The Space-Holder — Empathy Stories
Despite having hosted dozens of conversations as a Tribeless Host in Singapore, QING PING shares about his experience using The Empathy Box© for the first time with his closest friend group.
“I grew up as a ‘fixer’.
I was constantly looking for solutions to people’s problems; proposing actionable steps and giving advice.
I didn’t know it then, but I did this because I wanted to connect with people, and I thought the only way to do it was to help them.
I later learned that the only thing you can do is hold space.
Bear witness to their suffering. No one can fix or change someone else’s problems for them. But just learning to sit with those ugly emotions, and being curious about them — that helps more than anything else.
There are so many distractions to this depth of connection these days. We’re on our phones so much that it puts up a permanent barrier between others and ourselves.
If we are constantly distracted, how can we tell when someone else is in pain?
How can we create the space for people to talk about how their heart is doing?
How can we truly know what anyone is going through?
Every Tribeless session I’ve had is the antidote for this disconnection. It pushes all the distractions away, so all that remains is a space for empathy, vulnerability and authenticity — things I’ve always longed for.
To have a tool like The Empathy Box that enables this level of safety has been revolutionary — and so far, it hasn’t failed me yet.
I remember my first experience using The Empathy Box with my closest friends. Tribeless meant so much to me, and I wanted them to have the same experience. We gathered for our monthly dinner, and steeling my nerves, I took out the Box.
That night, we shared things none of us had ever shared with one another before.
A friend chose the world ‘family’, and I found out that her family was struggling to manage her mother’s descent into dementia.
Another friend chose the word ‘belonging’. It surprised us because he was usually the happy, extroverted one in our group, but he shared that he had always struggled with belonging in his workplace and other social circles.
The first thing that hit me was:
“Wow, I guess I don’t really know them as well as I thought.”
My friends had been carrying this burden inside them, but there was no social setting for them to talk about these things; to speak about their traumas and process them as a group.
Using the Box opened up a new dimension to our friendship.
We established that even though we can’t solve each other’s problems, we’re always ready and willing to hold each other in our vulnerability. A lifelong commitment to supporting each other.
After all, isn’t that what friendship is about?
I went into that session with a lot of anxiety, but left with a lot of hope. It reminded me of what another Tribeless Host, Danielle, always says at the end of every Tribeless session: “This has restored my faith in humanity”.
I have this fear that people are checking out on each other. That no one cares anymore, and I’m the only person left who does.
But I see a shared yearning in all the people that attend a session — and I know I’m not alone. Through Tribeless, we can hold space to talk about difficult things.
Through Tribeless, we can feel more human.”
Empathy Stories is a series of interviews with our incredible Empathy Box user community around the world in 2019.
Interviewed and written by Chloe Ling, edited by Gwen Yi.