Empathy, Listening Skills,
and Touching Another Heart

11. When to Acknowledge

Empathic acknowledging--a blend of empathy, listening skills, and acknowledgments--sometimes affects the emotional intimacy of two people involved in a conversation. Before proceeding with this chapter, here is some information which you may find useful at this point:

Now to begin this chapter, which adds to Chapter 10. Essentials of Acknowledging by discussing the following topics:
  • when to empathically acknowledge.
  • when not to empathically acknowledge.
  • reasons for unrewarding empathic acknowledging experiences.
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When to Empathically Acknowledge   oooooooo

The interaction between Tanya and Anita will be used to illustrate appropriate occasions for using empathic acknowledging. At the beginning of their conversation, Tanya was not emotional but Anita sensed that the topic of Ben was important to Tanya. When Tanya mentioned that Ben told her he loved her, she became overwhelmed with excitement. As she struggled to disclose to Anita that she felt the same way about Ben, she experienced another emotion--distress--because of her inability to say she loved Ben. When she finally said she loved Ben, she was speaking from her heart.

To summarize, the three fundamental indications for using empathic acknowledging are when the other person:

  • is emotional about her verbalizations
  • appears to value the subject she is talking about
  • is speaking from her heart.

It is important to keep in mind that all three do not always occur during a conversation, for example, a person never becoming emotional about a subject she appears to value. As you continue to practice, you are likely to develop a feel for when using empathic acknowledging might be useful.

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When Not to Empathically Acknowledge   oooooooo

Because this website stresses its benefits, I want to prevent you from concluding that I am advocating empathic acknowledging zealotry. Examples of what I am not advocating are:

  • allowing a clothing store salesperson to follow you around and bombard you with information when you want to browse by yourself
  • allowing a person who begins insulting you to continue
  • frequently suppressing your need to to talk about events which upset you
  • frequently depriving yourself of opportunities to engage in exchanges of opinions on topics in which you are interested
  • hiding behind empathic acknowledging to prevent the other person from getting to know you
This section closes with the reminder that:

We choose to use empathic acknowledging
at some points
in some of our conversations.

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Reasons for Unrewarding Empathic Acknowledging Experiences   oooooooo

Using empathy, listening skills, and acknowledging more often might reward you with interludes of emotional intimacy with your loved ones. If you are not rewarded, the reason or reasons might be found in the following partial list:

  • Emotional intimacy interludes do not occur often.
  • The talker may be one of the people who are never touched by being empathically acknowledged.
  • You are distracted by thoughts of what you want to say about your interests, evaluating the talker's personality, etc.
  • You are unwittingly communicating your dislike of the talker by harsh comments, disapproving facial expressions, etc.
  • You are interrupting the talker by lengthy acknowledgments.
  • You are interrupting the talker by too many acknowledgments.
Although moments of emotional intimacy do not occur often, you are more likely to benefit from your empathic acknowledging in other ways, such as by more satisfying conversations and by more people enjoying conversing with you.

To read the five footnotes of this website on empathy, listening skills, acknowledgments, and emotional intimacy, click on Notes.

NOTE: Reading the table of contents will help you understand the following links, which appear on every page of this website:

HOME CONTENTS WARNING INTRODUCTION 1. EMP. ACK. 2. PSYCH. HUG 3. BENEFITS I
4. BENEFITS II 5. URGE TO HELP 6. URGE TO TALK 7. BASIC SKILLS 8. EXPLN. SKILLS 9. DIFFICULTIES
10. ESSNL. ACK. 11. WHEN ACK. NOTES ADDNL. READING APPRECIATIONS AUTHOR

If you liked this site, e-mailing me your thanks will reward me for creating it and help sustain my motivation to keep it going for future visitors.

My Other Websites on Empathy and Listening Skills

Empathy, Listening Skills, and Relationships is a short version of this website.

Listening Skills and Relationships is a discussion board which includes messages from me and my responses to messages from others. To read or post messages, you do not have to register. Visit the board to read questions and answers, ask or answer questions, share experiences, etc.

Empathy contains a description of a conversation with a United States Copyright Office representative during which I used empathy.

Listening Skills contains a description of listening to my wife talk about her grocery shopping trips.

Communication Skills illustrates my use of nonverbal "listening skills" during a conversation to assess whether the other person is receiving my message.

Listening Skills Professional explains why I advocate that society establish the profession of empathic listener as a profession separate and independent from that of psychotherapist.

Empathy and Listening Skills illustrates the difference between understanding the information the other person is saying to you versus understanding the meaning to her of saying the information.

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Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 by Lawrence J. Bookbinder, Ph.D.