When Empathy And Active Listening Are Disempowering
Over the years, I have witnessed ways in which empathy and active listening can harm rather than serve.
Weird thing to say, right?
Stay with me.
We all need to digest this fully for empathy to help rather than harm.
In many forms of psychology, the self is not one solid, always consistent, thing. We are moving from different parts of ourselves all the time and growth is about learning our inner architecture so we have more choice in our lives to live freely rather than shackled by psychological patterns that are outside our awareness. When our minds and relating patterns are fixed we are driven by defense mechanisms rather than empowerment.
For some people, active listening and empathy can be a defense mechanism that harms rather than helps.
How?
Below is a diagram from Transactional Analysis. Just one simple model among many different ways to view how the self is split into many parts or ego states. I don't love the primacy given to "thinking" and "rationality" in this diagram and wish the word "thought' under the adult column were swapped out for "regulated" but the image still serves us. albeit, imperfect. (I also love Gestalt Theory, Internal Family Systems, Systems Theory, Jungian Analysis, Trauma and Sensorimotor Therapy, and Indigenous Concentric Systems Framework Theory who all have parts models).
I have witnessed folks who engage in active listening from a parent or child ego state. Their listening isn’t free because they are needing to be a savior, seen as good, or right (parent). These listeners feel badly if talkers don’t share something intensely personal or emotional, don’t get a lot of people coming to share with them, don’t get recognition from the community for their act of service, or they get angry when they are challenged with a boundary.
What is often missed in most listening training is the skill to track what ego state we are listening from that stops equality in our connection.
I am going to throw my own profession and myself lovingly under the bus a bit.
Therapists get into this work for various reasons but often one main one is to help. I know a snaggly part of me studied psychology because I was trying to prove I wasn’t crazy as I was told by my mother my entire childhood. “Something is wrong with you” she would tell me virtually any time I had an emotion that wasn’t happy. I continue to do earnest inner work around my defense mechanisms and I see my work as part of justice work. Yet, while conscious of my ego states more than most, I still get caught in what transactional analysis terms drama triangles.
Photo From Data Hive UK, How To Train Your Brain For Business Success
The Victim sees life as happening to them and feels powerless to change their circumstances. Victims place blame on a Persecutor who can be a person or a situation. Being powerless, the victim ostensibly seeks a rescuer to solve the problem for them. Victims also have a sneaky interest in validating their problem as being unsolvable. The Rescuer, in turn, seems to want to help the victim but in fact acts in a way that is geared to the rescuer's own need to be seen. Forbes, How To Escape The Dreaded Drama Triangle, Blumenfeld
Without intentional inner work, we run the risk of perpetuating a power over, power under dynamic as therapists and empaths.
When I go to a dinner party and folks find out I am a therapist, they almost always ask “Oh are you analyzing me now?” to which I always reply “I only analyze people under two conditions. One, if I am being paid. Two, if I am acting some hurt of my own out and I am using my therapy training to try to gain power (persecutor or parent ego state).”
Non-profit volunteers engage in disempowering “saviorism”, “parent”, “rescuer”, or “power over” dynamics that may harm rather than help.
In fact, I am learning, drama triangles are even more rampant in volunteer work.
Does this mean do not do good? No way.
Does this mean do-gooders are bad people? No way.
It means we have an invitation right now to support equality and health by listening from our empowering adult selves.
And the way to do that is to look inward at how your “do gooder” is and is not an empowering adult part of you.
I will use my own mistakes as a good example of how to do this.
In response to the COVID19 quarantine, my scared child self first took over and felt like a victim because it only saw problems and the worst-case scenarios. I was looking desperately for a rescuer. My inner parent took over to help that inner child but it also quickly wanted to help everyone else too and on to rescuing everyone else I went.
But my adult said “Wait, Traci let’s go for a run, calm down, and think things through.” I got calm and solutions focused and zeroed in on options that were empowering to me and others.
Photo From Data Hive UK, How To Train Your Brain For Business Success
For our listening to provide the kind of connecting that heals our listening needs to be empowered and empowering. To do that, we need to understand our own inner ego states that may have us moving from an inner parent or inner child. When we move from either parent or child inside, we easily get sucked into harmful drama triangles with others.
The goal in our listening, is to move from our adult self and connect from the empowerment triangle. So often we talk about the importance of boundaries here at Sidewalk Talk. Why? Because having none means you are slipping into a rescuer mode in the drama triangle and that connection is not heart-centered and empowering to the talker.
Tips to remain in your empowered adult self when listening:
Practice mindfulness.
Track your body. Anxiety or tension are good indicators you are in the drama triangle.
Listen to and write about the victim, persecutor, rescuer parts of yourself (we all have em, trust me!).
Focus on outcomes and your vision, rather than problems or changing the other person.
Listen from the empowerment triangle where the victim becomes creative, the persecutor challenges, and the rescuer coaches. (see graph above).
Let’s enable our listening to be an act of inner and outer empowerment and freedom for all.
