Constructing Empathy

Constructing empathy is an important component in ASR. Rather than hope and pray for empathy to occur naturally, we help it along. ASR has a few different options to help construct empathy.

Stacking is when you use a mindfulness approach with one partner and have them layer one emotion upon another until the felt experience of the other is achieved.

Reverse enactments ensure that the receiving spouse is attuned to the felt experience of the sharing partner before an enactment is offered.

Catch and reverse is an opportunistic strategy that catches a moment when an unempathetic partner happens to have the same or very similar felt experience as their partner. The therapist heightens and facilitates language to connect the two experiences.

For a deeper dive, check out my online course on “Fail-Proof Enactments”.