DAY 70: Empathy That Shows I Get It
Inspired by a question of shared experience
A quick note, I’ll be back from my travels in Guatemala on Friday. I have some big thanks you’s to Carol Sullivan for hosting the MI Practices and Berta Enright for hosting the MI Snack this week and last.
Also, we have just two slots left for the MI BASICS 6 hour class this Friday Aug 15.
More info here. - Sky
A Guest Posting from Carol Sullivan
This reflection was sparked by the question:
Can I offer enough empathy if I haven’t experienced what my client is going through?
In other words, do I need to have faced something similar in order to offer the kind of empathy that shows I really understand how difficult change can be?
In Motivational Interviewing, we often talk about empathy—but not the kind that says, “I’ve been there too.” The kind that matters most isn’t about shared experience.
It’s about shared humanity.
We don’t need to feel what our clients feel or carry what they carry to walk alongside them. It’s about remembering how human it is to long for comfort, to crave relief, and to seek a moment of peace amid chaos.
We all have something we reach for when we’re tired, anxious, lonely, stressed, or overwhelmed. And how hard it is to loosen our grip—or escape the grip those things have on us.
Empathy doesn’t always come from sameness. It comes from recognizing the tug of habit, the hollowness of longing, the small voice that says, “just this once.”
I’ll never forget a scene in a novel I read years ago:
A woman addicted to drugs sits with the telephone in one hand, her forehead resting in the other.
Her eyes are closed. While she waits for her dealer to answer, she’s whispering, “Don’t pick up, don’t pick up, please don’t pick up.”
Trapped in the wanting and the not wanting, she calls the one person who can quiet the pull of addiction—her fate in his hands, her tears carrying a flicker of hope that the phone just keeps ringing.
That intimate, heartbreaking moment stays with me.
We’ve all had our own version of that whispered plea.
Don’t answer. Don’t let me do it again.
Do answer. I don’t know how to stop myself.
Today’s invitation:
Reflect on one habit you hold close—maybe it’s morning coffee, evening cocktails, a late-night scroll through social media, or junk food.
We might not label these things “addictions,” but we know the tug.
If you paused that habit for a day:
What would you miss?
How much would you miss it?
How would it disrupt your day?
What might you gain?
This isn’t about self-denial.
It’s about self-awareness—about noticing how hard change can be, not in theory but in truth.
It’s about reconnecting with the emotional pull of habit so we can meet our clients with greater understanding—not because we’ve walked in their shoes, but because we know what it’s like to walk in our own.
Let this experiment deepen your listening.
Let it deepen your empathy.
Powerful empathy often grows not from shared experience, but from the courage to look inward—and to notice what lives there.
Carol
Carol Sullivan
National Board Certified and Functional Medicine Certified Health and Wellness Coach
Founder, Carol E Sullivan LLC | Guided Success
Currently on the path to becoming a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT)
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For me, empathy is stepping out of my own head and into someone else’s experience without trying to fix them. Whether it’s a client, a friend, or family, it’s about standing beside them in whatever they’re feeling. It starts with giving ourselves that same grace: trusting we have what it takes to move through whatever unfolds. It’s humbling, it deepens life, and it turns empathy into a quiet practice of gratitude.
Thank you, Carol, for this amazing prompt. "The kind that matters most isn’t about shared experience. It’s about shared humanity." this resonated with me a lot, and you put it in a really beautiful way. We humans are quite complex yet very simple creatures where we want the same things, security, safeness, support, belonging.... etc.
Turning this empathy piece into our own self-reflection with the questions you provided for us is a very helpful way to understand ourselves, not to share common experiences with our clients but to be human, and being an imperfect human is sometimes all what we need to live, grow and create safeness for others.