Common Factors: Therapist Empathy
What Are Common Factors?
Common factors are important factors or ingredients that make therapy and the therapist effective based on research.
These factors can be incorporated into any therapeutic treatment approach/model/framework.
Why Empathy is Important
No one likes to be judged, especially by their therapist.
Empathy refers to the ability to place yourself in someone’s else experience.
There are 2 types of empathy:
Cognitive
Emotional
Examples of empathy
Feeling understood by your therapist
Feeling like your therapist “gets” you
Compassion
Shared emotions
Nonverbal communication of understanding
Leaning in
Nodding
Arms uncrossed
Eye contact
Relaxed body posture
Facial expressions
And more
Verbal communication of understanding including
Validation
Clarifying
Summarizing
Checking for accuracy
Active listening
And more
Questions To Reflect On
How do I define empathy?
What are my genuine ways of conveying empathy?
How do I practice reflective listening in session?
Reflective listening is the primary way of responding to clients and of building empathy. Reflective listening involves listening carefully to clients and then making a reasonable guess about what they are saying; in other words, it is like forming a hypothesis. The therapist then paraphrases the clients’ comments back to them.
How do I communicate to clients verbally I understand them?
How do I communicate to clients non verbally I understand them?
What have been my experiences where I felt someone empathized with me? What did this person sound like? What did they say? Etc.
How do I like being understood by others? Verbal? Non verbal?
And more
Statements And Questions You Can Try Out
That sounds hard
That sucks
That must have been difficult/challenging
Thank you for sharing that with me
I appreciate you sharing this with me
I’m sorry you’re going through this
I imagine that was so painful for you
It sounds like....
What I hear you saying...
It seems as if....
I get the sense that....
It feels as though....
(Silence)
Mmhmm
Mmm
Uh huh
Right
That makes sense
I see
I hear you
I get that
And more