2.3 Building empathy
If you know little about the trans experience, empathy for trans clients may be harder. This is important because therapist empathy is regarded as a core predictor of the effectiveness of therapy across all therapy types (Watson, 2016). Cis practitioners may find the following visualisation exercise helpful for developing empathy.
Activity 2.3: Visualisation
Timing: Allow 10 minutes
It is a good idea to find somewhere quiet where you feel comfortable, closing your eyes as you listen to this.
Download this audio clip.Audio player: visualisation.mp3
Transcript
PROFESSOR:
If you feel comfortable doing so, please close your eyes. Now, I want you to think about something relating to your identity that you know in your heart to be true, preferably something that cannot be objectively proven, such as I am an empathic person, or I love my partner or my child, or listening to a certain kind of music makes me happy. Have you got something?
OK, next, I'd like you to imagine what it would be like if every day of your life people went out of their way to tell you that you were wrong to believe that thing about yourself. Your experience is not what you think it is. That thing you feel is an important thing about you, you're mistaken. It is not possible to be that thing, to feel that feeling.
What if they also tried to stop you from living as someone with that identity or expressing it? What if they tried to persuade other people not to see you that way? What impact would the removal of you being able to express freely this important aspect of your identity have on your wellbeing and sense of self? Notice the feelings that this stirs up for you.
Now, you may or may not have been thinking about something as huge and fundamental as gender, which has an entire legal and social apparatus attached to it. But think for a moment about that now. What if you woke up tomorrow morning and everyone believed that you were the opposite gender to the one you know yourself to be? And no matter how hard you tried to tell people who you are, they acted like you were mistaken, or crazy, or lying, or trying to get attention, or perhaps even dangerous. How might that impact your relationship with self and others?
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).
What was the experience of doing this visualisation like for you? Did it feel helpful?
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).
Discussion
Existing ideas about a client can disrupt empathy and prevent fully meeting them. We may need to spend time tuning into trans narratives to clear away some of our existing thoughts.
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2.2 Meeting Patrick