Cultivating Empathy: Strategies for Forgiving When it Feels Impossible - #forgiveness - ep 154

Welcome to the Vet Staff podcast, the place where veterinary professionals can join me, julie South, in discovering how we can all get our heads screwed on straight, get excited about going to work on Monday mornings and lead less stressful and more fulfilling lives at home and at work. Today we're in episode 154 and we're marking the ninth and the final installment of our ongoing series where we've been delving into forgiveness at home and at work. This is a special episode because I've had a few messages, emails, texts and voicemails from listeners who have told me thank you, if that's you that they've found this series helpful, and then they've gone on to ask the question but, julie, how do you forgive when you're really struggling, when you don't know where or how to start? How do you do that? They tell me these people that thank you if that's you who have told me they can do empathy for their patients and their clients, but they're struggling for empathy when someone's wronged them, someone's slighted them, their field betrayed, hurt to the point where they realize that they're struggling to trust anyone again, ever, and it's getting in the way of them living their best lives. Okay, if that's you, then what today is about is some places where you can start. This is not going to be a particularly long episode, so hopefully it won't hurt. And saying that, though this does come with a disclaimer, I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, neither am I a counsellor. If you need support, insight and help beyond this episode, then please, I sincerely ask that you find out if your clinic has any EAPs available, employee assistance programs, and or you get in touch with a helpline. What we're going to do today is look at some strategies and techniques that you can use to help you cultivate empathy when forgiving feels tough, impossible, tough. But before we get to that, before we do that, let's just hear from Vet Clinic Jobs, the partner of the Vet Staff podcast. The Vet Staff podcast is proudly powered by VetClinicJobscom, the new and innovative global job board reimagining veterinary recruitment, connecting veterinary professionals with clinics that shine online. Vetclinicjobscom is your go-to resource for finding the perfect career opportunities and helping VetClinic's power up their employer branding game. Visit vetclinicjobscom today to find vet clinics that shine online, so veterinary professionals can find them Vetclinicjobscom. As we've already looked at in the previous eight episodes in this forgiveness series, forgiveness can be one of the most challenging emotions to embrace, especially when you're feeling deeply hurt or betrayed. At the core of genuine forgiveness lies empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of someone else. Empathy can also be the bridge to forgiveness, even in the most difficult of situations. Here's how to start with empathy. Firstly, recognize your own emotions first, before attempting to empathize with someone else. It's crucial to acknowledge all the varying emotions that you have going on for yourself. Identify the cause of your hurt, your anger, your betrayal, your mistrust. If you've been listening to the last eight episodes, you'll have heard me say multiple times in each episode that forgiving someone doesn't necessarily mean you're forgetting or you're ignoring what they've done, or that you're condoning their behavior. That's not what I'm saying. That's not what forgiveness is about. Instead, it's about giving yourself the means to free yourself from the burden of resentment. For each teeny, tiny, incy, wintsy, little, bitily piece of resentment that you've got going on, that you're holding on to, you're denying yourself that same teeny, tiny, incy, wintsy, little, bitily bit of joy and pleasure in your life. We all owe it to ourselves and the people we love and who love us to live our best lives for us and for them, and that can't happen when you're hanging on to negative stuff. So the first step is to acknowledge exactly what you have going on emotions wise. What are you feeling? And okay. So if you're not actually feeling anything, that's okay. I live in my head rather than my body as well. Then ask yourself what are you thinking of when you think about the unforgiven act or the person? What kind of thoughts are going on in your head? Are they full of resentment? They're full of anger, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm sure you know. If this is you, then recognize them, acknowledge them, own them, because it's 100% okay to feel or think the way you're feeling or thinking right now. When you've got that, then the second thing is to seek understanding and not justification. For empathy to happen, you need to strive to understand the other person's perspective. I'll say that again. It doesn't mean that you're justifying their actions. Instead, what you're doing is trying to get a handle on why they acted the way they did. What were their motives? What emotions do you think were they feeling or thinking at the time? Unless you're dealing with a narcissistic psychopath, I bet money that the harm was caused not from malicious intent, not from them doing something deliberately, but it was done instead from their space of personal pain or ignorance or misunderstanding. Number three get some PAL P-A-L. Get some PAL time with them. Practice active listening P-A-L. Practice active listening. If you're able to have a conversation with them, then please make it happen. And when you do listen without interrupting or immediately jumping to conclusions I know it's easier said than done you need to be able to genuinely hear their side of the events, the story, because maybe, just maybe you might get some insights that you didn't have before. Remember that empathy requires patience and an open heart. Then, number four you need to avoid an us versus them attitude. This is hard as well, because we want to see ourselves as right and them as wrong, but generalizing and or creating a divide between yourself and the other person that you're attempting to forgive only deepens the rift. Remember that you're both human. Remember that everyone, including you, has moments of weakness. We all have lapses in judgment. We all have times when we react because we're hurting or we're in pain. We all have shoe size moments when we act our shoe size rather than a chronological age. Everyone, no exceptions. So do your best to get out of the us and the them attitude. Number five when you've done that, remember the times that you've been forgiven. I'll be surprised if you haven't marked up in your life at some point that required eating a bit of humble pie or your part, and then forgiveness from humble pie on your part and then forgiveness from someone else. How did it feel to be forgiven? Remembering that, when you can remember what that's like, it makes these times now a bit easier for you to empathize with others. When you've been where they are, when you've genuinely walked a moon or so in someone else's moccasins, you can better imagine, empathize how they must be feeling. Number six if you're still struggling to imagine how the other person might be feeling, then seek an external perspective. Sometimes, discussing how you're feeling or thinking with your bestie, a trusted family member and or maybe a therapist, can give you an outsider's perspective. They might be able to see the situation in a different way to you, to help you see things from a perspective that you mightn't even have considered. Also, when you talk things out loud with someone else, it makes a difference as well. Do some reframing. I've talked about reframing before. It's looking at things from different angles and in different ways. Instead of viewing the situation solely from the lens of your pain, look at it from a different angle. Simple but not easy. I know what other ways could you see it from. Try on all sorts of crazy glasses so that you can play at seeing things differently, for example. Maybe just maybe you could see it as a lesson I know how crazy is that or maybe just maybe you could see it as a stepping stone towards personal growth. I know, even crazy is still right, but have some fun. Ask yourself all sorts of crazy questions that enable you to see things in a completely different light. Turn it into a game. And in saying that, please, I'm not trivializing or minimizing the pain that you're experiencing, but sometimes you need to do something completely different to get a completely different result. If you always see things the same way through the same lens or glasses, then you're always going to be seeing them that way. It's time to try something different. Perhaps, instead of feeling like the victim of the situation that you see yourself instead as being in a powerful position, a more powerful situation. Ask yourself what needs to happen for you to experience that, what needs to change and for the record, it has to be you doing the changing, the different thing, the seeing things in a different way, not the other person. Why do you leave, because we can't change anyone else or a situation once it's happened. All we can do is change our response to them and or the situation, okie dokie. So those are some strategies, some steps that you can take to put on your empathetic hat, your empathy hat. But what if you're still struggling? What if, julie, this just ain't working? What if you've done all of those things and you're still really angry and forgiving just ain't gonna happen? What then? Okay, well, assuming that you want to forgive the other person, then here are some questions that you can ask yourself to help see things in a different light when you're trying so hard to understand their perspective, especially when it feels challenging, maybe even impossible. Here are some introspective questions that you can use to open the door to empathy. Find yourself a quiet space, maybe even get a blank sheet of paper, or open up a clean word document. You can always delete the word document, you can always burn or shred or soak the piece of paper later so that your thoughts remain private. Make yourself a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, or get yourself a drink preferably not alcoholic, because that just dulls, numbs and or depresses and then you can start asking yourself these questions. What might they be feeling or thinking? The other person, instead of focusing on their actions, instead look into the emotions or the thoughts that they might have been experiencing. What experiences in their past might have led them to have this perspective? Everyone's viewpoint is shaped by their past yours and mine. What events or circumstances in their life might have influenced their current feelings or beliefs or thoughts? How would you feel in their situation? Imagine yourself in their exact position, with their life experiences, their challenges and emotions. How would that be? How would you feel, how would you think in their situation? What fears, uncertainties and doubts or insecurities fud might they be dealing with? Fears, uncertainties and doubts, fud. Hurting people, hurt. Sometimes our actions and our beliefs stem from deeply rooted, maybe even unconscious, fears, uncertainties, doubts and insecurities. For me, for you, for them, what might they be? Next, ask yourself are there any cultural, societal or family influences at play? Understand that individual perspectives can be significantly shaped by external influences Religious, parents, grandparents, cultural, societal. What would it be like to have grown up the way they did, with whatever it was that they grew up with? What would it have been like to have those belief systems at play? What would it have been like for them, for you, if you were them, what information might they have that you don't? And vice versa? What do they know that you don't? Recognize that your understanding of a situation, of this specific situation, maybe, just maybe, is limited. What details do they have that you don't? Do you have that they don't? What experiences, knowledge might they be privy to, something that you're not? Or vice versa? What difference would all of that make on the situation? What about their values? How do their values differ from yours? How do they differ? Why do they differ? We all prioritize different things based on our upbringing, our experiences and our beliefs. What might theirs be like? Is it possible that they're seeing something that you're missing? Accept and understand and appreciate that you might not have all the answers and that their perspectives could offer a whole new way of seeing the situation. What might that be like? What are they seeing that you're not? Have you ever felt similarly like you feel or think right now about a completely different situation? Can you draw a parallel between their feelings and yours in another context? What's that like? What insights do you have that you didn't have? What would it take for you to hold their perspective, their viewpoint? What would you need to change for you to think and feel the same way that they do right now. Reflect on the conditions or the experiences that you would need to undergo to think or feel the way that they do. What would that metamorphosis be like for you? How do they benefit from their perspective? I realise that's a bit of a weird question, but we all do things because we get some kind of gain. Doesn't mean to say it's a good gain, but we get some kind of gain when we understand the rewards that they're getting from holding onto their viewpoint, for example, safety, validation or belonging. What might change with this insight? What might change or has changed? Similarly, what do you get from holding onto your perspective? What rewards are you getting? Do you get to be right, for example, and is right what it's always about for you? And then are you making assumptions or jumping to conclusions? Challenge your immediate reaction and judgments to ensure that they're based on understanding and not bias. We've all got unconscious cognitive biases and if you need help with some of those biases, because we've got a lot of them, check out episodes numbers 114, 114 through to 116, because we have some of those. I've talked about those in those three episodes, so 114, 115, 116. I'll put the links to those episodes in the show notes for you. With knowledge of biases, how might your biases or preconceived notions be affecting your interpretation of the situation? Armed with the insight that your background and your experiences create biases that colour your perception, what might change now with your viewpoint, with this extra knowledge? Ask yourself whether you've genuinely listened to their side, without interruption and without judgement. Have you given them a fair chance to express themselves without judgement, without interruption? What would need to happen for you for that to happen for them? Next, what common ground do you share? Focusing on where or how you have similarities in common can help bridge the gap between the differences that you have going on with the situation in question. So, what common ground do you have? What do you have that's similar? How are you similar? I hope you have found these questions helpful. Please be gentle with yourself and with the other person. I know it's not easy to forgive someone. Sometimes we have to dig real deep. We may think that we've forgiven someone, only to find out that there's a bit more resentment, unfortunately, that we need to let go of, to work on and to forgive like the onion, layer by layer. However, it is with it, because it means that the space that resentment was taking up in your heart or in your mind is now available for something a lot nicer and smile worthy than resentment. You may need to ask yourself these questions multiple times to get to the space where you feel that you're not emotionally weighed down or being held back. If you find you've done a few cycles of this exercise, you've rinsed and repeated a few times and you're still not where you want to be or where you need to be, then please consider professional help, someone totally independent and with the skills who can help you move on and move through. It'll be worth it, because life is too short to be giving your power away to someone else or to be holding onto something that's just negative, when you could be using that space for something a lot more positive. Because resentment is like you're holding. You're trying to drink from where you are. You're drinking from the poisoned chalice, but you're expecting the other person to get sick or, even worse, to die, when really the only person that is harmed in that situation is yourself. Can I ask a favour? If you enjoy listening to the Vet Staff podcast, can I ask you to please help spread the word so that others can find it, and one way that you can do this is to leave a review wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. A helpful comment would be good, but just giving it a five star thumbs up also makes a difference to the podcast algorithms and helps the Vet Staff podcast get found by others. So thank you for that. This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be the most fantabulous and forgiving version of you. You can be Until next week. Thank you for spending the last 25 minutes or so of your life with me. I really do appreciate it. The Vet Staff podcast is proudly powered by vetclinicjobscom, the new and innovative global job board reimagining veterinary recruitment. Connect in veterinary professionals with clinics that shine online. Vetclinicjobscom is your go to resource for finding the perfect career opportunities and helping Vet Clinics power up their employer branding game. Visit vetclinicjobscom today to find Vet Clinics that shine online, so veterinary professionals can find them. Visit vetclinicjobscom.