It is now my pleasure to introduce the founder, founding director of the empathy center, Edwin Rutsch Edwin, is also the developer of a long term evangelist of the empathy circle practice. Over to you, Edwin,
thanks Kara, and thanks again to our volunteers and for everyone taking part and joining us in this summit. Really excited to be promoting and working on building this empathy movement. And the empathy circle we see is a core practice of the empathy movement. And I have a slideshow which I'm going to show here, and it's going to be very quick. I'm just I just have less than 10 minutes to for my part of the presentation, sort of doing a filler here to get on the 15 minute mark here for each of our participants. So my the title of of my talk is empathy circles, the practical method for exiting the Drama Triangle. And because of, you know, all the confusion and recent criticisms of empathy, I've been really focusing on empathy definition projects. I'm creating a project to define empathy in an easier to understand way, and I've done a presentation on on holistic empathy, and that was in one of the previous presentations that I did, kind of explaining the the model. And then I've also done a presentation on comparing that model to the current, very kind of the popular, and I would say in accurate, cognitive, affective, concern, empathy, model that's kind of been created by academics, I find that has a lot of real problems and that we need an easier to understand model for that. So I've also done a presentation about that, and I'm now now working on, how does this whole, less holistic empathy model address the criticisms? If you're been just watching the media and and the various online papers, there's been multiple books out that are critical of empathy, and I'm wanting to address those criticisms with this holistic empathy model. And in just in short, the the model has four components. There's basic empathy, you know, deeply listening and sensing into another's experience, self empathy, deeply listening and sensing into your own experience, and imaginative empathy, where we kind of imagine ourselves in different roles, and we sense with our imagination, which is, I think, different from basic empathy and holistic empathy. How are we in a in a community and and the empathy level within in that that community, and the what I'm wanting to compare, or kind of talk about, is the Drama Triangle compared to the empathy circle. So I don't know you may have heard of the Drama Triangle, and this is a, it's, this is a sort of a model that I have in the back of my head. So in just for when I kind of see different relationships, you can sometimes see how these relationships fit into the Drama Triangle. And it's really a good model for how conflict works. And I the I'm what I'm finding is that a lot of the criticisms of empathy are actually that fit into the Drama Triangle. They're saying that empathy leads you into the Drama Triangle. And I think that's completely inaccurate, that it's actually empathy and holistic empathy, and the empathy circles that actually take you out of that Drama Triangle and bring you into, you know, connection, positive, constructive connection. So I'm going to just kind of quickly, kind of whiz through this. So in the Drama Triangle, this was created by Steve Cartman, I believe is his name in the 60s already, and it has. There's three roles in in this model, there's the persecutor. And I also mentioned that the so many of the criticisms of empathy kind of fit into this Drama Triangle model. And by kind of showing how those criticisms fit into this model, and then how empathy is the exit, I think it's we can really address a lot of the criticisms of empathy, and so that you. The model says that there's a persecutor who is, you know, judging, blaming, controlling, dominating, you know, a victim. And there's a victim, the person who you know the persecutor is, you know, kind of criticizing, and the victim feels powerless, stuck, you know, mistreated and oppressed. And then there's a rescuer who tries to fix, you know, tries to save the the victim. So a quick little scenario is that, you know, father comes home, the Son, you know, he sees a bunch of dishes in the sun and the that a lot of dishes in the in the sink, I mean, and this, and the son was responsible for, you know, keeping the dishes clean. And he says to his son, you know, why are all these dishes here? You know, you're just lazy, you know, starts criticizing the sun. So he's like the persecutor. And the son is the victim in this case. And and then the son, you know, just feels, you know, kind of put down, criticized. And then the mother, in this case, you know, tries to fix it and says, Oh, you know, he's been busy, you know, he hasn't had time to really, you know, kind of clean the dishes, you know, I'll help. I'll, I'll clean, clean up the dishes. And then the the father, then the son says, you know, to his father, oh, you're always so critical of me. You're, you're, you know, you're, you just have this nasty attitude and you're always putting me down. So in that case, the son who was a victim is sort of lashing out back at his father, the persecutor. And then the roles in the Drama Triangle change. So at this in this case, the son becomes the persecutor, and the father becomes the victim because he's being criticized by his son. And this Drama Triangle, you can take a lot of different scenarios and put it into this sort of dynamic that happens. And actually the empathy and the empathy circle is actually the exit from this, in the sense that if the father comes and, you know, is critical of the Son, the Son can be empathic towards the father, right? He can say, Oh, I hear you're just really upset that that I didn't do the dishes. And he can just listen to the Father, and the father would maybe express some more of their frustration, and then like, oh, I had a really hard day. And then so the the son reflects, I hear you have a really hard day and that it's been really difficult for you. And then, then it's the son's turn to speak, right? Or he would be speaking, and then, well, he would be then kind of sharing. He says, Well, when you criticize me like that to the Father that You know, I feel really put down. And then the father would reflect back, I hear you feel really put down. And this creates an actually takes everybody has responsibility in this, in this, in the empathy circle, in this situation, and you kind of can work your way out. You know, the wife or the mother would then be able to talk, and they would be able to talk about their their issues. So I'm going to jump forward real quick here to a sample of the empathy you know, this model where we have Paul Bloom, who's against empathy, says empathy is biased. We are more prone to feel empathy for attractive people and for those who look like us or share our ethnic or national background. So he's saying, in terms of the Drama Triangle, the persecutor is, you know, listening to someone else, and then the person who's not being heard is the victim. And then there's the whole dynamic that happens from that, and then another person from the sin of empathy, says empathy feeds the competitive victimhood mentality that is rampant in our society. In an empathetic society, victimhood confers vulnerability. So he's again saying the that that this is, again, right, saying that the the victim, why people want to be victims, because they get power out of it. And again, you know, I'm saying that the empathy circle is actually the exit from that. So this was, like a super fast presentation I'm working on, on on this, and you know, going to be doing a longer presentation. We just wanted to give a quick taste of what I'm working on, and so that's it. Just to keep on time, I'm going to end it. There.
Well, thank you, Edwin, I enjoyed that immensely. I love talking about that triangle that makes me the weirdo, but I'm okay with that. Ha, yeah.
