How to Help Someone in Pain Without Losing Yourself | 45

I am going to teach you today how to be empathetic, how to be the face of Christ, and do it with greatness. A few weeks ago, one of my students wrote in our WhatsApp chat for the cohort of the Faith-Based Coaching Academy, and she asked for support. She was very distraught because she had just found out that one of her best friends had received a very serious diagnosis, and she was hurting so deeply for her. It was almost as if they would have given my student the diagnosis, like, the way she felt. And she was like, "I need help because I cannot support my friend with how I'm feeling right now." Mind you, this student of mine has experienced cancer 3 times. So she has received a very serious, like the news of a serious diagnosis 3 times in the course of 5 years. Of course, she understands in her bones what this means to her friend, and she was feeling it so deeply. So I want to share today what to do when you have a heart so big that you cannot help but feel the pain of other people. How can you help those who are assigned to you if you make it yours, if you make other people's pains and problems yours, if you're so empathetic and so connected and so loving and so caring that it just affects you too deeply? How do you practice empathy is what we're gonna talk about today. Because you can imagine that in a field like mine, you are exposed to a lot of pain. I remember coming home one day and I told my husband, "I stared at pain in the eye today." I remember having a client who was grieving that she, She was in so much pain that I almost felt that I couldn't see her, because all I could see and feel was that suffering that was invading her heart. You can imagine that someone who is a therapist, a coach— I imagine many of these positions, like in children and families, like social worker, like there's So many, a teacher, heck, a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, someone in the medical field. There's so many of you who stare at pain in the eye through the people that you serve all the time. And maybe it's not even through your career. Maybe it's because you are the kind of person that people come to when they're in pain and they share, even strangers. In the street come to you and tell you their life stories. So if you're the person who is exposed to this and you struggle because you can't stop thinking about them later on and you lose sleep over it, I am going to teach you today how to be empathetic, how to be the face of Christ, and protect yourself, and do it with greatness, excellence, compassion, and wisdom. Let's not leave wisdom out. So here's how we do it. First, I'm gonna invite you to imagine that the person who is experiencing the bad news, the pain, the grief, the adversity, the hardship is in a pit, 'cause that's what pain feels like sometimes, like you're in a, in a, deep, dark pit. So imagine that big, deep hole on the ground, and your friend fell, right? Like, you know, with the news or with the experience, like your friend is at the bottom of the pit, and it's hard to reach, right? Like it's impossible to climb out of it. It's too deep, it's too hard. Life is hard sometimes, you know? I was in that pit once. Actually, I've been in that pit a few times, but especially when I lost Fofi, that was my deepest pit. What we do when we love so hard and when we're such beautiful, good people is as soon as we hear that our friend is in the bottom of the pit, or maybe a family member or a loved one, We just, we're like, our reaction is to like just run and jump in the pit. Now there's two of you. There's two of you in the pit. Now, not only can you not help your friend or your loved one out, you can't get yourself out of that. And that's why you lose sleep over it. And that's why you're dwelling on it. And that's why you're wobbling on it. It's painful for you too. So yes, your loved one probably feels like, wow, this person gets me. But you can't help that person. So what do we do now? We practice true empathy. True empathy looks like my friend is in the pit, and for a moment you're going to feel the feels. Allow them, welcome them. So while you're outside of the pit, feel that, like, oh, Gosh, like how— like those are heart-wrenching news. Just feel it, allow yourself. And then grab a long ladder, one of those that keep extending and extending, the really, really long ones, and put that ladder on the side of the pit. And then climb down to where your friend is. And when you climb down, you sit with your friend. Maybe you ask your friend or your loved one to put his or her head on your lap and you caress them. That's how I feel Jesus does to me whenever I'm going through adversity. I imagine Jesus or our Blessed Mother just like dándome cosquillitas. I love cosquillitas. I love when people caress my hair. So I imagine myself there. You can do that if you wanna borrow my image. If not, you just sit there with them and hold them and hug them or look at them or, whatever feels right in your vision, and you hold space. You don't tell them to stop crying. You don't tell them that it's gonna be okay. You don't tell them not to worry. They should worry. It may not be okay. Like, this thing sucks. You just hold space. You listen. You let your face deform with pity and pain. You cry with them, you feel with them. At that moment, you allow yourself to indulge in that pain. And I say indulge because when you feel it and you allow yourself to welcome and indulge in it, you're healing. Like, it's a good kind of indulging, right? Like, it's not like the dwelling where you extend it and you keep it with you. This is you allow it. You welcome the pain. You feel it. Feeling is healing. So you let your friend feel, you let your loved one experience that pain. And if you are experiencing too, you cry with them. No problem. And then you climb back up. The ladder, and you extend your hand, and you ask them to come with you. And what that looks like is like, "I know this sucks." Like, you know, you already let them know, "This sucks, and I'm with you, and I'm so sorry you're going through this." You already told them that with your words, with your actions, with your silence, with your presence, with your holding space. But now you're gonna be like, "Come with me." Let me give you some hope. Let's surrender this to God. Let's trust. Let's ask for prayers, for help. Let's look for the best doctors. Let's look for the best attorneys if the problem is a legal problem. Let's look for the best financial advisor if the problem is financial, right? Like, whatever the problem is that has you in that pit, let's— when you extend the hand, let me do this for you. Let me do a meal train. So that you don't have to worry about the cooking. Let me take your kids to school so that you can take that off your chest or your shoulders. Let me, let me, right? Like, you provide support, you give a hand, you offer hope. And then you climb back out, and you go home, and you pray, and you do the meal for the meal train, and you make the calls to support them. And then you can come back and visit. And you go down the ladder again, and you hold space again. But you don't jump on the pit with the person. So when people ask me, especially my students, they're always like, but Betsy, like, I just take everything personally, and I can't sleep, and I can't stop thinking about them. And I find so much beauty in people caring so deeply. And if you're listening to this podcast, chances are that you are the kind of person who cares so deeply. That other people's pain affects you tremendously. So empathy is not jumping in the pit with them. Empathy is not dwelling and wobbling on suffering and just thinking, that's it, this is it, darkness forever inside this big, deep hole. No, no. Empathy is grabbing the ladder, Going down, offering help. One day, at some point, if you continue going down and extending the hand, they are going to take your hand and they are going to come up with you. When I experienced the loss of Fofi, gosh, was I in a pain. And I, in addition to people extending a hand to me, I found myself in that pit extending my arms and begging for help when nobody had brought a ladder yet. I was extending my hands, and I was from the beginning begging God for hope. And I remember I went to the mom— I participated in the moms ministry of my parish. That's a ministry for moms. I participated in Emmaus, the Emmaus Retreat. I went to daily Mass. I went to the Blessed Sacrament every day. That was me extending my arms and asking for help. And in my case, I was asking God. But God sent me angels. He sent me the priest the day after Fofi passed to bring me that hope and so that I could borrow the belief from him that it was possible. I'm able to be happy again. And he sent me people who would randomly hug me in the streets, people I didn't know, strangers. And they would bring me like blue bracelets that they made because Fofi's favorite color was blue, or a blue rosary, or they would give me a hug, or they would say, I'm praying for you. Or they brought me food for weeks. They brought me a plant that had blue flowers. The most beautiful things. Those were all people who had a ladder and came down to extend a hand and let me know that I wasn't alone. I was not alone. Empathy is very healing. Empathy is not misery loves company. You know, like, okay, like jump in here. Like, empathy is, You're feeling with me, you're holding space with and for me, but you have the ability to get out of here and take me with you if I choose to join you. That is powerful, that is healing. So my invitation to you, my friend, is that you begin, like the last few weeks we've talked about building belief, like understanding how, what thoughts are and how they form beliefs, and then what to do with those beliefs and how to step into an identity of a person who's empathetic and wise and helpful and hopeful and can be that lighthouse for the person who's in darkness and at the bottom of the pit. So you get to embody that, you get to step into that identity, and from that wisdom, you can help everybody around you. And if you don't feel competent enough, or you don't feel like you know how to help with a deep level of excellence, I hear this all the time. Like many of, even the parents that call me for teenagers, they're like, "I'm not a professional. I'm not a professional, so I don't know how to help." Well, now you can become a professional in the Faith-Based Coaching Academy. If you are the kind of person that people come to like for help and support, and people confide in and trust, it is your duty and responsibility to become equipped. Because my friend, God doesn't choose the equipped, He equips the chosen. So if you've been chosen to be the hands and feet of Christ on earth, to help others, whether it's in your career as a teacher, as a— in the medical field, as a nurse, a doctor, or in your team corporate with, you know, in leadership, whatever the capacity is, if you are being called to help others, it is your duty, your responsibility, and a privilege to become equipped, to become formed. And you don't have to go get a PhD in clinical psychology to do that. I have a program that offers you the PhD-level education in psychology, offers you the formation combined with a connection to the indwelling God, with the tapping into the Holy Spirit within. Because you can have all the academic formation in the world, you can know all the theories, read all the books, have all the degrees, and if you are not connected to the infinite wisdom that lives within, you're not gonna be able to help people. To the best of your abilities. You're always gonna be able to help people, of course, but not to the best of their abilities. One cannot go without the other. That's why I created the psycho-spiritual integration model, because we need both. We need both to be empathetic. We need both to be purposeful. We need both to be the better version of ourselves that God created us to be. So that's empathy. Now, in the story that I started this whole podcast with, which is my student who was asking for support regarding her friend who got the diagnosis, there's another very important aspect to it. In addition to the empathy, which was part of the teaching her and forming her so that she may be the best coach she can be, there was the part of like, but wait, she has a history of diagnoses that have been traumatic. She's lived that pain. And that was the other thing that I thought was important to address with her. And I remember telling her, like, listen, this is the empathy part. So this is, okay, I'm gonna teach you how to be empathetic without wallowing in the suffering, right? But there's another part to this. Whenever you feel so deeply for someone, and it feels like bigger than yourself, like you can't shake it off, and you tried the ladder thing and it didn't work, you still feel very distraught, that is your body giving you information. Dr. Joe Dispenza says that thoughts are the language of the mind, emotions are the language of the body, and the body keeps score. The body doesn't forget. The mind may forget. We may forget what somebody did or how it happened, or, you know, we forget incidents and events, But the body doesn't. The body doesn't forget those emotions. That's why whenever something familiar, like a familiar emotion is triggered in our body, we react as if it was really happening. Like, even if it's a thought that you have that triggers that emotion, we react as if it was true, as if it was happening right now. If I think about Well, maybe not so much now because I've done so much, gone through so much healing. But there was a time that I would just think about how Fofi's accident took place, I would feel, my body would feel as if it was happening at that moment. My clients who have experienced betrayal, when they talk about the betrayal, you see them and it seems as though they're being betrayed at that particular moment. They're witnessing it right then. The body reacts and responds regardless of whether the thought or the event connected to that emotion is real in the present moment. It almost goes into past, into the past. It's operating from the past. And the body, since it keeps coherence, it remembers The emotions, I always say in Spanish, "El corazón tiene memoria." My colleague in grad school taught me that. The heart has a memory. The body has a memory. The body oftentimes responds or reacts from the past, not from the present. So whenever you feel that emotion, you also get to pay attention. It's not just that you're not good at being empathetic and knowing how to draw the line and set a boundary. No, it's that maybe that pain that you're feeling, you think is for only for your friend and only towards that person that is going through it. But maybe that has awakened an emotion that is stuck in your body that you haven't yet released or fully healed. And that is important information. You get to become curious Wait a minute, why is this affecting me so much? Why am I hurting so much? Why can't I sleep? Why is it so hard to release it, to let it go, to connect with peace? Get curious, ask God to reveal it to you. In the case of my friend, she's actually doing this certification to become a coach, and she must because she has incredible wisdom and a beautiful story to share and to bring hope to others, she realized like, oh my gosh, I guess in the effort of being present for my child, being present for my husband, being present for myself so that I can heal this illness, I didn't fully heal all the parts of this hardship. And that was really beautiful for her to become aware through her reaction, her emotional reaction, that there was still something to process there, something to heal. And now, because she was able to have that awakening, now she brings it to her peer coaching, her Faith-Based Coaching Academy, to process, to go over. And that's the beauty of doing personal development work and even a life coach certification, because yes, you're coming here to be equipped for others, to form yourself, to help your family, your ministry, your community, your your colleagues, the people assigned to you, but you inevitably do the work for yourself first. In this journey, you need to see yourself in the theories. You need to acknowledge what is partaking, like what you're partaking in, what you're participating in, so that then you have that awareness and that knowing and that clarity that you may identify in the people around you when you're gonna go serve them and serve them well. So whenever you feel a pain for someone else, on behalf of someone else, practice empathy, but also get curious as to why that hurts so much in your heart. What about you remains unhealed? What emotion is stuck in your body that you haven't processed because you didn't even know it was there? And then talk to someone. Talk to someone about it. If you're not one to talk to people, then journal about it. And then a really beautiful journal exercise that I enjoy is you just, you write and you rant and, you know, like say all the things that come to mind, be the victim, You know, feel all the feels, like release. And then pause, say a prayer, invite the Holy Spirit to take over you, and ask God to write you a response. And then start journaling without pausing, without stopping, without thinking too much about it. Just start journaling and let God hold your pen through your hand. And speak to you. And you can do this with scripture, you could do it with writing, you could do it in prayer and meditation. I, you know, if your thing is not to go to a coach, then use God. He's my favorite coach, the best one ever. Heck, nowadays you can even use Claude and ChatGPT and ask God to speak to you. Speak through them. Just, just make sure you train. Or heck, oh my goodness, how could I forget this? Go to Betsy Bot. Betsy Bot will help you through this. You don't even have— because usually with ChatGPT and Claude, you have to train them and be like, okay, you are a person of faith and you love God with all your heart and that's your priority. And so you're, you're a coach and a therapist or whatever, but you have, you know, you, you use the cycle, you do the psycho-spiritual work. If you go to Betsy Bot, you don't have to train it with a prompt because I'm already trained, and that's a better version of me, I think. So anyway, just be sure to get curious so that you may become aware, and then you address it with a professional, with AI, with a journal, whatever works for you. But make sure that you— with breathing, breathing is such a powerful way. Anytime I'm feeling any uncomfortable emotion, I will close my eyes, take a deep breath, inhale peace, and release that emotion through my exhale. And usually I exhale for twice as long so that I can really get rid of that uncomfortable emotion and then just inhale the light, the peace, the joy that I know I am meant to experience. So Number 1, practice empathy by putting a ladder, climbing down, holding space, allowing for the feels to take place, and then climb up, extend the hand, offer hope, and then come back down if needed be. And while you're out, just pray. But if while you're out, this persists, then get curious. Listen to the guidance. What is God trying to tell you with this emotional experience that feels bigger than you? What remains unhealed inside of you? And then address it. Address it, my friend. Bueno, if this was helpful, make sure that you share with someone you love or someone who's also the hands and feet of God on earth and are always helping other people. Like teach them a little bit of this. And if you are curious about being formed, psycho-spiritually, doing the personal development work, learning how to support others with this, and connecting more deeply to God, strengthening your relationship and becoming the wisest version of you so that you may be a beacon of hope and love to your loved ones and those around you, I got you. Go to my next webinar. You may register at faithbasedcoachingacademy.com/fw. F as in faith, W as in wisdom. faithbasedcoachingacademy.com/fw. Or if you desperately want to start this work right now, then you don't have to wait for the webinar. You can just go ahead and book a, life and faith audit with me on a call, and it's— that's at talktobetsy.com. I cannot wait to support you. Have a beautiful day. God bless. Bye.