Life Coach Training
Lesson 29
Empathy and Sympathy
When you work with clients who are exploring their feelings about the issues in their life, you are likely to feel some or a lot of what they are feeling. Such feelings may range from sadness, grief, pain, and fear to joy, appreciation, celebration, and ecstasy. A good coach can experience and understand the feelings a client is going through without going up and down with the client. This week’s lesson will help you keep your center and clarity while allowing and supporting the client to experience what he or she is feeling.
To master this dynamic, recognize the difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the capacity to recognize, understand, and offer the client space to feel what he is feeling and go through his experience. If a client reports a feeling of loneliness, you can understand this experience because you have probably gone through feelings of loneliness at some point in your own life. You can say to the client, “Yes, I know how it feels to be lonely.” In that moment you demonstrate that you have heard his sharing, validated his experience, and built a bridge of compassion and support. Your client can then consider the message the feeling is delivering, notice any gifts or opportunities in the process, and/or take steps to gain a more fulfilling experience.
When you sympathize with the client, you go into her experience so deeply that you take on her feelings as if they were your own. In general this process is not helpful to you as a coach. If you sympathize a lot, you will yoyo up and down with all of your clients’ feelings and probably feel tattered. If you are working with a lot of clients, too much sympathizing is a setup for burnout. While it’s important to recognize and honor your client’s feelings, you cannot afford to own them yourself to the point that they distract you from your service.
With practice you can find and develop a balanced position from which you can compassionately empathize with your client, but not sympathize. From this perspective you are in the best position to help your client. You understand their pain or situation, but you also hold a more peaceful energy and greater perspective that can show them a route to higher ground. If you were walking along a road with someone who fell in a hole and could not get out, if you jump into the hole with them, now two people are in the hole. If, however, you stay on higher ground and extend your arm to your friend, you can help them in the most effective way.
Your role as coach is to stay anchored in well-being even when your client has momentarily forgotten it. Your consciousness heals more than your words. See your client’s wholeness (as well as your own), and you will lift him to wholeness. You serve as an expanded space into which your client can expand with you.
If you do take on some of your client’s feelings, you can do some practices to get back to center. You can symbolically wash your hands; or go outside for a short walk; or sit in the sun for a few minutes. Say a prayer or affirmation of release. Read something uplifting or listen to your favorite music. Feelings are simply energy, so as you shift your energy you can shift your feelings.
Excellent coaching is a matter of connecting with your client and lifting your client. Empathy will serve the connection, and staying rooted in well being will help your client find his way there with you.
Exercise:
1. With which clients or people in your personal life do you tend to get caught up in their feelings?
2. Have you had moments with these people when you kept your center and did not get caught up?
3. What did you know, feel, or do in these moments that allowed you to stay at anchored in well-being?
4. What positive results did you notice when you kept your center?
5. What action or practice do you or can you take to release any negative feelings and return to clarity?
Affirm:
I help my clients by recognizing their feelings and experience
while holding to the truth of well being.