Okay, welcome everyone. I'm Edwin Rutsch. This is dialogues on building a culture of empathy. Actually, we're gonna we're looking at the how to define empathy. And I'm here with Simon Warren. And do you want to introduce yourself, Simon, just a little bit
about yourself. I'm someone. I'm a counseling psychologist here in the UK. And I've had a 30 something year career with our NHS, National Health Service, and some of that managing community mental health teams. And other times delivering therapy to hard to reach populations are very, an interesting, Korea that kind of led me into being an academic to try to cope with the stress of it. I ended up studying and then got top truths. So yes, that's me.
And you're working on research? I mean, you're interested in how we do research or hate how research is done is that
that's right. Yeah, at some particular research approach, I was taught, and I found particularly useful for thinking about the moral approach to some degree, which encompassed social issues and political concerns, as well as psychology psychologists could have been there, but psychology in the context of our lived existence, that I'm particularly interested in.
Oh, great. So as the reason that the way I got in contact with you is you had written a paper called empathy in the Phenomenological Research, employing Edith Stein's account of empathy is a practical and ethical guide. So we could, you know, talk about that I've been looking at the defining empathy, you know, how do we define empathy, and Eva Stein was like, 100 years ago, she'd already written about empathy, and it kind of creates had some definitions. And so I thought we just, you know, kind of see where it goes. And maybe we could start off by, you know, talking about how you got interested in empathy and, you know, and either Stein's work.
Okay. Well, there are two kind of examples from my working career that I thought illustrates empathy quite well. I had a job in committee Smith, our team's recruiting staff, supervising staff supporting them. And often, poor junior staff would go off sick with stress related illnesses. And then I started reading about something called vicarious trauma. So in counseling guns, sort of support services, where our clients have particularly difficult lives, were at risk of drug overdose or death by suicide or misadventure, where they get into trouble with the police for committing crimes. This was quite stressful for the staff to manage and to engage and help those people. So I did a bit of research more recently on, on bad, but my original kind of doctoral research was on decision making about who is responsible morally for decisions, particularly when you have someone who has a mental health problem, who may not always be thinking rationally, but also they use alcohol and drugs, which also affects their cognitive process. But under law, you know, you're still accountable if you choose to drink and drive. So there's complexities in how we would hold people to account normally. And I got into empathy really? Well, if I give you the example, I was thinking of homelessness. We, in the UK have an increasing problem with homelessness, I guess everyone will have walked past someone sitting on the street with a bowl. When we closed asylums in the UK, more and more people then ended up on the streets because they weren't cared for by the state. And initially, you think if you give this person some money, or a house or something, then it will solve their problems immediately. My, my empathetic connection was, I've got to help this person now I'll give them a bit of money. And I thought about my own experience, I haven't been street homeless, but I have been stuck in an airport, longing for a comfortable bed, longing for a good meal, and far from home. And I thought perhaps that's how a homeless person might feel. Initially, I was upset seeing someone sat in the street like that and wanted to help. So this will be a distance first sort of level of empathy. Where you feel an affinity something about the other person is communicating to us through their way of being affects us. So that's a clue that there's something we need to think about. But I was in my first initial sort of empathetic connection getting all wrong, because I wasn't understanding this person's way of life or or how they were living. So when I did work in services, trying to get people off the streets, just putting them in a home, or giving them a front door that they can lock or a bed didn't work, you know, the person wouldn't sleep on the bed, they were not accustomed to sleep and armpits, they weren't accustomed to taking their day clothes off, or wearing pajamas. So you didn't know how to prepare food for themselves in their kitchen, they had adapted to a lifestyle and a way of being I thought this is pretty much like, you'd ask someone who's a banker in a city, let's go and live on a phone and look after animals. And it would be such a different lifestyle and a skill set for them to have to adjust. Same thing with getting people off the streets is to get them into houses, getting them into jobs, getting them to healthy relationships is quite a lot of work. So empathy is about being able to see the world from the person's perspective as they encounter and live within it in their life. So when I was thinking the homeless person, I was turning away from them, to think about how I might feel away from home without a pet sleeping without food. And that's not how they were feeling.
So that's a common definition or people think is like, oh, it's like, how am I affected by what I'm seeing? If I'm seeing homelessness, I'm being affected in a certain way, some emotions and feelings are coming up sadness, or stress or anxiety about it or concern. And they think that that is empathy and yours in what I'm hearing you're saying is that's not what empathy is. It's being present with the person and sort of sensing what their life is about what their experiences and so that presence with them, that is really what empathy is. Yeah, yeah,
that's it. So I need this Stein, she understands our being as unfolding in time. So she's suggesting that the empathy that we feel for another person is no different from the empathy that we feel for our past self, or our future self. So my future self is a different person from me. I don't know, I haven't met them, I don't know what they're going to be like. And I have feelings towards them. In the same way that might feel towards someone else, I met someone in the streets, I could be a homeless person in the future, I don't know. But she she made this point that empathy bridges the present moment into what might unfold in the future for us, as ourselves or for other people. So we can get over invested in trying to make this other person's future, right. And not be able to settle or invest our own future or do things for ourselves until we put things right for this other person. So what are those workers that I was supporting who over empathized with their clients?
Really over empathizes over it? Or some other term? You're looking for it? Yeah, over sort of took if that really? There's another? Yeah. boundary, identifying or something? It's yeah,
yeah. So it's not thinking about the person in the terms of their life in a complete sense. So he, this gives this interesting example of someone who's trying to con you out of money. So because I think I'm a trustworthy person, I assume that this other person is trustworthy, so I lend them money. And then I'm surprised when they don't pay it back. I fail to empathize with them, because I haven't understood that they desperately need money and have no means of paying it back. So they need to calm me in order to meet their needs, and I haven't, you know, have failed to understand them as a person, it's not just that they're taken advantage of me, I should have seen the true clues and picked up on that we often can't light it silently.
So it's using empathy to understand someone else and sort of their worldview sort of what what makes them up and that's how that's my definition of empathy is the sensing into I see it in a larger sense of, it's a way of being in the world where we sense into other people's experience as well as our own. And it's the way we sense into without judgment without detachment, you know, with a real sense of presence to be present with what is and what sort of arises. And and we do something called you know, I'm working on a project to define empathy at the defining empathy.com. And the model I'm I use is empathy is that sensing into and then there's an imaginative empathy that we can imagine ourselves In any sort of point of view, any position we can imagine ourselves are in the past, we can imagine ourselves in the future, we can imagine ourselves in someone else's point of view. We can even imagine ourselves, but it's like being a banana, like, wow, I can take on the role of banana, you know, and see the world from that point of view. And I can take the point of view actually, as a group, I can say, I am a group, I am the world. So it, there's this basic sort of a direct sensing into, but then there's adding imagination. And I call that imaginative empathy versus sometimes it's, you know, they try to call it cognitive empathy, which I think is a horrible term. It's very academic, very dry. And I, in fact, very accurate. I think it's more that we are imagining ourselves into these different cities. It's a capacity that we have. Yeah, yeah.
That is pretty much what the era Stein would be part of a Phenomenological Research movement 100 years ago. And that's how they saw empathy as a kind of perception. And it was an imaginative skill that we have to put ourselves in the shoes of others and seek advice from their point of view. And so the philosophical thing that's quite tricky, is the debate for them was empathy, as a term came around 100 years ago, 150 years ago, perhaps in Germany, in response to people like Immanuel Kant, who was formulating human existence, as quite individualistic, that people are separate cognitive entities that go around trying to make sense of the world. So they then see each other and, and try to make sense of other people. Whereas other cultures don't see people quite so separate from each other. You can think about it, a baby, and a mother, quite a meshed in each other. And the baby doesn't know necessarily this a separate person from its mother. And it may be 20 years before that child has grown into an adult sufficiently for them to go out into the world and be autonomous, independent. We're not naturally separate from other people, our separateness is something that we achieve. I think then empathy can be as much about maintaining that separateness once we've achieved this, as you know, just it's not just about seeing into another person's mind as if they're separate from us, because in many ways we're emotionally meshed and connected with others. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does is well in your your it's it's really about a worldview right? It's like eat a scientist setting up a worldview versus another worldview there's there's the worldview of where individual lipstick we're on our own where our own sort of internal entity you know, contained entity versus we're in relationship and that we're there's a relationship going on between people and we're sort of a meshed emotionally our feelings are a meshed with each other. And those are sort of two broad categories of worldview of what of the world is like and then the other part I think that you're addressing is the that it were everything is cognitive everything is thought and reason that we're seeing the world through this thought and reason cognitive and then there's the other the I think you called it in an effective there is this effective turns like that the there's a move away from that towards the seeing the the felt experience of life that we're in this constant state of felt experience. And if those two different worldviews so you're kind of like constantly looking at the broader you know, almost philosophical, what is the human life about and and I come down more on the Hey, it's I felt the experience we're living this feeling world we're in relationships I'm you know, very much in line myself, you know, with with the worldview of that you're sort of the EDA Stein is sort of speak to, as well as the capability of taking multiple perspectives, we have this ability to sense into other people's experience. So we also have the ability to imagine ourselves in all these different situations. So it's kind of a there's almost like, almost like a battle for the what is reality? How does reality work and, and I see that to the iron feeler, maybe maybe you've looked into it was sort of saying that when we look at a work of art we're sensing into or feeling into it and feelings are arising. It's not like just a mental individualistic thing. They're trying to describe how we feel into the world in a sense So that's kind of that's kind of my take on it. Yeah,
I agree. And I find it really interesting this notion of agency that when we have an empathetic connection with another, it's not that we choose, always we're pulled is drawn. And when you see a picture, you may be overwhelmed by the beauty of what's portrayed. And you can let yourself go with us. Or you can pull yourself back. So for those members of staff that I was supervising, some of them were being encouraged by others within the mental health teams where I worked to toughen up the, the narrative was about, oh, you're new to this business, you're there and you got to be harder, you've got to take a stance, it's no good giving the person begging money, because they're just going to spend it on drugs, and you got to take harsher attitude towards this person. But I don't think that helps. That's not empathy, that is blocking empathy, I would see that as a hindrance to having an understanding or a connection with another person. You don't want to be conned or forward by them or taken, taken advantage by them. But it's just not healthy to join them in a sort of cynical, aggressive blaming. Attitude.
Yeah, that's, that's the, that's the way I've been starting to think about is if empathy is that sensing into that person who's having whatever they're those issues, there's things that can block that that block, and we can deepen our empathy, and we can block empathy. So what's going to block our empathy is judgment saying, Oh, you're stupid, you're, you're incompetent, and you're judging them. So that kind of blocks the sensing into seeing that the broader reality of what that person is experiencing, you can detach, withdraw, you know, become cynical, I guess, cynicism is a form of with maybe withdrawal, you can just leave altogether withdrawal or you can become self righteous is like, Hey, I'm, all my ideas are right and yours are wrong. And, and so there's all these different blocks, as well as we can deepen our empathy by, you know, learning to be more present and create space for the person who's sort of on, unfold who they are. And the other part that I would say to that they're even in in empathy, I see that there's sort of this individualistic view of empathy, is that oh, it's me empathizing, how I empathize, but what about an empathic relationship because I can, that person who's having those struggles being deepening their empathy, and then our relationship becomes a more mutually empathic relationship. So that's very seldom kind of really talked about is the a mutually it's like in therapy right, the therapist, there's a client and therapist a therapist empathizes with the client, but it's only a one, it's one way sort of empathy. You pay your money, or you get your whatever for being heard and listened to for the hour. But they're only the person who's the client is only receiving the empathy. They're not learning how to empathize, per se, you know, deeply maybe with the therapist, I would actually be seen as terrible for the therapist to be receiving empathy. But then how does the client also take that empathy skill into their family and do empathic listening empathic practice but their family to build the whole empathic society, you know, what I'm looking at?
Since you're such a good point, and part of my career right now, I moved away from therapy for a decade or two, because everything was becoming evidence based. And this is built around the assumption. That is what the therapist does, that causes the person to get better or feel better. And, you know, this is a lot with psychotherapy, in its original kind of invention. And existential practice is more about being present with the person and a mutual encounter. So you wouldn't take your problems to the client and ask for help. But you would be honest, you would tell them how you feel and what you're thinking. You're not just nodding and smiling and saying that must be really difficult for you. You are giving them an honest encounter with yourself. You bring yourself into the relationship so that they you are them, somebody they can identify with understanding, empathize with.
Yeah, that's the Carl Rogers model, right. It's like be your whole self as a therapist that helps to be open and transparent about what's going on for you with the client because then that creates more of that deeper mutual impact. thick relationship.
So it's the clients work that helps them to overcome the difficulties, not anything we do other than bring ourselves to the relationship. Let's say this agency think is quite complex is knitting fire complex, then many people would like to think,
well, the direction I've gone is, you know, I don't have a psychology background. So I've kind of come at it, you know, from the, from the outside, thank goodness. So, what we do is what we call the empathy circle. I mean, that's kind of the thing I've sort of landed on, is it small groups, doing neutral, empathic listening together, which is like, there's no one person is the expert, it's just that we're mutually listening to each other. So it's peer to peer. And it's like, everybody can do it. You know, it's like, it seems to me, like if there's homeless population, that what needs to happen is that, that if there is that social problem, which is certainly is here in the San Francisco Bay area, is having that connection, it's the mutual empathy and the connection that helps people sort of build those, you know, relational skills to be heard, to start working through whatever issues to have space, to identify what the problem is, and, you know, whatever issues are wanting to learn and grow with, to, you know, have that problem solving approach. So that's, that's what really I've landed on is the relationality, which is what I really liked about your paper, you know, you're you're talking about the arguments for the importance of relationality, the importance of feeling, the importance of, you know, multiple perspective taking,
I did check out your, your video online, some of the work that you're doing, overlap with what I do. So if I'm doing some training for doctoral students in counseling psychology, I will have them in a triad or a group of four. And they will do exactly what you're so they take it in turns to be the counselor and the person who is the client and the person who's witnessing or monitoring and then have 20 minutes, and then they do a bit of feedback, and then they swap around. And that is past their practice development. We help them with
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And how has that worked? How is that working for?
Well, we've had to go online with it. That's been a challenge. But it obviously it does work because we were taking students through this doctoral program and getting them qualified. And they have to have practice as well as they're going out into volunteer roles as counselors, and doing live work with clients. And they're getting supervise, efficient in their placement. And we do supervision within our educational institution as well. So they get a lot of support, wraparound support as the learning their theory developing their practice. Yes, it just was uncanny how much the interactions I observed in your videos, were similar to the sort of thing I've been monitoring through my Zoom Room.
It's the next logical step. I'm surprised that Carl Rogers didn't do it, because it seems like the next logical step he went off into doing these encounter groups, which, you know, I don't know, it seems, I'm not a real encounter group. You know, I just seen you know, people just start beating up on each other, you know, in but if you have the mutual empathic listening, it just seems like the next stage steps, the logical step from from client therapist.
I'm with you really with you on this because, you know, empathy as a concept in psychodynamic theory, in Carl Rogers in cognitive behavioral theory. Empathy is not a word that you come across, you know, it's somehow it's been bypassed. Isn't that what you want from your counselor? That's what I would want from have counseling myself as part of our training is that you have to have therapy yourself. So I want my counselor to empathetically connect with me understand what's going on for me. Why would we not make that part of our practice, is it's quite strange that it's, it's not a term that is frequently found in academic material around psychotherapy and counseling.
I've heard from a psychiatrist is the same thing in psychiatry so that we don't really learn that I mean, in, in the training, you know, it's not a so it I don't understand either why it was what what kind of happened to it, is it that it that it kind of got professionalized? Somehow the professionalization of it? Visit there's sort of a logic to that empathic presence and doing it in small groups. And with that, what we're also doing is We're doing it for peer to peer, it's like just anybody to be learning this practice. And that you, you do it multiple times you become a trainer of it to so that you're, you're not just, you know, learning it for yourself to listen to others, but that you're learning to train other, just regular people, just anyone to be able to take part in an empathy circle, and then you spread it to so we kind of spread this empathic mindset and presence and, and we have the challenges that come up, when you hold an empathy circle, there's challenges like people don't want to, you know, they want to give advice, or they, or they want to tell their own story, or there's all these things that are sort of blocks to the empathy, and are they they kind of suddenly, you know, reflect back with their own ideas kind of enmeshed in the reflection. And yeah,
I kind of one of the models I use for this with students, sometimes it's the think of when you're riding, learn to ride a bicycle, the big risk is you kind of fall off your bicycle. So you know, you probably do the same for your children, you fit those little wheels on the back
we call training wheels. Yeah, training wheels.
So all the things that you're asking people to do, which is to listen, not interrupt, to try to summarize to feedback, and they're all stabilizing skills, that happy teaching. And the we call it phonological exploration. So you don't look for you don't try to interpret you don't try to advise you ask, what was that, like, tell me more about that. I'm interested in this, when that happened. And you go with the person into the experience, you get them to describe what's going on, and you gather information, this is what you do. And when people become comfortable and familiar with with that, then they can take stabilizing wheels off a bit. They can find their own balance in their encounters with clients.
It's funny, I use the same metaphor, training wheels, I see empathy circles as training. Is that metaphor too, because it's such an obvious, it's like, you want to be one of those. You know, on a bicycle, you can do cross, you know, you go up and down the hills and use Zoom, and you flip and you turn it, but it kind of starts with the training wheels. That's what I see is empathy circles are is sort of that training wheels. And it seems like our culture, our whole culture needs these empathy, you know, training training wheels. Yeah.
It taught us just to stay, you know, to stay with the material that's coming up and not to leap in and interpret and talk over. It's hard. And I had to learn to do this when I was training. And I know it's difficult to stay with somebody else's experience and be interested in curious.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, you know, so I don't know what what do you think is? What's kind of on your mind, then? What's kind of where are you? With like next steps? Or what to do you know where to go with this. Or it's like, you're kind of setting a philosophical foundation, right seems like you want to go somewhere with it sounds like where you want to go, we have kind of a similarity you want to kind of spread and empathic presence, and
I'm tracing some of that similarity I'm thinking to experience for me is that I have a dyslexic condition which wasn't picked up at school. In my doctoral studies now, in my 50s, I get a diagnosis of dyslexia, struggled for 50 years without a formal diagnosis. So I was no good at exams, or filling in forms or remembering how to spell medications. So there was no way I was going to become a nurse or a social worker, get that first degree and get into a professional role. So I got into managing Community Health Team mental health teams by being good at this and winging it, really. So I was the amateur, the person in the group who didn't have a professional training, who's who kind of why are you doing this? Why didn't Why do you think that way? Explain this to me, I could be the layman who didn't have a clue as to what was going on and ask the stupid questions that no one else thought. And then of course, we get a better team, we get a better system because people are asking those important questions, not just doing what they've been trying to do without thinking about us. So that was my foundation. And that's why I started studying because I was just wanting to be having an education and an understanding was important, but I didn't want to be the expert, I always want to ask the stupid question. And I quite like people like Socrates, who I come across who, who practice this not knowing stance. So he allowed others to tease out what they thought they knew, just by asking questions and not proposing anything quite like that position. But I find that psychology, psychiatry, they have got a geological background. This is Foucault, Michel Foucault, who traces the history of ideas. So the reason why we think about human sexuality or gender, or class or race is because of a historic political power dynamic to our existence. And when we know we need to understand where we are, by tracing where we have been. So the whole philosophical frameworks of psychology and psychiatry and social work, have a history that I'm, I'm learning about and trying to see the paradigms on which this stuff is built. And I think empathy can be an important part of that. And then we can perhaps get professions to be a different bit less sexist and racist and more accepting, we can have a more egalitarian approach to what we do would be my agenda.
of tracing the philosophy that like ideas emerge, and they become sort of, you know, in the culture, they become like, a value that lens that we look through, and you want to trace those back to show how that how that's developed. And the direction is just that there's getting past some of these judgments, I mean, sexism, racism, whatever, these are sort of forums of how we judge each other, maybe get past those.
So, you know, for someone with a displacement condition to publish academically, is not easy, but I feel. Yeah, I do want to get these messages across that, you know, we, we haven't the assumptions that we make about things like sexism and racist, racist views. They didn't come from nowhere. And if we can spot how they can advance, and if we can change our attitudes and adjust and think about how we organize things in society differently, that's progresses next. I suppose my academic interest in writing is driven by that desire to understand and explain and help us understand each other.
Yeah, I think you're making the case with either Stein that there's, here's these different Phillips philosophies that sort of develop EDA Stein has this relational view of the world multiple perspective taking and then there was other philosophies and you know, she mentioned that she, I guess, was Jewish, ended up in the concentration camps and was killed and you kind of kill ideas that's, you know, suppress, you suppress different values, different worldviews, and then whoever, and other ones were more successful because they were promoted in the society. And so I think that's sort of the history of how these ideas come about, you know, which one which ideas are what are going to be sort of strengthened in in the culture I guess that's one aspect.
Yeah, so it's still stuff I struggled with but I quite nice write a bit more about you this tines concept of zero points as an individual as a Sarah, zero point for reference. So cantons, other people who set up the idea of the individual have this hurdle of how does an individual bridge the gap between them and others and understand them? And Kant says, there's a rational way of approaching the world that is, transcending the individual. So if we were all rational, we'd all do the same thing of Moodle immoral and we'd all be just because there is a right way to do things from a transcendental ultimate cause life perspective. And either Stein is saying no, there's just all these different people with different points of view and we've got to start a network of understanding within those different perspectives there's no overall God sighs
yeah yeah, I have that sense sometimes it the reason was a replacement for God artifice seems to that, you know, you had this supernatural force that was out there, you know, called God. And when reason came along, it was like, well, Reason is God. It's like the supranational natural force that is sort of beyond our world comprehension that reason sort of rules the universe. And that, that it's, it's a piano that seemed kind of like what we're dealing with is
narrative theory to a degree is that French shackley tirado. And I know that isn't it. So to adopt a voice of authority, you speak in a third person, your your academic writing isn't my point of view, it is established that the evidence shows that the results are clear. This is seen by a godlike figure of rationality and science. It's not human experience. Human perspectives.
Yeah. And then that gives whatever your ideas are more weight, right? It's really a power. It's a power grab, like a power grab. It's like, we're gonna pretend this the supernatural, I'm the high priest here, you know, you know, but you have
your power, or my power that we're expressing here is the power of this imagine, kind of caught my rational science. I don't know, he's probably White is probably middle class. Certainly male. And
he's genomic. Yeah, he's got a PhD.
We have to become like Him, in order to speak in his voice. Well, well, if I stopped doing that, this give the voice of authority to anybody and everyone and find out what the boat is like for them from their point of view, where they are, whatever their race, gender, or ethnicity or age.
And that is the that's what the empathy the empathy is a whole different worldview of, of the process of sensing into other people's, you know, experiences and what what their experiences. The other aspect is this cognitive that that God has no feelings, supposedly, right? It's feeling lists. And then then there's this world of feelings, where it's all a big sort of a mayhem. It's kind of like Rodin's, you know, the thinker and at the gates. The model that, you know, he's connected to God thinking, and then there's all the mayhem in the in the background. So actually, this week, I'm doing an empathy circle with some, some folks one is an academic, who is into dialogic and how do we and and the topic is, what is the feeling of reason? What does feel what does reason feel like, I want to go directly towards that God of unfeeling supposedly, his reason has a feeling it's an embodied sense, it has a felt experience. So we're going to kind of be exploring what does reason actually feel like?
Well, I would say it's a false reassurance, we when we reasonably feel safe, and uncertain, because we imagined that we have all the facts notation, we know what's going on. I don't think we really do.
Yeah, I heard that too. I interviewed somebody, but I thought it was reason to feel like and I said, Well, when I was growing up, I just felt like very confused and everything, then I kind of discovered reason, and I started feeling safe. And it was exactly that term, there's a sense of safety involved in that. So it is an embodied there's something you're doing that. That, um, there are a feeling sort of related to it. Yeah.
So I have some more things to Rice, but it does take me a long time to get my head in the right frame and get it on the paper and to review. So I have a trajectory with this.
And then I understand is it's that point, it's the multiple points that seem there are multiple perspectives. And then how do you sort of address that? Is that kind of like, what do you do with it? Or what is the philosophy behind that? Or what is the evidence behind that?
Yeah, so we do have all these multiple points in existential theory, beyond in your own is quite influential his idea of Givens so that all human beings have to die. They all struggle to make their lives meaning for they all have to encounter other people that will embodied the given aspects of everyone's existence. So empathy and understanding others is possible, because we share all these things. Gives us some, some guidance in a very confusing and chaotic come up with
is that so it gives a common experience. There's some commonality there that we can therefore understand each other because we do Have these common common foundational experiences?
But it's very different from kind of empirical, rational science based evidence is, how do we respond to the lack of meaningfulness in life, it's not something we can measure, or determine or calculate. It's quite an abstract personal thing business. I know that you can find a measure for empathy rating scale, psychologists love to do this, it seems I hate it, any, any kind of emotion. So a lot of my colleagues are busy delivering therapeutic interventions to reduce anxiety, which is kind of, you know, putting a bandage around a wound to make someone feel better, but it's not actually curing, it's all making them healthy, helps you cause more kind of wrapping. And so, you
know, the self assessment type. Yeah, which are, as I understand it, are known to be very inaccurate, anyway, that kind of have no meaning, but people they like it, they do get some kind of assurance of something. Yeah. People want
to feel better, don't they? So anything you do to teach them how to reduce anxiety, and then they feel better and more capable, which is good. But it's not making them more resilient or capable of living successful lives? It's just avoidance?
Yeah, yeah. Well, the one thing with empathy, you know, if we see, I see empathy as an integrative sort of a process that, like, here, we're, you know, I've got my thoughts, my views, my experience, you have years, and through this dialogue, that are sort of an integration that takes place, you know, that we sort of integrate our, our experiences. And so that's just is the sort of the importance of dialogue and, and through an in an empathic way, you know, to be sort of open and present. And, yeah,
that's another sort of pharmaceutical principle that a couple of authors important in the tradition, observed conversation. So genuine conversation, is one in which neither party or can be more than two people. But no one's actually in charge of where the conversations going, it has its own direction, you may lead for a moment and then let someone else take the lead. But it unfolds in its own way. And their suggestion is that that's how you discover things about what you yonder in your conversation and see what emergence comes up in your shared experiences.
I think that's what you're also writing about, was the emergent quality doing research with that emergence, in a more of an emergent way. Is that right here?
That's, that's yes. So so having conversations with people and finding out what comes up and being surprised by it, sometimes you are, your research is then reaching beyond the world, as you know, is rather than the empirical building a model and then testing to see if it works or not, you're just looking for the evidence that confirms or denies your existing framework of reference. You're not stepping into the world beyond your horizons. Yes, Phenomenological Research has been quite sort of left behind in proper academic research has always empirical and science based in psychology, and it's a bit niche to be logical thoughts. I've kind of I'm sold on the phonological methodology, because it makes sense to me.
Well, as you're you're also doing research here, you're advocating for I guess, a phenomenological. Qualitative research approach, then. So how would that look like what would that?
Well, it is fundamentally it is having conversations with people as you do it in a far more structured way. So if you're going to get published this research, you need to have ethical permission. You need to have a research question and a strategy. And then you go and interview people in the recording, you transcribe and you analyze themes and discover what came up. So it is done in a very rigorous and methodological way. But it is basically a conversations and there's quite a lot of overlap in if you practice sex, essentially, your approach with clients is phenological. You're just thinking Try to see what comes up. You don't start a session with a plan. You started with a conversation and see what emerges. Then in your clinical practice with your research practice?
Well, in terms of research I'm researching on defining empathy.com is like, how can we create a, a sort of an empathy, typology or a better clearer definition? Because I just see that, yeah, I want to have empathy movement, I mean, trying to support and empathy movement, I mean, I see that empathy, you know, really needs to be a core foundational cultural value, I just think it would just lead to, you know, some, such a much better society and well being. And the definitions are kind of like all over the place, like you started off by saying that, Oh, people are defining empathy as like, oh, what's going on? For me, when I see the homeless person, I don't even see that as empathy. I see that as a block to empathy. You know, there's the criticisms of empathy, like the against empathy book from Paul Bloom. And he's, what he's saying is you go to your therapist, and you're all angry and fury ated. And then your empathy is when your therapist starts getting infuriated and angry, kind of state matching, you know, or contagion. That's actually what he's calling empathy is that you're taking on the emotions of the, of the other person, and I see that as a block, damn, if he's like, you know, he's actually defining his. So I want like, let's get get a clear, you know, definition, I feel a lot of resonance in terms of, you know, from at least from our discussion so far in terms of our understanding of sort of the essence of what empathy is,
yeah, well, I think we'd call emotional dumping. That's a bit of a colloquial term, isn't it. But if you just feel bad about things, and you go and have a really good moan at someone, and then they're miserable, and you come away, feeling relieved, that really isn't empathy. That's an exchange of emotion, when you've dumped your negativity on another person. Yeah. That's not a fully rounded, complete exercise of empathy. So in counseling, my task is to hear the distress, hear the grumble, but to give it back, to not walk away out of that session, feeling distressed, because no damaged, I've got to give it back to the person and say, Well, this is your life, you know, what are you going to do about this? pose that question for them, hopefully, that the feeling more able to hold the distress of their life, having shared is because they need to take away the problem. Problem.
Yeah, that's, that's kind of the feeling I get to when somebody is, you know, sharing, I just give reflection, this is what I'm hearing, I'm staying present with you. This is I'm reflecting my understanding of, of what I'm hearing, is that accurate? And then it's, it's sort of on them, you know, it's it, they're holding it and actually having that mirror, or that in that sense of presence is actually in itself, this kind of healing. It's like, oh, I'm, I'm not alone. Here with it. I'm, I'm in connection with someone, maybe I can see this from another perspective. And it's amazing to me that when a lot of these issues that people have in their relationships, they kind of see the problem already, they already have a sense of what the problem is, they're sort of looking for their own solutions to the problem. For example, I did, in my family, I did a mediation with my sister and sister in law. And my sister in law was very aware that she uses anger, to sort of when she has sort of problems that she knows, it's like, you know, it's annoying, but she knows she does it, then my sister has the issue of withdrawal, she is very aware that she withdraws when there's a problem. So people are, you know, if people are very, in a sense, they're maybe not consciously aware, but just sort of, at a subconscious level, that there's over aware of what their own problems are. And they're kind of trying to, to work through it and having that empathic reflection, that empathic presence so they can sort of explore it and express it kind of helps them just kind of work, work through some of those, those dynamics that they're dealing with.
Agree, I think counselors need to learn to let the client the client doesn't know what technique from the encounter and where they're going in their life. So as a counselor, you have to sit back quite a bit and two places unfold so that you understand what the person is seeking from you, and how to be with them in their journey. That's quite a skill to practice. So yeah, yeah, so I don't think counseling is anything unique is professionalized. And it's kind of taught and done in systematic ways. But it's skills that we already have, or can develop in other settings. Yeah, it's so so I think what you're doing is, is marvelous, and I'm really behind you, I love the idea of not owning this, but giving it to the people who are practicing this and making it a possibility for them to expand that into further relationships. And set it free. That's, that's what we want to do. If we care about people's need to give them the tools and practices and find a way with,
yeah, if you have any ideas on on how to do that, I'm trying to, you know, kind of spread it as make habit be an open source training, so you know, love to have other people jump in on it, and, you know, take the training and innovate, you know, around developing it. We have a model, where that we have the training, you know, we have up to 40 people in a training cohort. And we have, you know, usually there's like, there's a group of trainers and trainees. So, you take the training the first time as, as a just a participant, the next time you take it as a trainee, whereas you're actually helping facilitate parts of the training, and then you move, you know, do it maybe three or four times, and then you become a trainer of it. And then you can start, you know, training and create your own groups, so that we could really spread it and scale it up. And it needs a lot of I'd love to get some, you know, good curriculum developers to, you know, help flesh out and, you know, map out and you build on filmographies, we have the five weeks module one, but I see it as like, we need a module two, module three, you know, how to go deeper how to apply it towards conflict, mediation, etc.
Well, sticking to the phonological attitude, you'd be listening, the language and the understanding emerge from the encounters. So I could impose my narrative from a counseling psychology background and say, This is what you're doing. It's what I do in my training. But it's not because you're doing something in your world, which is similar, but it needs to emerge and evolve in its own way. And you'd need to form the language around your experiences, and invents use of language to communicate and share with each other what you're doing. So
I'm just impatient. I want things to fast. I want to scale up faster. I've been thinking of running for Congress, as the empathy candidate we have we have our elections coming up here, and I've been let's take it to the political you know, I want it will be like a campaign, we'd use empathy circles as the campaign organizing principles and see if we can get Republicans and Democrats to, you know, talk to each other.
It's an angle which, you know, it could you do need the publicity, you need the capturing and capturing imagination, and quick wins with publicity, and then building some knowledge and some framework and some understanding of what you're actually doing. Quickly around new recruits. Yeah. I think there are, I don't know if you say this political I know, in South America, there are political movements, which are a bit like this, which are trying to overcome the truck trafficking cartels and kind of ultra right wing politics they have. Yeah, grassroot movements are a wonderful when they get hold to traumatic, traumatic change comes about.
Yeah, well, you know, extinction rebellion, which is started in the UK there. We've done a lot with them with that community for empathy circles. It's kind of spread around the world in a lot of the different chapters. Oh, okay. Well, we've got almost an hour or so anything, so any final thoughts? about defining empathy there is any anything that you're still
working on it? Yeah, I mean, of the things I've published, I am pleased with that article. I think it's concise, and it's clear. And it challenges empirical research and sets an agenda for research that is empathy based. So I'm going to continue to work with things like that, and I'm really pleased that you're doing what you're doing. And I think there are overlaps. I'm happy to give time and thought I tried to, you know, keep pace with from on your circulation mess, and I can check in with what you're doing every so often.
You're gonna take the training to we have a cohort starting the 27th January 27, on Mondays 10am Pacific, which is the time I guess that's 6pm. UK time,
I will check over committed because I've retired from health care, but I've now taken a full time job teaching counseling, and I'm doing postgraduate certificate in education. Because if I'm teaching now, I probably need to have a piece of paper that says I compared the UK maybe worse than where you are. But everything you do here, you have to have a piece of paper that says that you can do in
Germany, I have German citizenship, so I'm familiar with Germany, it's like everything. America is a bit more if you can kind of do it. You can hang out a shingle or intuited agree, you know that people come to your door and pay for it. And then it's a little bit less bureaucratic than Europe, I think.
So I will try to get along to the train but I don't have to assess how much time I can commit to it because I've got assignments and things in marking.
Yeah, well you might find it helpful for the students you know that the students if they learn the practice, it's something that they can use themselves and you know, teach actually their clients or their personal support or you know, I think they could actually benefit a lot from
it's an opportunity for them to practice their skills.
Well, great delight talking to you, Simon, this is just felt a lot of residents a lot of mutual sort of, you know, this sort of empathic worldview and it's nice to speak to someone with similar, you know, understandings of this topic. So thanks a lot for taking the time.
That's okay. And hope it goes well, and I'll keep in touch.
Okay, great. I'll post this let you know and it's up online. Pretty. Bye. Bye for now.
