How to Create a Healing Empathic Presence
- By Steve Pollack
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- 28 Jun, 2019
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NVC in Real Life: the true essence of Nonviolent Communication

What is Healing, Empathic Presence?
While corresponding with a close friend, I recently found myself describing a very rare quality of healing, empathic presence. It’s a state of consciousness that I’ve been fortunate to experience while doing NVC-related work with clients (work which is similar to couples and family counseling, but really is neither of those). This uplifting, empathic presence also arises sometimes when talking with a friend or family member. This bit about empathy is so subtle that 20 years ago I didn’t understand the first thing about it. Only the work of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg helped me to really get it.I find it so challenging to describe clearly in words. Sometimes I’ve found myself instead writing about what it’s not. Empathy is not sympathy, for instance. It’s also not about offering strategies to get someone out of their pain right away. Empathic presence is not trying to teach the sufferer a lesson about how to avoid getting into this kind of pain. Those are all well and good at times, but according to NVC philosophy, they’re not empathy at all.
The Spiritual Experience of NVC Empathy
Just sitting and being with someone else, giving them your full unbroken attention, can help set the stage for it. A psychotherapist once told me that on a really good day, she finds herself in this wondrous state while in session. Even just sitting still in solitary meditation can help to open your heart to the mysterious presence of empathic awareness. There's joy and pain throughout the universe, and meditation helps you to observe it all with greater objectivity and compassion.
Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!
Empathy is profoundly mysterious by its very nature. There are numerous formulas for entering into an empathetic state of consciousness. There are all sorts of exercises and processes designed to awaken your own empathic healing nature. Sometimes these may help, but in my experience, the mystery of empathy is that it comes of its own sweet will. You know it when you're in it, but you just can't force it. Usually I feel it most strongly when working with clients who come to me for help with nonviolent communication and mediation of interpersonal conflicts. My clients sometimes refer other people to me, telling them they've found a really good therapist or psychologist. Of course I don't have the qualifications to be either of those, but I take it as a great compliment that they see me in this way.
Can Your Therapist Offer A Healing, Empathic Presence?
Is Divinity the Ultimate in Empathic Presence?
Maybe deeply spiritual people with great faith never need this kind of empathy from a human being. They’re in the habit of receiving divine healing empathy directly from Source in their daily practices of meditation or prayer. Why would they turn to a person? Why would they spend $300 or more per hour when they can get it direct from Source, at no charge? They simply pray, meditate or talk with the Divine. Their attention flows from a heart that’s wide open, and a mind that’s absolutely focused and centered.

Without some of these things, we might find our life to be a humdrum existence. We don't have to forage or hunt for food anymore. We don't have to run from wild animal predators most of the time--unless someone unleashes their aggressive dog. We can go out anytime of the day or night. Just 150 years ago it was very unsafe to go out at night due to wild animals, thieves etc. Many of us don't hold positions of high office in government or business. Many of us are not even in an intimate love relationship, which would occasionally bring some drama with it. In the West, most of us don't live in a house with an extended family in it. Extended families living in close quarters can be a breeding ground for drama.
Some believe drama is an inherently unhealthy or bad thing. Lots of people have profiles on dating websites which say "NO drama here!" "No tolerance for drama... you bring drama into my life and you're gone!" I'm not suggesting drama is inherently bad, negative or undesirable as those profiles proclaim. There's something human about drama, something very real, except maybe (ironically) on reality TV shows where the drama is stoked and at least partially staged.
When people follow national or global politics for several hours a day, I wonder what needs are being met by that. It appears to be a need to participate in the grand human drama. A desire to get behind the values they want to see up at the top of our governments and other societal structures. The problem is that sometimes, in modern times, there is such a constant barrage of dramatic news constantly available that it's hard to limit it. It can become addictive in a way that is unhealthy and stressful.
Some situations are notorious breeding grounds for toxic drama. The very thought of them can put your stomach into knots. Amazingly, at a recent condo board meeting with about 12 people present, the meeting, though tense at times, was peppered with laughter and joy. It felt like a family. Dysfunctional in some ways, for sure, but still there was a felt sense of family. Condo owners have shared assets, shared risks and shared rewards...that's one of the definitions of community. And those are the things that stimulate drama.
So it appears to me that drama is neither good nor bad. It is what we make it out to be. It depends on whether we react to it negatively with judgment, or respond to it positively with compassion and care.