The Use of Empathy Circles in Family Dynamics
Speaker: Dean Bowles  (15 min)

Overview

Dean Bowles, a community charity director and volunteer, discussed the transformative impact of empathy circles on family dynamics. He introduced the practice through activism, which taught him to listen to understand rather than compete. Dean applied this method to resolve conflicts within his family, where his partner was declining and his daughter was self-harming. By using empathy circles, he fostered deeper understanding and connection, reducing self-harm and empowering his daughter. The practice removed power dynamics, enabling genuine presence and reflection. Dean emphasized the importance of teaching empathy circles to children to foster accountability and growth within families.

Outline

Dean Bowles' Introduction and Background

• Speaker 1 introduces Dean Bowles, highlighting his roles as the director of a local community charity and a volunteer in a community kitchen for the homeless and disadvantaged.

• Dean Bowles begins his talk by discussing the use of empathy circles and their impact on family dynamics.

• Dean reflects on the challenges of communication within families, comparing it to the unpredictability of technology.

• He shares his background in activism and how empathy circles helped activists bond and resolve conflicts.

Dean's Personal Journey with Empathy Circles

• Dean explains how he was raised in a combative environment by lawyers and how this influenced his family dynamics.

• He describes his initial exposure to empathy circles through activism and how it taught him to listen to understand rather than to compete.

• Dean underwent training to run empathy circles and applied this skill to conflict resolution in activist work.

• He recounts the increasing tension within his own family, including his partner's decline and his daughter's self-harming behavior.

Implementing Empathy Circles in Family Dynamics

• Dean shares how he used the empathy circle process to address the tensions within his family.

• He describes the initial challenges his family faced in adopting the empathy circle practice, including difficulty in not questioning or passing judgment.

• Over time, the family members began to understand and be present with each other, leading to deeper insights and improved communication.

• Dean highlights the empowering effect of the empathy circle on his daughter, who started to feel valued as an individual.

Impact of Empathy Circles on Family Relationships

• Dean discusses how the empathy circle process removed power dynamics within the family, allowing for more equal and present interactions.

• He notes the positive impact on his daughter's behavior, who no longer self-harmed and started to ask more questions and engage more actively.

• The empathy circle enabled the family to address hot topics in a structured and respectful manner.

• Dean reflects on the importance of being present and listening without judgment, which brought a new level of richness to their family dynamics.

Dean's Reflections on Empathy Circles and Family Dynamics

• Dean emphasizes the importance of reflective listening and understanding in family relationships.

• He acknowledges that his preconceptions were clouded by his past experiences, and the empathy circle helped him see his family members' perspectives.

• The empathy circle process enabled the family to grow together and develop a deeper understanding of each other.

• Dean shares that his daughter now uses the empathy circle practice in her conflict resolution work, highlighting its long-term impact.

Speaker 1 and Speaker 3's Reactions

• Speaker 1 and Speaker 3 express their amazement at Dean's story and the impact of empathy circles on family dynamics.

• Speaker 1 identifies patterns of trauma and tension in the family and the role of empathy circles in interrupting these patterns.

• Dean reflects on how the empathy circle process helped him and his daughter become friends and equals.

• Speaker 1 shares his own experience of teaching his son the empathy circle process and the importance of teaching it to children.

Transcript

Speaker 1  0:00  

Dean is going to come up. Dean Bowles is the director of a local community charity and works part-time as a volunteer in a local community kitchen for the homeless and disadvantaged. Today, Dean is going to talk on the use of empathy circles and family dynamics for everybody. Take it away,

Speaker 2  0:19  

Dean. Hello, everyone. I'm just checking that I can be heard. Not sure if the headlines are working correctly, but this is the way of things with technology. It's also the way of things with families. Sometimes we think we're speaking clearly, and sometimes we think we've made ourselves understandable for other members in our family units, but it's only with careful reflection and with careful listening that we can actually truly see what they see, or they think they understand of what we believe is in our hearts. I came to the Epic of Circle practice through activism, and it was a way of us activists bonding with each other, sharing trauma, sharing joy, and sharing gratitude for each other, and I developed the affinity for this practice because it was the first time I'd come across anything whereby I was taught to listen to understand to comprehend rather than to compete with, because my family dynamics were, I was brought up by some lawyers, so I was brought up in a very combative environment, and it seemed I brought this forward into my own family unit. I thought I'd somehow left it behind, but it's very hard to leave behind where you come from, unless you work very hard at it, or unless you have someone reflecting back to you where you're at now, so you can actually see yourself for where you truly are, not where you think you are. So I learned the practice through my activism. I then underwent training the trainers on how to run empathy circles, and this then gave me a deeper insight, and I then took that level of that understanding to conflict resolution, and I used the conflict resolution in activist work with situations that were arising to dissolve tensions. Meanwhile, in the background, there was this increasing tension within my own family unit. My partner was in decline. May she rest in peace. She's now passed away. My daughter was in a situation of feeling she wasn't visible, so she was self-harming for attention, and then my partner was having accidents all the time, so there was this war of attention between the two of them about who could hold the limelight, almost, and in the end I thought this is really, really, this is really, really dangerous, because it was escalating, each one was was going deeper and deeper into this trauma, and then I remembered, actually, I'd use this process called the Empathy Cafe, the Empathy Circles. So I sat them down, and I explained to them the process. I said it was a constructed dialog with a limited time to speak, so you had to be thoughtful about what you said to each other, and at first it didn't go too well. It was very hard for them to not question, not to pass judgments, and to just be present with someone and speak to what they'd just heard. But by the third time we'd done this process, actually they started to get a hang of it, and they started to then be fully present with each other, and I saw a side to my daughter that I had been blinded to. I gained deeper insights into why she was doing what she was doing, and the pain that she was in, because when you listen to understand rather than to, to, to think you, you know it already, you get a deeper level of understanding, and when you reflect back, you hear yourself reflecting their situation, so it started to enable us to be fully present with each other in a way we'd never been before, because families are beautiful things, but they can also be very heated things, very traumatic things, because when you're with someone all the time, you know what buttons to press, you know how to activate their rage, or how to make them sad, or you have prejudgments, and you're preloaded. So, with this process, all of that gets negated, because you actually have to be present, and you have to be quiet, and you have to listen. And through this listening process and through this mutuality and removing all the power dynamics in a relationship between their parents and their child, it suddenly empowered my daughter to such a level that she'd never experienced before. She then started to be more present in everything. She started to ask more questions. She started to come forward more.

Speaker 2  5:32  

She started just to realize that actually she, she wasn't just a child, she was a living individual, and that both me and her mother valued her as that individual, not just as a child. So it empowered her, and it enabled her to understand that she could actually ask us to be quiet, and she could actually say, 'Right, we're having an empathy circle, now there's something we need to talk about, because we had this unwritten rule that if ever there was something going on within the family, we could call for a quarter of an hour empathy circle, would be two rounds, three minutes each, just to reflect on a hot topic or something that we thought the others should, should know about, and although my partner was declining in her mental capacities and her physical health, it did aid her, and it did aid both myself and my daughter in assisting her on her journey. I think without that process, without that, that, that depth of time, or just being present with someone, that it, we would have both been scarred a lot further and a lot deeper than we were scarred, so using the circle removed those power dynamics within the family, and then enabled us as individuals to be present with each other as individuals, not as the father or the mother or the daughter. I still have to give great thanks for this whole thing, because it really did enable me to understand their point of view about what I was doing. I thought I was doing things for the right reason. Turned out my next, my understanding, what I thought was right was biased and skewed by what had happened to me, and I hadn't actually listened to what was happening to them, so my preconceptions were clouding my ability to see who they were and what was going on within the family dynamic, so being present with them without judgment or without criticism or without questioning, and actually just hearing them brought a whole new level of richness and just within our family, and my daughter's no longer self-harming. She's still on the road to recovery, as I say. Her mother has passed, my partner has passed, but she now uses this practice in conflict resolution, where she is working and where she is staying. The power of actually reflecting to someone what you actually hear them say enables them to feel heard and actually appreciated. And in a family, we so often forget to do that with each other, we're so busy with our own beliefs that we understand what the other people within that dynamic need from us, that we fail to actually ask them what they really need from us, and just that quiet space, that that one on one space, that that time to actually hear, see, feel, taste, and reflect, and be with that person where they actually currently are enables that richness of understanding to grow. So I would recommend teaching empathy circles to children, so they can then hold their parents to account, because being held to account for you by your child, it's very cathartic, very formative, and very painful, but sometimes the best things come. Out of a little bit of pain, and listening to comprehend rather than to compete with, enables you to actually grow together, and that growing together, I think, wouldn't have happened without us actually using the reflective listening process. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 3  10:25  

Oh, that was amazing.

Speaker 1  10:30  

I heard I heard patterns, I heard pattern interruption, I heard specifically the patterns around traumas and tensions in the BS, the belief systems that we attach to those, and the impact of empathy circles on those patterns, the power of presence as a pattern interruption that allows us to develop those abilities of connection outside of our bs and beliefs.

Speaker 2  10:58  

That's basically what enabled us as father and daughter to actually become friends rather than just I've got the power and you haven't got the power, now we're equals, and that is a really beautiful thing. I wouldn't have had without doing this process.

Speaker 1  11:18  

I, oh, and the power and pain of teaching your children that I am teaching my son. Here's the dance I'm going to share this with everybody. Here's the dance he created, so that we would understand the process, because he figured it right. So, first you hear, but then you have to listen, which is going to help you understand, so you can reflect it and circle it back. Oh, they're good. Teach it to the kids, 1,000% That's how you get a movement going. Dean, that was amazing. Another big breath, everybody. Oh, that parasympathetic nervous system to.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai