In this last article, of the three part series, concerning empathy, I will explain how therapists and front-facing mental health professionals can systematically develop their natural empathic capacity through a series of phased mind & body exercises; this will include a brief description of how Compassionate Insight is used to support a client’s natural healing process.
In many ways, childhood trauma is a blessing as well as a curse. Childhood trauma often teaches childen to be very aware of the emotions and secret thoughts of the people around them – It’s a matter of survival! What they do with that insight will depend on their predisposition.
But here’s the thing! Most living beings are empathic under certain circumstances but we’ve learnt to ignore it, due in no small part to the rise of materialism in both its cultural and philosophical forms.
“Often it begins with helping clients notice the signals their body is already giving them. Many people have been moving at such a fast pace that they’ve learned to override those signals.”
Lori Carol Maloy, Licensed Mental Health Counselor.
The move toward materialism in the 19th century led to the adoption of eugenics in Northern Europe and America, which paved the way for the Second World War. In the 20th Century, the Medical Industrial Complex enthusiastically embraced materialism and all its implications, which, in turn, led to the rise of the pharmaceutical industry and the drugging of the world. In such an environment, noticing non-material connections between humans was career suicide for any academic.
So we ignored the mounting evidence against materialism and its implications.
Starlings in a murmuration, fish in a shoal move as one! And yet, it has been shown to be mathematically impossible for them to coordinate their movements by physical sense alone.
We have all felt the uncomfortable feeling of being stared at from behind. For those of us who have worked in security, it is common knowledge that if you stare at a target they will become aware of you.
Professor Rupert Sheldrake produced a documentary showing that dogs often know when their owner is coming home. He also went on to examine the sense of being stared at the Amsterdam Science Museum. The evidence for a non-physical connection between living beings is statistically significant (Sheldrake, R., 1999).
The popularity of Polyvagal therapy was largely due to the fact that it gave therapists permission to notice the way that humans seem to be linked in a non-physical way. The empirical observations, on which Stephan Porges based his theory, were sound but his explanation of their mechanism was based on speculation and an almost religious faith in the theory of evolution.
Our clients come to us for: (Elliott, James, 1989)
- Relief from distress
- Insights on their own patterns
- Clarity and understanding
- Direction and support
In order to offer the client clarity and direction, a therapist must have some familiarity with the client’s struggles – they must have some experience of the inner journey and they must be able to discern where the clients are on their journey and the steps they need to take in order to get well.
In short, it is very hard for anyone to help a client out of psychological distress without having suffered in a similar way (Yalom, 1980).
Unfortunately, the expectations of the materialist paradigm make it impossible to quantify and measure this process and therefore it is very difficult to teach it in an academic environment.
Putting aside the limitations that have retarded the helping professions through most of last seven decades, it is possible to train our empathic ability. We have over two thousand years of recorded data in the Eastern Orthodox tradition to help provide us with a step-by-step system (Macaria, 2018)
In order to feel the hidden thoughts and feelings of others, we must first train ourselves to be able to notice our own thoughts and feelings and go beneath them to the root that generates them – the Schema. Only then are we able to sense the same in others. To use an analogy in order to explain this phenomenon, we are like a tuning fork picking up the note of an adjacent tuning fork.
Exercise One: Single-pointed concentration
The first step on this road is to cultivate the ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing.
In my multi-media course, I teach a variety of ways to achieve this but for now let’s focus on the simplest: breath concentration.
Imagine that your nostrils are the opening to a cave, just be aware of the cool air going in and the warm are going out. Become aware of the pause between in and out.
Your mind will intrude – don’t be angry – don’t give up. Just return your mind to your breath.
On each out breath count one, two, three and up to nine and then start again.
You need to practice for 17 – 20 minutes a day.
Try to get used to doing only one thing at a time. Avoid doom scrolling on your phone, or listening to music while in the gym or driving. Make your mind get used to boredom.
This exercise, if you are patient, will give you a certain level of neural plasticity.
How long you will need to practice this technique will depend on you, but when you are comfortable with sitting for 20 minutes, you can move to exercise two.
Exercise Two: Meta-Cognition
Using your skill with breath concentration as a spring board, you now need to become aware of your autonomic nervous system.
The first thing to do is become aware of the need to breathe in and the need to breathe out. Normally, it is automatic and we don’t notice it.
Assuming that you are healthy and you don’t have heart problems, in a safe place and ideally with someone you trust, breathe out and hold your breath out until you feel the desperate need to breathe in. Remember this feeling.
Now after taking a little rest, breathe in and hold it in. Notice the feeling of desperately needing to breathe out. Remember this feeling.
Now, return you mind to your observation of the breath but now move your focus to your chest. As you breathe out, you will notice that about half way through your breath out, you will begin to feel the need to breathe in. When that need becomes too much, we begin to breathe in.
About half way through the breath in, you will feel the beginning of the need to breathe out.
Now follow the breath as before, but count from the time you begin to feel the need to breathe out.
Exercise Three: Sitting Silently
Now try to notice when you are consumed by a strong emotion, just notice it – don’t interfere with it. Let it be and sit silently with it – recognise that the thought is not you – observe it.
As you sit with strong thoughts and emotions, you will find that they begin to dissolve into something else. This is what Buddhism refers to as mindfulness but unlike Buddhist “mindfulness” this is just the beginning and not the end.
As you go deeper, as anger dissolves into sadness and then into fear we begin to see a pattern or structure. This is what Jeffery Young called your Schema. It is like a window through which you see the world (Young, 1990). If you can learn to become aware of the intrusive thoughts and feelings of your own Schema framework, then you will be able to see it in others.
Bonus Tip: It helps to keep a journal of your thoughts and feelings and their transformations.
Exercise Four: Compassionate Insight
It may take a few months or a few years, but if you get used to sitting silently with your own feelings and thoughts, you will begin to notice more clearly the thoughts and feelings of others.
However, I will caution you in advance. The insights that you gain into another person’s deepest self are a sacred responsibility. You must never assume that you are right, test your theory gently because if you are wrong it is very likely that you will lose the client
And if you are right, you may call attention to something that the client is not ready to see. It is for this reason that I won’t use EMDR, it metaphorically keeps poking the client for answers – by its very nature it is performative and reinforces identification of the client with their pathology.
For this reason, I have developed Compassionate Insight Therapy as a part of DMN-I NST. The role of therapist in DMN-I NST is very much like the concept of the Sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. The therapist is there to gently challenge the client to heal while sharing their journey with the insight of shared pain.
Conclusion:
The observations of Stephan Porges, of Polyvagal Theory, were perfectly valid, he was describing empathy: a non-physical connection between two living beings, although he couldn’t admit to it.
Rupert Sheldrake describes Morphic Resonance as a cloud of formative causation but refuses to describe the mechanism by which it works and thereby saves himself from his theory being debunked, as was the fate of Stephan Porges.
The fact that we can’t explain the mechanism by which empathy works doesn’t negate our lived experience of its reality – the observable facts.
If you keep up with this practice, I guarantee that you will be a better therapists and a happier person
References
- Elliott, R., James, E., 1989, Varieties of Client Experiences in Psychotherapy: An analysis of the Literature. Clinical Psychology Review V9, I4 Pages 443-467, Elsevier.
- Macaria, N., 2018, The Angel of Light and Spiritual Discernment in the Orthodox Tradition, Matherson Trust
- Sheldrake, R., 1999. The Sense of Being Stared At Confirmed by Simple Experiments, Biology Forum.
- Yalom, I.D., 1980. Existential Psychotherapy, BasicBooks, Perseus Books Group.
- Young, , 1990, Cognitive Therapy for Personality Disorders: A Schema-Focused Approach, Professional Resource Exchange