Dear Addy,

Thank you both for your insightful response. It lightened my bulb about being Empathic. I should try to be more empathic than trying to not criticize… I need to be more compassionate with others and myself.

you are very welcome. I am glad your light bulb went off about needing to have more empathy, not just for others but for yourself too.

I don’t like when people complain and not doing anything about it.

mostly what I do is when I listen to complain I directly go for solutions

This kind of approach is called the unbalanced masculine: when someone complains about something, i.e. expresses pain or hurt, we immediately offer solutions, instead of simply saying “I am sorry, this must be hard for you.”

Validating the person’s pain is the first step to empathy. In fact, there is a step before that: In order to validate another person’s pain, we need to first be in touch with our own pain and validate our pain. We can’t be empathetic with others unless we feel empathy for ourselves first.

I don’t want complaint about him [your father] or as a matter of fact complain about anything. I just don’t see any value in doing that.

Constant complaining is not a good habit, and I understand if you don’t like it. However, expressing pain, hurt, sadness… isn’t necessarily bad. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we complain if we express our pain. In fact, expressing our emotions and naming them is the first step towards healing.

It seems to me, Addy, that the reason you don’t like listening to people “complaining” (i.e. sharing about something that bothers them) is that their pain reminds you of your pain, and you don’t want to get in touch with that pain (the pain you’ve experienced as a child and youth being heavily criticized by your father). You want to quickly jump to solutions, without “sitting” with that pain, without even admitting it’s there.

Empathy is the opposite of that: admitting the pain, sitting with it, not judging ourselves for it, just witnessing it and having compassion for ourselves for having experienced such pain.

What do you say?