Unburied empathy
What we do immediately after we express empathy helps or hinders the connection and alignment we’re trying to build.
My hair is falling out. Ugh. It started a few months ago, and I’ve grown very reluctant to look in the mirror. Each morning, I stare at the bathroom tile and wonder if I’m seeing more of my departed lovelies or if, by some small hope, the dog has been hanging out in there.
It seems to be due to the acute Lyme disease I had late last summer. Lyme is the gift that just keeps giving.
When I went for a haircut a few weeks ago, I was talking to my hairstylist about the sad state of hair affairs when an employee sitting nearby interrupted and chirped, “Oh, that’s too bad. But stay positive! I think your hair looks great.”
I managed to wrestle Bad Tammy to the ground just before she said something extremely rude. She was dithering between “You should look up the term toxic positivity” and “Oh, I’ll tell my five remaining hairs you think they’re awesome. That will make this so much better.” I’m from New York originally, and sarcastic blood will run forever in my veins.
What is it about difficult emotional cues that they so frequently trigger either annoyingly chirpy positivity or attempts to ignore the cue entirely?
Buried and unburied empathy
In 2018, a research team investigated how well physicians recognized emotional cues in conversations with families of critically ill children and how they responded to those cues. The families were in circumstances where they had to make very difficult decisions about their young children’s care.
The researchers found that while the physicians recognized families’ emotional cues 74% of the time, nearly 40% of the responses had “buried empathy.” Buried empathy is empathy that is “buried” by subsequent words or actions. The doctors in the study buried empathy in three ways:
They made an empathetic statement and then turned immediately to medical jargon.
They made an empathetic statement followed by “but” and factual information (similar to the hair salon woman).
A second physician interrupted with medical data.
The buried empathy either stopped progress in the harrowing decision-making or stopped family members from expressing mourning or asking for time to collect themselves. If you think it sounds great that the families became “less emotional,” think again. Noted the study’s authors,
“We recognize walking into the emotion is difficult, and it may seem counterintuitive to invite deeper emotions, such as mourning or overt sadness; however, we also know emotional evolution may be necessary for rational decision making. Shared decision making may therefore necessitate emotional processing.”
Unburied empathy is just what you’d guess: Empathy that is expressed and then not smothered by subsequent words or actions. When the physicians in the study responded with empathetic statements and then simply paused, the families were more likely to talk about their fears, hopes, and dreams for their child. This was critical information for the physician-family alliance needed to reach painfully hard decisions about their child’s care.
Buried empathy is let’s-get-down-to-business empathy. It’s technique. It conveys, oh, I kind of care, but let’s not get bogged down by your negative feelings (because you should be positive! because I’m afraid of encountering raw emotion! because we’re here to reach rational agreement, not talk feelings!).
Unburied empathy is hold-the-space empathy. We’re holding the space for someone to tell the truth about what it’s like to be alive, as author Susan Cain put it. We’re holding the space to go deeper, to build stronger connection. Unburied empathy isn’t followed by “but” or “at least.”
We think of empathy as something we experience and then express, and then they feel better, and then we feel like we’ve been a good partner / colleague / mediator / coach / manager / friend / family member.
This is not wrong, but it is incomplete.
The takeaways
What we do immediately after expressing empathy makes the difference between a stronger connection and a greater distance.
After expressing empathy, don’t bury it by lapsing into jargon (I’m looking at you, fellow mediators), “but-ing” it, or diving straight to business.
Instead, pause. Let your words hang in the air. Give them time to absorb them and decide what to do with them.
Your pause is the gift of possibility.
Over to you
Some journaling / conversation / comment prompts for your consideration:
Write or talk about a time when…
…you experienced buried empathy in a moment that was important to you. How did they bury it? What did that feel like?
…you experienced unburied empathy. How did they hold the space for you? What did that feel like?
…you buried your empathy after someone else expressed something difficult. How did you bury it? Why do you think you did that?
I welcome your musings about buried and unburied empathy:
It makes sense - thank you for highlighting what we do and thank you for reminding me that connection is what matters