‘On the Same Wavelength’: How Empathy Can be Measured
Back in the February Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reported the first physiologic evidence of therapists and clients being measurably ‘on the same wavelength’ during live psychotherapy sessions. Clients and therapists had similar physiologic responses during moments of high positive emotion, and the more similar the responses were, the greater the level of therapist empathy experienced by clients.
Back in the February Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reported the first physiologic evidence of therapists and clients being measurably ‘on the same wavelength’ during live psychotherapy sessions. Clients and therapists had similar physiologic responses during moments of high positive emotion, and the more similar the responses were, the greater the level of therapist empathy experienced by clients.
The clients and their psychodynamic therapists, who were in already established relationships, were wired up and their physiologic responses measured using skin conductance recordings.
Data provided by independent and impartial observers showed that both clients and therapists expressed significantly more positive emotions during moments when they were experiencing more similar responses than when they were experiencing different physiologic responses. Interestingly, the study suggests that shared positive emotions and arousal were important gauges of empathy. It does not mention ‘negative’ emotions, which it seems to me are the ones in the greatest need of an empathic response, and the bread and butter of many a therapy session!
Another interesting finding is that there was much less physiologic concordance when therapists were talking than listening. The content of the verbal responses given by the therapists was not recorded, which makes me wonder whether the verbal responses were coming from outside the therapist’s empathic grasp of the client’s frame of reference, or way of seeing the world. It seems to me that when I make responses known as ‘reflections’ in which I more or less repeat what the client has said to me, or try my best to convey it’s essence as I have heard it, I remain in an empathic state. It is something I can feel physically, and it does not surprise me that this can be measured.
Carl Rogers had a name for the moments when client and counsellor both experience being ‘on the same wavelength’: he called it ‘mutuality’. These study results act as a caution to trust and to stay close to my own body sense of empathic connection. Although there may be many times when it’s appropriate to speak from another place in myself, and the connection is bound to ebb and flow, it does not seem right to lose that basic empathic connection at any time in a session.
I also wonder whether the empathy itself was producing some of the ‘positive’ emotions recorded. It certainly feels good to be understood, and to understand, on all levels, even down to the unconscious workings of our nervous systems. Let’s feed those real connections which we can experience on all levels, from the spiritual through the mental and emotional to the physiologic.
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This article was last reviewed by on Monday, 8th October 2007. You can leave a response below.
The URL of this page is:
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2007/10/08/measuring-empathy/
3rd September 2008
I love your comments and agree about making sure your connected to your client.
From the perspective of the client its the part that validates me and also communicates that I have been heard.
Within daily life I am definately very empathetic to others lives and there trials as well.
4th September 2008
Empathy, Empathic, Highly Sensitive Person all have meaning. This blog is understandable. As I delved deeper into the energetic healing world it became harder to be around emotionally unstable people. I worked in locked psychiatric units, first as a secretary/nurse tech, then as a Nurse. What I’m going to say next may sound a little off beat, but if one understands the concept of empathy transfer (energy transfer) this is the basic idea of it all. As I worked on the psychiatric unit I came into contact with several people with different diagnoses of mental illnesses. As a highly sensitive person I can describe what some of these clients were feeling within. Examples include:
When a Manic Nursing student stood near me he put out the feeling of a billion ping-pong balls going off at high velocity in every direction. I was working as secretary this day and had to ask the charge nurse to ask him to stay out of the office and remain on the floor with the clients.
A mix-bipolar /borderline client I was sitting next to and talking with started putting out a feeling of great sadness and hyperanxiety around 1900. I asked her what was going on and she informed me that this was the time of night he always got into trouble and as a girl it was the time of night she had trouble with her father.
As a Nurse tech I was working on a medical floor, an elderly man had just died and I was cleaning him up for his wife to come back and say her good-bys. I could feel his spirit floating above his bed looking down. His wife came back into the room and I so wanted to tell her, but hospital policy kept me from doing so. I could feel the change in the room as it filled with Spiritual beings. The room filled with Unconditional love.
As a Nurse Tech, sitting next to a schizoaffective client, He was talking to his mother and I was talking to the client on the other side of me. Somehow a mind connection occurred, his mind felt like thick dark sludge with a mumbling voice in the left back hemisphere.
A Catatonic clients mind is dark, peaceful and quiet. This one I have to say I tried connecting with on purpose. By visualizing a small light and trying to bring her to it. This client had been on the unit many times in the past. Catatonic was part of her illness, then is time her family stated, “This was the first time she had come out of it so quickly”.
I have many other examples; I never was sure if being a highly sensitive person is a blessing or a curse. As a healer it helps me to also see things in the body of the person I’m working on energetically. A fibromyalgia client I was working on. When I had my hands on her legs I could see in my mind’s eye my hands sinking into her connective tissue, my hands felt like they were getting tangle up in the tissue. There was a strong sensation of bee stings. I described the feeling of bee stings to her and she and her legs always feel like bees are stinging them.