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Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
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Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#32- Share your own vulnerabilities too. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. The golden rule. - Practice active listening. - You're not there to solve the problem, just to listen. Listening is good enough.* You can actually ask, if they talk about the same thing more than once: Is this something you want me to work on and try to fix, or you just want to talk about? Don't be dismissive, you're not trying…
Thank you for sharing. This matches my experience too.
Empathy starts with listening and continues with making a safe space for someone to share deeper feelings.
Passing judgement, problem solving, or dominating the conversation are anti patterns.
I was lucky to get some management training in active listening at a past job. It felt like common knowledge to me but thru training and practicing at work I was surprised to see how uncommon following the fundamentals are in the workspace.
Often everyone is too “busy” and “results oriented” to communicate clearly and to make time to actually listen to one another.
Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#33Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan I learned a meditation from there called Tonglen. It’s hardcore. I have only done it a few times in my life but it really made me want to help alleviate suffering from other people a lot more after doing that a few times. The whole book is also littered with scientific studies about meditation. So it can explain things clearly to very sceptical minds, like mine ;)
Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#34- Share your own vulnerabilities too. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. The golden rule. - Practice active listening. - You're not there to solve the problem, just to listen. Listening is good enough.* You can actually ask, if they talk about the same thing more than once: Is this something you want me to work on and try to fix, or you just want to talk about? Don't be dismissive, you're not trying…
> You can actually ask, if they talk about the same thing more than once: Is this something you want me to work on and try to fix, or you just want to talk about?
Agreed!
Asking helps me clarify to myself the possible goals (and make it explicit that "just" listening is a valid goal). Even if you don't ask thinking about the question is a nice way to remind yourself that you don't need to solve it for them.
My experience has been that women appreciate this question - I think that most men tend to jump into problem-solving mode and actually being asked is a nice change (here in the U.S.)
And of course there's this 2 minute video to memorably highlight the idea :)
Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#35People always look at me funny for recommending it but How To Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk can be a big help for dealing with adults too. The main difference between a child and a grown-up in terms of how you talk to them is that the grown-up has a larger vocabulary, so you need to resort to tricks like "draw me how you feel" less often. Although written with another purpose in mind, Never Sp…
I want to second this. All the answers to the OP that pop into my head can be learned from the How to talk so kids will listen series.
Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#36Meditation, of course. The Brahmavihara of Karuna (compassion) is exactly what you are looking for here.
Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#37The book Non-violent Communication is a great way to “do no harm” in challenging conversations. As for practicing empathy and compassion I think real world experience is key. Check out anything to do with “authentic relating”. Here’s a group that offers online and in person classes: https://authenticrelating.co/ But empathy and compassion has to be there naturally (which I’m sure it is as it sounds like you’re empath…
I find NVC to be harmful and passive aggressive when wielded by some people. Any time we talk empathy it can turn into "what someone else just knows you're thinking" and the slippery slope into thought policing. And I've only heard of NVC folks using that. Personally, I prefer what can be demonstrably shown via past behavior combined with a sense of charity.
It’s even worse for some people. They promote that they read it which gives them undue credibility for their unpalatable ways of operating.
Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#38The book Non-violent Communication is a great way to “do no harm” in challenging conversations. As for practicing empathy and compassion I think real world experience is key. Check out anything to do with “authentic relating”. Here’s a group that offers online and in person classes: https://authenticrelating.co/ But empathy and compassion has to be there naturally (which I’m sure it is as it sounds like you’re empath…
I find NVC to be harmful and passive aggressive when wielded by some people. Any time we talk empathy it can turn into "what someone else just knows you're thinking" and the slippery slope into thought policing. And I've only heard of NVC folks using that. Personally, I prefer what can be demonstrably shown via past behavior combined with a sense of charity.
I find NVC silly, because how you pronounce something matters more than the exact words used:
https://learningenglish.voanews.com/amp/a-simple-sentence-wi...
Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#39Try reading the Bible. I see someone already mentioned the golden rule (Do unto others as you would have others do unto you)
it is what I am familiar with, be it science, science fiction or fantasy, some of the contents is still valid and good practice regardless of what I believe.
Re: Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion?
#40This might also be one of those things that you have to accept that can't be done consistently well. Although there's probably many ways you can pick up to not do it badly.