Empathy – your secret superpower

Hello again,

Before I continue on the resilience series, I want to talk about another one of those slightly overused terms: empathy. Resilience and empathy are closely connected and are super-skills for your children to lead a more successful, connected and fulfilled life. They're also super-skills for parents as you'll discover below.

I recently lost a dear friend who was an inspiring teacher of non-violent communication (NVC). She was my mentor and ran an “empathy practice group” here in Margaret River over many years. Attending this group was an incredible experience for me. I joined because I wanted to continue learning how to better apply empathy in daily life. I had built a good basis during my training in Denmark (Scandinavia) but still wanted some regular reminders and guided “outside of the family” practice. That’s because we’re not all naturally deeply empathetic – but if we’re lucky, we’ve learned this incredible skill from our parents and through our culture and environment. For me, it took a conscious effort and lots of practice to develop this skill. I often still need to remind myself before I respond, especially when a certain behaviour or situation triggers me.

What is empathy, actually?

When I first “learnt” about empathy during my coaching training in 2018, I actually struggled grasping what it is. Of course, I could understand the concept theoretically but applying it in practice was difficult. I realised I had to open up emotionally first and acknowledge my own feelings a lot more in order to get how this works.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s emotional experience, and for that, I needed to get out of my head and allow my own emotional experience to be heard within me.

Empathy is only partly based on genetics (you are born with more or less of it) and just like resilience, the other part of the foundation for children is having a secure attachment to at least one parent or carer. As with resilience, the rest is skill! This is great news, because it means we adults can a) still learn it if we aren’t naturally very empathetic and b) role-model and teach it to our children and teens.

Note that empathy is different to sympathy, which is a lot more passive and not necessarily a shared experience. It can also be perceived as patronising by the other person and make them feel like a victim, which is rather paralysing.

How do you “do” empathy?

How did I learn how to become more empathetic? I’m describing the exact process in my upcoming book (psssst! I can’t wait to share this with you!), but in a nutshell: I first had to become more present, learn to be more aware of my body, be able to stop my thoughts and listen for my emotions and where they show up physically. This was the internal part. Then, when interacting with someone else (during the training this was mainly my husband and our sons), I needed to learn how to refrain from judgement about the other person and/or about what they’re saying. Then the image of “listening with every cell of my body” really helped me to stop my own mental dialogue while trying to understand the feelings and needs behind the other person’s words. And then, it was a lot of biting my tongue, i.e. holding back on any well-meant but unsolicited solutions, advice or guidance. For me, that was really hard! For you it might not be difficult at all, or it might be some other part that is tricky for you. It just depends on our personal blueprint…

OK, got it – but why or for what is empathy important?

As mentioned above, empathy is a superpower in life and an important leadership skill (like resilience!). Its most important benefit is that it helps us build and improve relationships and prevent or resolve conflicts a lot more successfully, including at work![1]

Empathy is therefore also a superpower for parents. In my view it’s one of the most effective (and completely peaceful!) tools to de-fuse explosive or otherwise challenging situations with children and teens. It also enables us to find solutions that are win-win (respect everyone’s needs) rather than win-lose (you might get what you want but the child loses/has to give in) or lose-lose (you “win” but feel bad after the interaction and the child loses). Win-win solutions are always successful short- and long-term, whereas win-lose only “works” short-term and lose-lose obviously isn’t a successful result to start with.

However, the win-lose mentality is deeply embedded in our fast-paced, competitive western world, and was also role-modelled to many of us by our post-war generation parents.

Unfortunately, some social media and online experiences kill empathy in children. Negative aspects such as the superficiality, public shaming and ridiculing, selling at all cost, bullying and maintaining a fake façade online are the opposite of what empathy embraces: vulnerability, authenticity, honesty around feelings and needs, truly listening.  This development has been witnessed in school yards all over the world (e.g. like the scene in the Netflix series “Adolescence” where two teen girls are fighting – instead of helping or trying to resolve the situation, their friends and classmates just watch, taking videos of the scene with their phones).

Real-life example: how empathy changes a challenging parenting moment

Empathy is such a game changer in parenting, because it prevents kids and teens from becoming defensive. Instead, they feel seen, heard and understood, and therefore they don’t have to fight back.

I hope the following typical example of a transition from one enjoyable activity to another (less exciting one) will demonstrate how empathy could work in action. A young girl doesn’t want to leave a birthday party when her mum asks her to, despite having given her a heads-up ten minutes prior. Mum has just gotten back from work and hasn’t prepared dinner yet. They also have to pick up the older sister on the way, so staying longer is not an option.

If this mum now starts feeling a little stressed because her daughter doesn’t want to come with her, she might put on a stern voice and say: “We are leaving RIGHT NOW!”. This will either turn into a win-lose scenario (the girl follows, begrudgingly) or a lose-lose situation if her daughter runs back into the birthday room instead, provoking stress levels in mum to rise and possibly some “consequences”. Instead of a top-down command, mum could have said: “I can see that you’re having so much fun!” to start with and then PAUSE! - because this is where the little girl feels seen and understood and doesn’t feel a need to fight because her mum is on her side. Mum could continue: “I’d love for you to be able to stay longer, too, but we have to pick up Lilly from her dance class and pop by the shops to get some groceries for dinner. Would you like to say goodbye to your friends before we go?” or similar. The key is to start with acknowledging the child’s needs and feelings in that moment, then pause.

It might seem that the empathy-based approach might take a little bit longer, but it’s not if we consider that the girl’s grumpy mood might cause more challenges or stress for mum down the track (e.g. a squabble with her sister in the car or a tantrum at the supermarket, or the stress of trying to extract her from the birthday crowd once she’s run back in). Empathy requires some self-restraint (take a deep breath!) and a pause on our behalf to start with and that feels more time-consuming - but most of the time it’s a lot more effective overall.

I know that this sounds pretty simple in itself, but I also know that it can be quite hard in practice, especially if you haven’t grown up with empathetic parents who role-modelled well (like, eh, most of us?). We all have individual personalities, expectations and triggers, so what to focus on first can be different for each of us.

I’ll give you some tips on how to foster more empathy in your family in my next blog post, as well as talk about why self-empathy is very important for us parents in order to preserve our energy, set clear boundaries and prevent or reduce frustration and any resentment.

If you’re unsure of where to start your personal empathy-based parenting journey or how to adjust your current style to create more ease, contentment and joy at home, please contact me - I’m always happy to help 😊 

There’s a FREE 20min “coaching discovery” call option on my booking page! Give it a go! Absolutely no strings attached…

Till next time, keep in flow.

Much love,

Anke x

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[1] 91% of CEOs link empathy to higher performance (however many fall short of delivering themselves). A toxic and non-empathic work culture destroys trust, motivation and an optimistic outlook for employees 2026 State of Workplace Empathy Executive Report | Resources | Businessolver