I chose to do this project with my sixteen year old sister Vanessa.  She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a junior in high school.  I told her the questions over the phone, she answered them at her leisure, then read them back to me on the phone.  We then proceeded to discuss the differences in our responses.  Below are our answers to the seven questions regarding  empathy in our relationship.

Veronica’s Answers

1. Does your friend understand most of what you say?
Yes, she most definitely does.  We share so many of the same life experiences that most of the time she knows exactly what I am saying without my even saying it.  She also understands the nuances in my speech.  For example, she can tell by the tone of my voice what I am really thinking.  I guess you could say she goes beyond understanding what I say to understanding what I mean by what I say.

2. Does your friend understand how you feel?
Again, since we share so much of our lives, Vanessa can really tell how I feel. . .  usually without me having to explain it to her.  For example, one evening Vanessa, my mom and I went shopping for sandals.  We had been shopping for about two hours without finding any shoes whatsoever.  Finally, we found a store with two pairs that I liked.  There was a family in the store with us, and the kids were sticking their feet into the aisles to try to trip me.  Then another family entered the store and walked right in front of the mirror I was using.  Mind you, the space between the mirror and my feet was only about a foot!  Vanessa could tell exactly how I felt about those kids by watching my face.  We had a great time laughing about my frustration when we left the store!  So, yes, she definitely understands how I feel!

3. Does your friend appreciate what your experiences feel like to you?
This is one area where Vanessa may be lacking.  She has a hard time opening herself up to interpretations different from her own.  For example, she may understand that I am angry and mad for failing a test, but she cannot quite understand that I am mad at myself instead of at the professor.

4. Does your friend try to see things though your eyes?
I believe she tries to see things through my eyes, but that she just is not able.  She has a hard time putting herself in others' shoes and feeling how their experiences differ from hers.  She sometimes seems close-minded because of this, but I know it is only because she cannot understand what I am seeing or feeling.

5. Does your friend ask you questions about what your experiences mean to you?
Yes!  She asks many questions about meaning.  We are always discussing how events relate to the bigger, more philosophical questions in our lives.  I love discussing my beliefs with her, because she knows the right questions to ask to get me thinking in a new way.

6. Does your friend ask you questions about what you’re thinking?
Vanessa always makes sure to ask what is on my mind.  She is my closest friend and so whenever we are together we always talk about what we are thinking at that moment and what we have been thinking about since we last talked.  She is great for discussing thoughts!

7. Does your friend ask you questions about how you’re feeling?
This, again, is another area where Vanessa may not be quite as skillful as she could.  She really has a hard time understanding others’ points of view.  It does not occur to her to ask, because it does not occur to her that anyone might feel differently about something.

Vanessa’s Answers

1. Does your friend understand most of what you say?
My friend, for as long as I have known her, has been a very stubborn individual.  Therefore, if she takes a strong opinion on a subject and I take the opposite opinion, she tends to resist.  However, I think she is resisting the dissension itself rather than my own personal argument.  From knowing her so long and after having talked to her about our discussions after the tension and defensiveness (which is common among siblings) has ceased, I realize she has in fact understood a lot more of what I say than I had thought.  In some cases, she even understands more than I do because I tend to get wrapped up in trying not to make her defensive, while she can be both defensive and listen at the same time, even if she acts like she is not.

2. Does your friend understand how you feel?
I am probably the most sensitive person I know.  As a result, I have an intense and heterogeneous flood of emotions at every change, every insult, every accomplishment.  My surroundings tend to affect me greatly and, as a result, I cry easily.  But because my friend and I have spent so much time together, she is very aware of this.  Due to this, I have noticed that if we are having a discussion and I begin to cry or if I come to her with a mass of mixed emotions, she puts aside her stubbornness and the superiority issues that all siblings have and places herself on my level.  She unconditionally comforts me with words and hugs, and she knows how to help me regain control of myself and a little more confidence.  I think that for someone to do this, he or she must obviously and truly understand how I feel.  If a person responds to me in a way that lifts me up, I consider that person to be a true friend.

3. Does your friend appreciate what your experiences feel like to you?
My friend asks me all the time what cross country, my sport of choice, is like.  She listens intensely, never interrupting me, and questions me about friends and school as well.  I suppose my most important experiences are typically found in races, both cross country and track.  She supports me at meets whether I do well or not.  She encourages  me to do my best and has even run with me at times. Running is a part of who I am, and how I race greatly affects how I feel and vice versa.  As a result, I find myself both feeling up and down from it.  Each time I learn something new about myself, inner or outer, she is one of the first to bring it to my own eyes.  Because she listens intently, and runs with me sometimes, I know she has some appreciation of what my experiences  feel like to me.

4. Does your friend try to see things though your eyes?
As I said before, when in intense discussions with my friend, she does not go out of her way, like any typical teenager, to see my point of view.  If she does see it, she does not make it recognized.  So basically, she does not try to see my view when we argue.  However, as I also said previously, in things that are a part of my life and not hers, for example cross country, friends and track, she does try to understand what I see and go though.  This may be for her own benefits, I do not know, but she does ask, and therefore, she sometimes does try to see things she does not see though my eyes.  However, things she already sees and has analyzed in her own eyes tend to stand as obstacles to accepting different versions of the same view.  So she does not try to see my view if she already has one on that particular subject, but she does love to learn what she does not already  know.

5. Does your friend ask you questions about what your experiences mean to you?
Although not directly asking “what do your experiences mean to you,” my friend asks me questions about my experiences.  I am a long winded individual, and because I feel so comfortable opening up to my friend and telling her everything, I usually go straight from laughing or crying into analyzing what my experiences have done or what they now mean to me without her prompt, and she listens intently.

6. Does your friend ask you questions about what you’re thinking?
I tend to daydream a lot, but I do not ever recall my friend asking me what it is I am thinking about during my daydreams.  I recall, however, her enjoyment in snapping me out of such reveries, but not with seriousness or concern.  The only time I remember her asking me what I am thinking is after she gives me a long detailed version of something she is thinking about or going on in her life, and has obviously told me all of this for a reason.  There may be a subconscious reason to release the information to an outsider, as if just hearing it said back to her by an outsider makes her able to be separated enough from it to analyze it again from a different viewpoint.  Sometimes, however, she stops, makes a point to look at me, and says, “what do you think."  It is a very rare occasion, but she asks it in a very meaningful and intuitive manner.  But, as in this case, since it is a view she has already seen, she must work even harder before asking me this because she must first accept that her view might be wrong or different, and she must okay that possibility.  Thus, due to her stubbornness, she rarely asks  me this question.

7. Does your friend ask you questions about how you’re feeling?
My friend has plenty of opportunities and reasons to ask me how I am feeling because of my sensitivity, and she does, but quite rarely.  This is simply because when I am feeling different, weird or sad I tend to blurt my feelings out on my own.  Maybe they are the same subconscious reasons as before, and maybe because my friend is always there.  Anytime I’m “affected” and have not told her, if she hasn’t caused it, and if she isn’t too wrapped up in a point she still may be holding against me (even though it’s actually the point that is different from her own, she takes it out on me as an individual) and as long as I am not getting the silent treatment, she will ask me what I am feeling, and more importantly, sharing my same love for analyzation, she asks me why.  She brings me to the basis where these feelings began, helps me through hard times, and makes me laugh even harder at the funny ones.

     Empathy is defined as “the ability to recreate another person’s perspective, to experience the world from his or her point of view” (Adler 95).  Before doing this project, I was under the impression that my sister and I had a pretty empathetic relationship.  I thought I was definitely the more empathetic one, and that she was just unable to achieve my level of understanding.  Now I realize how wrong I was!  Looking back over our responses, I noticed some striking contrasts.
     Most obviously, Vanessa and I have very distinctive writing styles, which I believe stems from the fact that our brains work very differently.  My responses are short and to the point, and I usually assume the reader knows what I am talking about.  Vanessa’s responses, on the other hand, are long and explanatory.  She makes sure that anyone can grasp what she is thinking.  Her sentences are longer than mine, and she uses almost twice as many words as I (she uses approximately 1,100 words, while I top out at a measly 540).  And I thought I was typing too much for my answers!  While correcting my horrendous spelling and shortening some of her sentences (yes, I did split up quite a few!) I found myself wanting to delete whole sections of hers that I thought were unnecessary.  This difference in our writing styles serves as an analogy for our entire relationship.
     Firstly, I assume to much.  I tend to believe the reader or my sister, has the ability to know what I am thinking.  In my answer to question number two, I was positive Vanessa could read my mind.  What she was really reading was my body language, which she can do with anybody.  Secondly, I do not communicate to her that I am listening and that I understand what she is saying.  I do not explain in detail what I feel, either to Vanessa or to you, the reader,  because I assume she, or you, already knows.  Thirdly, I tend to give off a defensive manner, or an “I am right, you are wrong” feeling.  I do not mean to do this, but as I reread our answers, I realized I come across as being very brusque.
     It is now clear to me that Vanessa is the more empathetic one in our relationship.  She understands more of what things mean to me than I give her credit for.  More importantly, she understands why I act the way I do.  That clearly shows her ability to “recreate someone else’s perspective” (Adler 95)!  I, on the other hand, thought I knew everything about Vanessa.  I thought I could already see her point of view, so why should I bother asking.  Interestingly enough, I asked another friend to do this assignment with me before asking Vanessa for two reasons: I knew Vanessa was busy with cross country and I thought I already knew what she would say.  Surprise, surprise!
     I would certainly like to increase the empathy in my relationship with my sister.  I feel terrible for assuming I knew so much about her, when I hardly knew anything about how she views our relationship.  I want to get closer to my sister, and I feel that by increasing our empathy, we can avoid fighting so much!  Now that I think about it, our fights are usually caused by misunderstandings of what one of us is trying to say.  My sister is one of the few people to whom I really open up, and I am very ashamed that I did not let her share with me while assuming I knew what she would say if she did!
     My biggest problem in understanding Vanessa seems to be in my perception of her. I have difficulty “select[ing] which data will gain [my] attention” (Adler 75).  I am definitely a victim of oversimplification.  I stuck Vanessa’s experiences and feelings into a box for easy reference so I would not have to ask her how she felt or thought.  This is also an example of my organization of Vanessa’s thoughts.  My organization was simply to shove my perception of her into a big pile.  I saw her in only one light-- as my little sister.  I also misinterpreted what she told me.  I did not see past the talk to the meaning behind it.  I was not very involved with her as a person, but more as the stereotypical sister.  However, there are not very many “physiological influences” or “cultural influences” on how we perceive each other since we were raised together (Adler 82, 83).
     To increase our empathy, I would like to sit down and have a talk about each others actions and how they affect us.  I want to know what I do to give the impression that I am so defensive.  I think we should consciously make an effort to ask each other more questions about our thoughts and feelings.  We should not assume we know everything about the other person (I guess that one applies to me more than Vanessa!)   One way we can do this is by using the perception checking method summarized on page 93 of Interplay.  We should describe to each other the behavior patterns we see, we should put forth our views on what the behavior might mean, and then we should “request for clarification about how to interpret the behavior” (Adler 93).  This would surely help us understand each other better.  This check, however, would be almost useless if neither of us could “get a sense of how it feels” to the other person (Adler 95).
     To increase our empathy levels, we would need to work on the three areas of empathy: “perspective taking”; “emotional contagion”; and “genuine concern” (Adler 95).  I do not think Vanessa and I have very many problems in the genuine concern area, as we love each other very much and care about each other.  I clearly need to work on perspective taking.  As I stated earlier, my perception of Vanessa is completely wrong.  I need to reexamine how I treat her and how I respond to her.  Both of us have trouble “set[ting] aside [our] own opinions and tak[ing] on those of the other person” (Adler 95), but I feel I have more to work on in that area than she does.  Emotional contagion is another dimension we do not need a whole lot of work on.  We understand shared experiences of happiness, sadness, jealously and so forth, but we need to be able to experience the feelings the other person has, and we do not.  To work on these areas, we will need to be more open-minded when our opinions differ, be imaginative to try to feel what each other are experiencing and have commitment when it does not work (Adler 98).
     I am very happy I chose to do this project with my sister.  I feel our relationship now has a huge potential for growth where before there was only stagnation.  I have had to come down off my high horse and admit my sister is better than me at empathizing.  I hope to gain a deeper understanding of my sister as well as help her (and my) self- esteem.  I know I always feel better after talking to Vanessa because she does not judge me.  I can now give her the same feeling by practicing better empathy.  This will enable us to get closer and trust each other more as well.  I cannot wait to try it!
 
Bibliography
Adles, Ronald B., Lawrence B. Rosenfeld, Neil Towne, and Russell F. Proctor, II.  Interplay:  The Process of Interpersonal Communication.  7th ed.  Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1998.