Many people struggle with knowing how to support others who are enduring tough times, but empathy — the kind, thoughtful key to that support — can be learned, Christy Edwards told participants at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in St. Louis June 25.
Edwards, a pediatric hospital chaplain in Kansas City, led a breakout session titled “Cultivating Empathy: The Path.” She is a member of Second Baptist Church in Liberty, Mo.
“Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person,” she said.
Christy Edwards
She began by describing a situation that happened to her.
“We were going through a really difficult time, and a friend of mine … came up to me and said: ‘Christy, I’ve heard about the tough time you all are having. I just want you to know I work with a lot of kids who are like your son, and a lot of them can’t even talk. A lot of people have it worse than you do. You should feel grateful.’
“Now, this was a kind, well-intentioned person. Do you think her intention was to hurt me? No, I really don’t. Did she hurt me? Yes, she did.”
That interaction reflects hurtful situations that occur repeatedly, Edwards acknowledged.
“So many of us want strong, healthy relationships,” she said. “We want to know how to be able to support others when there are times of crisis and hardships. And that’s a big part of having those healthy relationships.
“But we really struggle as a culture to know what to do — to know how to support people when they’re going through tough times.”
Social connection
In 2023, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, citing a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services statement: “While the epidemic of loneliness and isolation is widespread and has profound consequences for our individual and collective well-being, there’s a medicine hiding in plain sight, social connection.”
“Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost our ability to make strong, meaningful connections with each other.”
“Now, this sounds so simple, right? ‘Social connection’; it sounds so easy,” Edwards said. “But I started thinking about it, and I didn’t see the problem as gathering into groups. We know how to get together in groups, but somewhere along the way, we’ve lost our ability to make strong, meaningful connections with each other, especially in person.”
People can be in a group and still feel acutely lonely, she said “We know we’re surrounded by lonely people. … We know we are with lonely people, and we’ve lost our way of how to make meaningful connections with other people. A big part of making meaningful connections with other people is knowing how to support them when they’re going through times of crisis or difficulties, which we all do.”
“We want to be part of the solution,” she observed. “We want to be part of the healing of this epidemic.”
How to really help
The first step is to “unlearn some things,” she said. “There are so many things that are embedded in us that we blurt out, that we say to people when they share something tough with us. We respond with things that are not helpful. And so, we’re going to name what those things are.”
Edwards led the group to list statements or reactions they have heard or said that were “more harmful than helpful” and need to be unlearned:
- “God has a plan.”
- “Your grandma died. Well, let me tell you about my dog …” or, hijacking the story.
- “Well, why would you think that?”
- “God doesn’t give you things you can’t handle.”
- “God gives the toughest battles to the strong.”
- “At least you have ….”
- “They’re in a better place.”
- “You’ll see them again one day.”
Edwards countered the idea that people say these things because they are not naturally empathetic.
“Empathy can be learned, like any other skill,” she said. “Maybe it comes more naturally to some people than others, but it can be learned, just like learning a new language, learning a new skill. It takes intentionality. It takes practice. And it takes work. That’s not the fun part. But anyone can learn empathy.”
Beyond recognizing empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings, she stressed the importance of defining what empathy is not.
“Empathy is not relationships without boundaries,” she insisted. “Boundaries, whether they’re physical, spiritual, psychological or emotional, keep us safe. We can have empathy for people and have healthy boundaries. That’s part of having healthy relationships.
“Empathy is about shared emotion.”
“Empathy is also not about shared experiences. Empathy is about shared emotion.”
What hinders empathy
She reminded the group of her friend who told her: “A lot of people have it worse than you do. You should be grateful.”
“Three things in this story really hinder empathy,” Edwards said.
Christy Edwards presenting in St. Louis.
“The first one is ‘a lot of people have it worse than you do.’ We tend to compare our suffering to other people, right? … We’re constantly one-upping each other. We’re such a competitive culture, it trickles all the way down into our pain. We want to be the pain winner.”
“The second thing was she was dragging me into gratitude when I wasn’t ready to go there,” she added. “Are you aware of the phrase ‘toxic positivity’? This is an instance of that — where we get so focused on wanting people to feel grateful all the time. … And sometimes, as a culture, we’re using gratitude as a way to completely numb out and avoid these difficult feelings we need to process in order to be healthy and to have healthy relationships.”
“And the third thing was she told me how I should feel,” she said. “In times of trouble and grief, … we’re responding to (people) by saying: ‘You should feel this way. … You don’t even have control over your emotions.’ We don’t want to do that to each other, do we? It’s not supporting; it’s not helpful.”
Examples of empathy
Edwards provided several illustrations of unhelpful and helpful approaches to empathy through role-playing situations. They included:
- “You should …” statements that interrupt the struggling person’s story by providing unsolicited advice.
“We’re world-class fixers,” she said of this unhelpful approach. “Often when people come to us when they are in pain or struggling, they don’t want us to fix the problem. They’re coming to us because they don’t want to be alone in the problem.”
“They’re coming to us because they don’t want to be alone in the problem.”
- Echoing and affirming the struggling person’s statements of lament, mirroring their tone of discomfort, discouragement or confusion.
This is a helpful response that honors the struggling person’s feelings, she said. “If someone comes to you, and their tone is low, think: ‘I want to match their tone. I want to join them. I want to join my friends where they are.’”
- “At least” statements that contrast the struggling person’s feelings or statements with reminders of people in harsher situations.
This response makes things worse, shaming the other person while masking the listener’s discomfort with the situation, Edwards said. “Somebody shares something tough, and we’re filled with anxiety. We don’t know what to say, … and we immediately go into trying to cheer them up, trying to make it better, trying to fix it.”
- Turning the conversation away from the struggling person and talking about yourself, comparing the other person’s struggles to your own.
“It’s not about me, and it’s not a competition,” she said of this unhelpful response. “I don’t need to one-up with how my experience was. … We want to keep the focus on the person who is sharing with us.”
- Acknowledging the other person’s emotions and their reaction to the challenge they are facing and the trauma they are enduring.
“One thing you can do is always validate someone’s feelings, especially if they are different than your own,” she advised. “We always want to validate emotions, even if we think if we were in that situation, we would respond in a different way.”
- Acknowledging the inability to fix the problem but promising to be present.
“Here’s something you can always say, especially if you are a fixer: ‘I wish I could fix this for you, but I know I can’t. I want you to know I’m here to listen, and I’m here as your friend,’” Edwards advised.
“If you get in a situation, and you don’t know what to say, and your anxiety is bubbling up, you can always say: ‘I wish I knew what to say right now, but I don’t. I want you to know I’m here for you. I’m here to support you. I wish I could fix this for you.’”
An important key to developing empathy for others is facing one’s own emotions, Edwards said.
“Until we sit and really get to know our feelings, we can’t connect with other people. In the chaplain world, we have a phrase, ‘You can only go as deep into an emotion with someone else as you’ve gone within yourself.’
“And so, if we don’t spend time sitting in our own feelings, we’re just not able to sit with other people in theirs. And that’s where we remember how empathy is work. That’s the work part. It’s not great fun. It’s very important. … If you validate your own pain, you’re going to validate someone else’s.”
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