Role of Empathy to establish and maintain a rapport

This attitude of “feeling into” the client’s feelings is generally called “empathy.” The word comes from a German word “Einfiihlung,” which in its turn came from two Greek words which can be translated “In” and “Feeling.” It differs from sympathy (”I feel as you do”) and from antipathy (”I can’t see why you should feel that way”) and apathy (”I couldn’t care less!”). It is trying to say something like “I’m beginning to realize how you feel.” There is compassion in it, but also sufficient dispassion to prevent emotional identification which would deprive the counselor of the necessary objective perspective to help the client help himself.

Empathy in this sense would seem to be the counselor’s most important contribution to the establishment and maintenance of healthy rapport, and it is therefore one of the foundations of counseling. It is an expression of the counselor’s unconditional readiness to “feel into” the client, to look at his difficulties and problems, and his efforts to deal with them, through the client’s eyes, and thus to provide him with a kind of new dimension in which he can come to consider his problems and their possible solutions. Above all, and whether there may be any adequate solution or not, the counselor provides the renewed encouragement of a healthy accepting personal relationship for the client’s growth to greater maturity and understanding.

Empathy is not an easy quality to achieve or maintain. The counselor, being human, will have his share of emotions, prejudices, needs, and habitual attitudes, many of which may be evoked by the client’s story and expressed feelings. It is all too easy for the counselor to respond in any of the ways already mentioned, fact-finding, moralizing, advising, criticizing, sympathizing, or reassuring respectively. Or he may plunge prematurely into the “practical” question, “What are you going to do about it?” To give genuine empathy any counselor needs to be aware of most of his own emotional needs and habitual attitudes and prejudices, so that he can allow for them, and be on guard against their intrusion into the counseling process. Even the most “accepting” words can be said in such a manner as to convey indifference, criticism, and even hostility, and the counselor needs constantly to ask himself the honest questions, “Am I being too protective to this person?” “Why did that remark stir up these feelings in me?” In this way, and by regular frank discussion of his work with other counselors, he may be helped to greater emotional steadiness, and the ability to offer genuine warmth without sentimentality.

To return to the counselor’s response to Betty, “You felt pretty upset and humiliated about it?” This will give Betty the chance to confirm his impression of her feelings, or if she wishes to modify or extend it. It will certainly give her the feeling that here is someone ready to look honestly at her difficulty with her, and not to try to argue her out of her feelings or pat her condescendingly on the back. She will have the growing feeling that at least she can take the risk of being her real self. As this happens she will feel freer to talk about many things previously regarded as too threatening to her self-respect, and as she finds even these things accepted by the counselor, and herself accepted in spite of them, her defenses will go down and she will become, possibly for the first time, able to “come to herself,” as the Prodigal did. Of course this may not all happen in the initial interview, but when the counselor handles the initial interview well the insight-generating process will become well established.

In many cases it is found that as the unburdening goes on the initial expression of mainly negative feelings, and reports about the partner’s misdeeds will be gradually replaced by more positive expressions. At the beginning the positive expressions may be mixed up with the negative, love and hostility, independence and dependence, confidence and anxiety or doubt. This is called “ambivalence,” and it is present to a considerable extent as “mixed feelings” in everyone. When it comes out in counseling the client may feel that there must be something abnormal in having such “contrary” feelings, and the counselor can best handle this situation by a simple accepting response to the ambivalent feelings.

For example, in the course of her further narrative Betty may say something like, “And yet with all those beastly things he’s done I know he is good at heart and I still can’t help loving him. There must be something peculiar about me!” The counselor’s response might be something like, “Even though you can’t bear a lot of his behavior you still feel he’s lovable deep down?” The counselor’s simple “matter of fact” acceptance of the ambivalence will generally do more to help the client than any vigorous assurance that “everybody has mixed feelings like that at times.”

When the counselor makes the first response, “Even though you can’t bear a lot of his behavior, you still feel he’s lovable deep down?” it is quite likely that Betty will go on in some more positive expressions, such as “Yes, he’s a good man at heart, I think he must have been going through a pretty worrisome time. If we could only get some of these horrible squabbles cleared up I’m sure we could be very happy, as we used to be.” From being almost entirely dominated by her sense of humiliation and hostility, Betty has now come quite spontaneously, through the counseling relationship, to a much more objective and positive view of her situation, and a readiness to move ahead towards growth and healing of the marital relationship. She will go home from this interview much more relaxed and restrained, not approving Frank’s crude and ill-mannered actions any more than she did, but ready to accept him and to see that he may be struggling with himself and not always able to cope adequately with his feelings.

Whatever may happen with any counseling with Frank, Betty will still have a lot more to do if she is to achieve sufficient understanding of her own vulnerabilities to work towards a lasting marital harmony, and Frank too will need to do the same. It takes two to make a partnership, but only one to destroy it. But even if Frank were unwilling to come it is possible to do something quite worthwhile through Betty if she can grow in maturity and learn to handle Frank’s childish outbursts with dignity, with sustained acceptance of him coupled with a frankly expressioned disapproval of his uncooperative behavior. Many marital disorders are very greatly healed by the ability of the more far-seeing partner to rise to the challenge with the help of a good counselor, and develop the mature capacity to accept other people and their feelings even though disapproving of their conduct. Here surely is the essence of personal relationship in society as well as in domestic life.

Tags: Counseling