shrine for the relationship can be a very healing next step that will remind the couple of the importance of their bond.

WHEN COMMUNICATION REACHES AN IMPASSE

If the partner meditations above don't work and you arrive at an impasse, please reach out for the help of a professional mediator—a couple's counselor, a therapist, or an actual mediator. Sometimes, you really need a third person who can hear both of you and identify the issues and threads that got away from you.

If you can't afford professional support (or if your partner refuses), there are a lot of books on conflict mediation and communication at your library. However, I haven't found too many of them that treat strong emotions as important carriers of vital information. I can understand this, because conflict can be dangerous, but if you're interested in exploring conflict-mediation techniques, be aware that you'll see all four of the problems that lead to the emotional confusion that we explored in
Chapter 3
. You'll also see a lot of focus on anger suppression. Even so, some of these books can be very useful.

I found one approach in a book called
Taking the War Out of Our Words,
by Sharon Ellison. Her approach is valuable because it helps you engage in possible conflicts without unintentionally evoking anger in the other person. Ellison's approach is based on tone, body language, and gestures, and she teaches you how to ask questions that aren't unintentionally interrogating or manipulative.

It's fascinating to observe how we've been conditioned to ask questions, with raised eyebrows that denote surprise and need, and an upward change in pitch at the end of the question, which often demands an answer. No matter which words you use, raising your eyebrows and shifting your tone upward at the end of a question feels more like a demand for an answer than it does like an honest request for information. Ellison suggests keeping your forehead fairly immobile and shifting your tone downward at the end of a question. It's absolutely amazing how this changes communication. Ending a sentence with a downward pitch helps you seem surer of yourself. In fact, newscasters are taught very early not to use up tone at the end of sentences, because it makes them seem uncertain. So down tone has some authority to it, yet when you use it to ask a question, it has an amazing effect—it conveys that you're stating something that's true for you rather than demanding a response from the other person.

You don't use down-tone questions for everything, because that would be silly. If you want someone to pass the salt or give you directions to the freeway, you raise your eyebrows and use up tone. But if you're in a conflict and your partner's boundaries are already impaired, simply reducing the amount of need you convey in your questions can help your partner feel like there's space to breathe. Down tone is grounding, and it's boundary respecting, especially if what you're asking is challenging. Try it with an intense question like, “Are you saying that I take advantage of you?” Say it once with eyebrows and up tone, and emphasize a couple of the words harder than the others. This question can be a scathing accusation if you ask it the right (or wrong) way. Even with up tone, which can seem weakening, this question can be a threat or even an ultimatum.

Now calm your eyebrows and ask that question again without undue emphasis on any word, then end on a down tone. Can you feel that there's a space all of a sudden for your partner to answer instead of merely reacting and attacking? Ellison's choice to use down tone at the end of questions is genius, and it can shift a fight
against
each other into a deep conversation about issues that are actually threatening to your health, your happiness, and your relationship.

If you have relationships in your life that reliably devolve into power struggles and fights, Ellison's work can really help you. She also teaches parents how to work with children without unintentionally aggravating them, as well as how to set boundaries without violence, in her audio book
Taking Power Struggle Out of Parenting.

If you're having serious troubles in one or more relationships, remember to resource yourself regularly. Find areas in your body that feel safe, calm, and resourceful and open up your focus to include the knowledge that you can experience
both
things. You have a relationship that's currently troubled,
and
you have inner sources of calmness, grounding, and focused strength. You have both things. You also have other resources in your life—other empathic relationships with animals, nature, your mindfulness practices, art, music, and friends in your community. Reach out for loved ones and beloved activities when you're having trouble in your relationships. Interaction is food for empaths, and when you have a relationship that's troubled, you need healthy interactions to balance the scales.

In the next chapter, we'll look at the development of empathy in children. As you think about troubled relationships in your life, it may help you to
observe how children develop empathic skills. Luckily, because empathy is a malleable skill, you can actually apply the lessons of childhood empathy development to your present-day life. It's never too late to have a healthy empathic childhood.

C
HAPTER
9

Empathic Mentoring, Empathic Parenting

Nurturing and Supporting Empathy in Children

SO FAR IN this book, we've delved into your empathic skills, your emotions, your self-care skills, your home environment, and your relationships. We've also focused on you as an adult. However, as we learned in
Chapter 2
, your empathic skills actually developed very early in your childhood, which is also when a large portion of your emotional training occurred. In this chapter, we'll look at the development of empathy in children—not only to help you work with children (your own or others') empathically, but also to help you understand how your own development of empathy and emotional awareness may have been supported or impeded in your childhood. Let's start by observing a game we all played when we were babies but that we may not identify as a specific emotional and empathic teaching tool.