Can Empathy Be Learned?

An outlier's perspective

Photo by AJ Robbie on Unsplash

My brother recently mentioned a financial call-in program he likes to listen to.  What I found surprising is why he likes this program so much. 

He gave an example of someone earning $35,000 a year who wanted to know how they could best pay off $100,000 in student loans. And then he judged … and he laughed … and he derided. 

While my brother berated the decisions this person made that led to that mountain of debt, my thoughts immediately went to ways in which expensive degrees brought hope of a more solid future. This caller, like so many others, might have taken a bet on education opening doors for them, and then they didn’t open.

This conversation filled me with sadness – sad for the caller’s experience, and sad to know my brother listens so that he can have the pleasure of laughing at those less fortunate than him.

Ridiculing and diminishing were my family’s communication tools and were most often aimed at me. I was the outlier – the black sheep of the family for holding core beliefs that were opposite to their viewpoint. I still am and will always be.

Can Empathy be Learned?

It is generous to say that empathy is not a strong suit in my family.  It was rare that they could put themselves in the shoes of another to understand their perspective and associated feelings. It was only the perspective of my family that mattered, and everyone needed to agree with their point of view or a verbal belittlement followed.

I am the outlier here, as well. I tend to see multiple points of view in any situation. To me, life is not the binary of black/white or right/wrong, but shades of grey that are unique to each person’s perspective – or, as I more recently started to express it, not grey but all the beautiful colors of the rainbow.

Empathy allows me to see and feel from the perspective of another. Understanding their point of view gives me access to understanding the emotions people feel in relation to their experience.

I treasure this way of understanding the world around me.  Coming from a family in which this is a skill that has atrophied from chronic lack of use, I have started to wonder if empathy can be learned. 

I believe we have a default mode of response – focus on me (my feelings, my philosophy of life, my way of being), or focus on others (what someone is thinking or feeling that drives their behavior).

Defaults are simply a starting point, and they can change with effort. But what can guide exploration into an empathic way of being?

An Actor’s Exercise: “There but for the grace of God go I”

My first career was as an actor, and accessing the thoughts, behaviors, and emotions of a character is at the center of much of the work.  I studied with the incredible Jeff Corey in Los Angeles, and my favorite exercise was one Jeff called, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Jeff always said, “At the core is you.”  You always start with who you are, but what if your life circumstances and experiences were a bit different?  Instead of taking one path, what if you took another? Or, instead of being raised by both parents, for example, what if you had only one – or none in your life? And so you start to build a solid understanding of the life of a person who might be very different from you.

We met monthly in Jeff’s studio outside his home on Point Dume in Malibu. For this exercise, he’d hand us the name of a real or fictional person, and we’d start to connect the dots between who I am today, and how I could have been this other person.  After the final dot has been reached, the gulf between two people no longer existed.

It’s a powerful and insightful exercise. There is so little that separates us.

Empathy as a Path of Healing

The pain of growing up as an outsider in my own family was healed largely due to empathy.  I can feel what it was like for each of my parents to grow up in the families they did – my mother orphaned young, my father raised by a tyrant of a father who ultimately abandoned his family.

I can see how their experiences formed the basis for their worldview and drove their behavior. I can see that they had limited positive role models and recreated unhappiness again and again. Of course they didn’t understand me, but I could connect the dots and understand them.  And I could forgive. They did the best they could, and I cannot ask for anything more.

Image by wirestock on Freepik

My Favorite Question

My favorite question comes from the practice of Appreciative Inquiry, a strength-based change methodology:

What is the smallest step I can take, right here, right now, that will have the biggest impact?

If we want to build our capacity for empathy, what is the smallest step we can take to do that?  Small steps are easy, and they lead to additional small steps and, ultimately, to change. 

Often, a starting place is with a pet. It is somehow easier or safer for us to open our hearts and feel empathy with a four-legged friend. If we can experience it with them, we can experience it with humans. It’s something to consider stepping toward.

Moving Forward

Empathy holds no place for judgment, derision, or ridicule. We can understand at a deep level, the truth of “there but for the grace of God go I.”  If the circumstances in my life were just a bit different, that could be me. Compassion opens and we can feel peace.

What’s the smallest step you can take to embrace more empathy in your life?