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2025-07-01 - Defining Empathy | Otter.ai

2025-07-01 - Defining Empathy

Edwin Rutsch56min

Jodie Jenson

00:00

Okay, okay, yeah, go ahead. Okay. So every once in a while in in the empathy circle, I feel like there's a moment where I want to connect with a person and like, get into that shared space, but then we've moved on before. It's, you know, because it's now that person is responding to somebody else, and then that person responds to somebody else, and then it finally comes back around to me. And by then we've changed the subject, right? And so I'm just curious what your thoughts are about that, in terms of finding like, if we can think of it as a Venn diagram of values, like, I value certain things, you value certain things. And we were trying to find where those values overlap. How do you see that playing out in the empathy circle, like in those cases where there are five people and, you know, there, there are all these different people talking about different things, and I, I've lost my chance to connect directly with a

Edwin Rutsch

01:01

person. Well, I take notes, and then just bring up whatever was sort of brought up for me. So, you know, I can, I can go back to the first person with something they said, then add to somebody else, and so I kind of hold on to it by note taking. And then the other is, I can also just speak from the moment, because as time goes on, something new becomes sort of alive for me, too. And the other thing about the values, if you're, if you're how familiar you are with nonviolent communication, okay, so, yeah. So you know, again, you know, Rosenberg was a student of Rogers, and he kind of, you know, built on Rogers work, and what he's, what he wanted, the concept he kind of, really, you know, fleshed out was needs, you know, that people have needs. So it's, it's the the aspect of, of if somebody's angry, or, you know, has various initial emotions and feelings. So you listen to those, and there's something a feeling, if they're feeling a there's a feeling, he calls it needs that they would like. So maybe there's something going on in the group where it doesn't feel fair, right, that I value fairness, and then everyone's, you know, and then there's not a sense of fairness. Not everyone's getting equal time to speak or something. And then I get upset. I get angry, because I had a need for fairness and so that

Jodie Jenson

02:41

would overlap with a value of fairness, like, right, fairness is important to you, and thus you need to be heard as well, right?

Edwin Rutsch

02:50

Or a sense of care. Or, if you read through the book, you'll see that he has a whole list of, there's probably even the appendix, a whole list of of what he calls needs. And this is into this. So when you're when we when you have a conflict, you're a group in conflict. You're you try to find what the shared needs are. And the idea is that the strategies of how to get meet those needs, how to create those feelings, everybody has different sort of strategies, and the conflict is at the level of the the of the strategy of how to get those needs met, or how to create that feeling. And if you can get people to connect on the the shared need or value or feeling, then you've got a starting point, then you can kind of strategize together on what's how do we get that, that the need met, his things about meeting, meeting needs. So it's similar. It kind of overlaps, right? With you're digging deeper into you're finding that, you're finding that common humanity, in a sense, right? It's like this is something we have in common. And once you have a com, you know, you have an understanding of the the needs of the other person, or the feeling that they would like to create, and you have that too, then, well, how do we create that? And you have that deeper sense of connection to operate from.

Jodie Jenson

04:18

Yeah, I think that's it's so interesting, how much the overlap there is. And then we, as we use different terms to mean, like to talk about the same phenomena, yeah, realize that we're talking about this exactly. Yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

04:33

yeah. It's almost like a tower of Babel, when I think about it, the language is so much of the the issues is just we're using different terminology. So yeah, or we feel that we're not being heard. I mean, you know, the Conservatives don't feel heard by liberals, the liberals don't feel heard by, you know, by the conservatives. And you know, just kind of keeps perpetuating and,

Jodie Jenson

04:58

yeah, I feel, uh. An AI prompt coming on for one of your next videos.

Edwin Rutsch

05:06

Oh, yeah, if you have any ideas for you know.

Jodie Jenson

05:09

Oh, you should do that. You should do a tower of Babel one. Oh, yeah. I think that would be really great, because that's, that's exactly what it is. I mean, we're all here in the same place, and we're looking at each other, but we're speaking different languages, and we have to find a Rosetta Stone so to speak, to be able to translate between people. I was thinking about this a couple of months ago, like, I think we had just had a conversation, and I was walking by the language arts building at BYU and thinking about translation error that comes into play as well. Like it would be interesting to see how this kind of empathy circle would play out with an interpreter in the middle, because the interpreter's job is to listen and convey. And then I think it would be interesting to see how, how the translation gets to the other person, and then if they repeat back, you know, if the person who speaks the opposite language repeats back, and it goes through the interpreter and receives, it's received back to the person who originally gave the message, I think that would be fascinating to look at how that could play out. Yeah, complicated it would

Edwin Rutsch

06:21

be, yeah, there's a one Mediator. Has a from NBC. He has what he calls the three stool mediation. So he acts as a bit of a a mediator, but he's trying to find help people find the shared needs, you know. So when they're in conflict that, you know, he does a reflection, but he also tries to reflect back the needs. And if you're doing NVC, I mean, sometimes it gets to be just too much, but they'll kind of give a reflection, but then they'll also make a needs guess, like, are you needing care? Are you needing, you know, empathy? Are you needing respect? Are you needing whatever? So they kind of put that into the reflection too. And it can sometimes be helpful. Sometimes it can become kind of annoying, but

Jodie Jenson

07:11

annoying on the receiving end, if somebody is trying to guess your needs and you haven't figured it out or what part, well,

Edwin Rutsch

07:18

it's with NBC. Sometimes it's like everything's just a constant stream of needs, guessing. It's like, just stop, just let me know what you heard me say. Stop guessing, trying to guess my needs. But it just becomes on over and over. You know, it just becomes too much.

Jodie Jenson

07:32

Yeah, I think anything can be just too much of a good thing. Yeah, even NBC, because it's, I mean, it's a very, very good thing, but you're right, it can be a little overwhelming. The other

Edwin Rutsch

07:44

thing I just another is, I don't know how, I don't know how you are with, you know, politically, there's this whole woke, you know, kind of generally far left. It's, you know, right. Can be very authoritarian. And I just saw there was a someone who had just sort of been, had been Christian, and she was taking training, you know, for to become a therapist, you know, at a at a college, and she said the whole system is set up, is a woke sort of system that is using academia, yeah, and academia, so it's, it's very, you know, the whole way things are structured is in the in the woke framework of, you know, there's victims, and you have the critical theory, and you got to criticize and and the, you know, you have to start look at your biases and your privileges and just that whole sort of aspect. And to me, it seems a rather authoritarian kind of, uh, yeah.

Jodie Jenson

08:48

It's so funny because they Yes, I've been studying this very thing. So this class that I just took is ideological bias in psychology. It's, it's all about that kind of thing, like just unveiling all of the ideological bias that there is in especially in in psychology, yeah, um. And one of the the main takeaways from it, hang on, what did you just say? What was the last thing you just

Edwin Rutsch

09:12

said? Because that it was authoritarian? Oh, yes, yes, um,

Jodie Jenson

09:15

one of the mains I took from it was that the woke side of things, is always berating the conservative sign for being too authoritarian, but then they're also being authoritarian, right? It's very ironic, and they don't want to recognize that it's happening, but it is. It's happening. And yeah, I mean, there's plenty of research that has looked at left wing authoritarianism, and it's very alive and well, yeah, and

Edwin Rutsch

09:43

she's just issues, you're in the psychology field, and she was studying marriage, family, you know, therapy is the field that she was working to get into. And she says the whole, the whole college is kind of geared towards sort of woke and it's, uh. Yeah. And so anyway, she, it's just something I've just seen. She's been getting out on the podcast and stuff, talking about that. And she was actually kicked out of the program,

Jodie Jenson

10:07

really, yeah, because she's so vocal about it, yeah.

Edwin Rutsch

10:11

And she, she's been getting more vocal. She, she had objections. They're saying, Oh, you talk too much in the classroom, right kind of stuff. And and had objections to parts. And then, I mean, I've been sort of tracking this, you know, for years, and I've just seen a lot of people in the sort of the liberal, classic liberals, kind of leaving the left because of of that kind of authoritarian, you know, sort of hardcore woke philosophy and kind of getting everywhere. So

Jodie Jenson

10:41

gosh, that's so interesting. And it's so interesting, how much it's become like this, this invisible authoritarianism, yeah? Because this whole time that they're being authoritarian about it, they're accusing the other side of being too authoritarian, yeah? And, I mean, I know, I've shown you the the moral foundations theory. I'm going to share my screen again with you, just, uh huh, oh, Siri thought I was talking to her. I was not. Let's see moral foundations. Let's see here it is. Um, here we go. So this I find very interesting, because here you would have on the liberal side, the very, you know, the woke side of things we want to avoid harm. And there that's a highly valued thing on the left, and fairness is highly valued on the left. And then you can see down here authority and in group impurity. These are just like not as highly valued. But I wonder if there's some bias here in reporting because they I wonder if people on the liberal side don't want to be associated with authoritarianism, although in their the in their actions, they're being authoritarian, but they say that they don't value that, even though it is. I mean, there's even a quote in this book that talks about a sacred project that sociology has that's to try and undo this authoritarian structure. And it's just, it's, it's ironic to see this as like, these are much more highly valued on the left, but then if you come over to the right, you can see that, yes, these go up and these come down, but it's still about the same right. Like all five of the values are are valued by conservatives at a relatively equal level. So the only side that I mean, just according to this graph, it looks like the empathy deficit would be over here. You know, if you're just looking at, if you're looking at the way we see values, like we only value these things, and these things are not values. They are not worth valuing, then we're going to have an empathy deficit here. But as these come up and these come down, and they're very similar over here, I know you've mentioned that conservatives have been more willing to empathize when you've done empathy circles with them, and it seems like that's something that needs to be explored in the literature more, because all of the literature that I've read suggests that liberals are empathetic and conservatives are not. Mm, hmm, yeah. And I think that's interesting, and I don't think it's, it's representing the whole picture.

Edwin Rutsch

13:42

Yeah, I don't either it's, I mean, it seems to be, it's more of a spectrum between empathy and authoritarian. And then all those blocks to empathy, you know, I think I showed you those, those blocks. Yeah, I

Jodie Jenson

13:57

want to pull those up again, because I'd like to look through them together, if we can.

Edwin Rutsch

14:01

I mean, there's, there's sort of, there's plenty of judgment and self righteousness, you know, on all sides, for that matter, you know,

Jodie Jenson

14:11

it's very true, um, and that, I think that's probably going to be one of the biggest blocks to empathy. Okay, can you, I'm sorry, can you find it? Because I can't remember what, where on the website it is. Is it in defining empathy? And then the blocks empathy is under that I can't remember.

Edwin Rutsch

14:32

No, it's, yeah, I keep moving things around. So, oh, there it is. It's

Jodie Jenson

14:38

blocks, okay, I see it there. Search. I a search. Yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

14:45

that's the page I've got for the blocks. This is it, right? Yeah, that's it. Uh

Jodie Jenson

14:51

huh, okay, um, I just wanted, yeah, go ahead.

Edwin Rutsch

14:56

Oh yeah. Self righteousness is there. That's when I. See a lot,

Jodie Jenson

15:01

yeah, yeah, I think so, and I am. I'm just so curious about finding the balance between things like protecting something that you see as a sacred value. And empathizing, because sometimes a sacred value requires that you don't take the perspective of the other person.

Edwin Rutsch

15:35

Oh, it'd be an example of that, yeah.

Jodie Jenson

15:37

So the example that I'm thinking of with that is, if you sacred value of honor, and like honor killing, and I have to protect my family, because, okay, family is a sacred value, right, and the sanctity of life, we're not going to see eye to eye, right? And so, I mean, I can see, I can see how we could find some overlaps, and we could enter into a conversation. But if you're actively not you, because I don't think you'll ever do this, but you is like a nebulous you, right, attacking me, like physically attacking me, trying to kill me, that's not the time for me to be like, well, let's, let's slow it down, and let's have an empathy circle, because if you're enraged about something and you are hell bent on harming me, like in that moment, I have to protect myself. Yeah, and so I'm just curious in your experience with people like, at what? What's the tipping point where you can see that people are no longer able to empathize with each other. Yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

16:44

it's not a clear, you know, it's, it's kind of case by case. But there is the you know idea of protective use of force that you just have, you have to do something like I was at one of these. I mean, the first time, I started with the empathy tent at the Occupy Wall Street in Berkeley. I set up the empathy tent, and then I was going around. The next day, I went out with these cards and had a box of cookies. And I call them empathy cookies, you know, going to the different tents and say, Come to the empathy tent. We, we, you know, will give empathy. We have art stuff and so forth. And I was inviting people, and that fight started out there, you know, and it was a guy pulled out a bowie knife. I mean, that was the biggest bowie knife on campus. Was in the park. It not on the campus, but at the, you know, downtown, the Civic Center Park, the main park there, next to the City Hall, and then the other guy had a pipe, and they were going at each other, you know, and the one guy with the knife, I thought, well, I'm Mr. Empathy. I should try doing something here. And I walked up with with my cookie jar, and to his back, I said, Excuse me. Excuse me. And he turned around and looked at me with this. I said, Would you like an empathy cookie?

Jodie Jenson

18:16

And I thought, if you make it out of that alive.

Edwin Rutsch

18:19

I mean, I always think, I thought, I thought, I think I'm a little over my depth, you know, it I thought. And then somebody was like crazy. Then there was a little a tent right next to me, and somebody came out and said, Oh, I'll have one of those cookies. And I turned around, and he took a cookie, and then the other guy went back and actually slashed the guy's arm, and then the police came a little while later and and, you know, arrested him. But so it depends on sort of your skill level. Like, if I was doing it now, I would say, oh, excuse me, which like an empathy cookie. Are you feeling angry? Right? Are you? Are you feeling upset? I would have tried to reflect back, you know, what it was he was saying, so to empathize with him, to sort of calm him down, and, you know, but if he would have kept coming at me, and I could defend myself, I certainly would have defended myself. Or he's wanting to, you know, maybe shoot him or something. You know, you gotta. There's sort of a protective use of force, but the underlying is, intention is, I would like to get him into an empathic, mutually empathic, the intention underneath the protective use of force is, and I think police do that a lot too. You know, police are trained to sort of de escalate. You know, have used the level of force. It's sort of required to the existing, to the the the challenge, you know, so and, you know, things could get really bad, like World War Two, you know, you wait till the Nazis are, you know, taking over and want to conquer the world. There's, it's kind of, you. So you can say, hey, I would like an empathic world, but I can see you got to fight it too at that point, you know, but so, but it's all the time beforehand, right? It's not like the countries were fostering empathy. They could have maybe had empathy when the Germans were, you know, having their cultural crisis is, you know, before Nazism right? All that up that time, it could have maybe not had, you know, the Versailles Treaty. So be so harsh, or, you know, just like so, just like America did after World War Two, they, you know, kind of were more generous and seemed to had good, good outcomes. So, so anyway, I'm all for protective use of force with the intention of stopping immediate harm, with the intention

Jodie Jenson

20:47

of, yeah, find that balance.

Edwin Rutsch

20:51

So yeah, it's not easy. Have I

Jodie Jenson

20:53

shown you? Let's see where is that book? Have I shown you this book?

Edwin Rutsch

21:00

No, I don't think so. Um,

Jodie Jenson

21:02

so he talks a lot about going through history, looking at different people who have stood up to brutal force like that, things that went against their values. And this is so this has been helping me to develop my theory, because intransigence is basically like stubbornness. Mm, hmm. Like, at what point do you just need to be stubborn? And so he's saying here. So he's, he's Jewish, and so his ancestry, he has, you know, family who went through the Holocaust and stuff. So he, he sees it from the perspective of, at some point you have to say no, and you need to not just acquiesce all the time and so and that, if you think about my my model where I've got, you know, perspective taking and conviction to values on different planes, I don't think that we need to acquiesce to people who are willing to bully and take advantage and, you know, do horrible things to individuals or groups of people, because when you when you have the wrong version of empathy, which is the version that's an actually an empathy deficit, right, where you're just empathy with the other side and not inviting any empathy to reciprocate, then you end up with CO dependent and, you know, interpersonal relationships, you end up with cases like genocide, where we can have the group identity takeover, right, and we're willing to do anything that our authority figures tell us, even If it means harming other humans, right? And so Nazis, or people in the Rwandan genocide, they got so caught up in their group identity that that was the only thing that mattered. And so coming back to the the blocks to empathy, I wonder if we could add one in here. And I'm not sure if you have it in here, but group identity might be something that could block us from empathy.

Edwin Rutsch

23:05

There is identification, but that's similar, so, yeah, I wonder if that's identification.

Jodie Jenson

23:11

Oh, shoot, it's, it's not taking me there. Um, hang on. Let me just try that again. It said the link was broken. Yeah, is it showing up on your side? Because I'm not seeing it come up.

Edwin Rutsch

23:29

Something just happened. I just hit the public. Oh, that, yeah. I just published. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker

23:34

okay, let's see

Edwin Rutsch

23:41

that's the editing link I just put in.

Jodie Jenson

23:47

Okay, it's asking me to to log back in in order to edit. I don't know why it thinks I'm not logged in. Um, okay, so

Edwin Rutsch

23:58

should be able to see this. This. See that without s for editing,

Jodie Jenson

24:05

just Yeah, coming up. I'm just curious how you define identification, like identifying with the other person's experience. That's what I thought you meant by identification.

Edwin Rutsch

24:18

Didn't go anywhere overly Okay. Well, identification is, is more like you're in the empathy circle, you know, I share, oh, I've got this, you know, biopsy that I did, and then you say, Oh, I've had that happen to me too. You're sort of identifying, oh, it

Jodie Jenson

24:39

comes back to yourself, right? Uh huh. Um, yeah, okay, so here we go. So in identification, there is a confusion of self and other, okay, awesome. While in empathy, the other is regarded as a separate person. That is such an important distinction. Um, yes, I love that. Along these lines, in his definition of empathy. The above, in addition to understanding, feeling and sharing, Carl Rogers is emphasize, and also emphasize the role of self, other, identification, differentiation. So I'm going to look into that one, that link that you have there, because that is great. Um, yeah, because identification, I've, I've had enough conversations with people who have thought that they were empathizing with me. They were turning it around and telling me their story instead. Yeah, I'm sorry if I've shared you that with this with you before, but I had an ectopic pregnancy several years ago, and I almost died. I was like, minutes away from dying, and I had to have emergency surgery. I lost a ton of blood. It took me like, four months to recover from it. And when I would talk to people about it, they would say, Oh, I had a miscarriage. It was really hard. Let me tell you all about my miscarriage. Yeah, I'm like, I freaking almost just died, like you're not

Edwin Rutsch

26:02

helping, yeah? So the empathic approach is, oh, you're hearing you really had a really difficult time with this. You're almost dying, and you're it was very, very traumatic experience. You know, tell me more

Jodie Jenson

26:14

that would be the other side of it that is much more empathic,

Edwin Rutsch

26:18

fencing into your experience, yeah? And creating a space and to sense into and for you to explore it and to share more of what the experience was like,

Jodie Jenson

26:28

yeah? And the beauty, beauty of that is it helps the individual who needs to share their experience be able to sort through it and understand what really happened to them, right? Yeah? And like it that helps with self empathy as well.

Edwin Rutsch

26:45

Yeah. And do you feel like you're not alone with the deeper feelings? Right? You've got a sense of, hey, I feel connected. Somebody's really hearing this. And, you know, there's sort of a sense of warmth from the being heard about. It is my experience.

Jodie Jenson

27:00

Yeah. And so then there's another line there, because we want to find that shared connective space where I hear you and you hear me, and we can say, wow, we've both been through something difficult, even though maybe you know you can't fully understand me, I can't fully understand you, because they were different experiences, but there is something about connecting over those things that can help bring people together, yeah? Like, in some cases they drive people apart, because you're not empathizing with me, you're identifying with my experience, right? But then I am also talking about trying to find that Venn diagram, right? Yeah, but

Edwin Rutsch

27:40

it is where you if, in your situation, it would be me listening to you until you feel satisfied, right? You've sort of gotten you can. You can almost feel like, oh, I don't have anything else to say on this. I've sort of explored it. Or maybe you're in total distress about it. You need, like, a half hour an hour to, you know, kind of work into it. So it depends on what my capacity is for that. But then once, once you're once you've been heard, there's sort of a space like, Oh, let me hear your story now, because, well, I had the same experience. And then you empathize in return too. Then it becomes the mutual

Jodie Jenson

28:16

right? Because if you're still too deeply in distress about your own experience, it's hard for you to empathize with somebody else, and so if somebody hears you, then you feel like this soothing balm comes over you and it's like, oh, thank you. And now I feel like I have the capacity Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. But until then, it's like, it just it drives a wedge between the two

Edwin Rutsch

28:42

people. And sometimes it's referred to as emergency empathy. You just know that the other person needs a lot of space because they're so in, so in distress, that you just say, Okay, I'll listen. And you know, I did that with my sister in law when she was having her which I think I've talked about with manic and it was like almost two hours, three hours of what I would call emergency empathy so

Jodie Jenson

29:06

well, and I'm sorry that that didn't turn out to be holistic empathy.

Edwin Rutsch

29:11

Yeah. And then yeah, well, we've had two or three empathy circles since I just had one with her a couple of days ago, again, so, and you know, she starts, her modus operandi is to just attack, attack, attack, go, you're just selfish, you're this, you're that, you're, I mean, and then I just empathically reflect, and, you know, and, and then we kind of get into a deeper connection. But I always say, like, I just tell her and my brother too, because he kind of did all the stuff behind my back. So it's the same kind of ways. I would like an empathic relationship with you, but I'm not going to be a doormat, and so I don't want to relate socially, you know, talk to you, and the only way I'm going to talk to you relate is to an empathy circle.

Jodie Jenson

29:58

And so. It's, I'm curious if they see that with with a lack of understanding of the version of empathy that you're talking about, do they see you as hypocritical by not being willing to just be a doormat for them?

Edwin Rutsch

30:14

I think they're learning, you know, it's sort of a learning process. It's, you know, it's sometimes it takes time to have that, that awareness. And I keep saying I'm willing to have an empathic relationship, and the problem is, you weren't listening, and I'm only willing to have a mutually empathic relationship. So I think, I think it's a learning process, and that there that was my sense too. And you know when I it's like, where you cut off, cut someone off, right? And I really don't like to cut people off, and I haven't never cut anyone off in an empathy circle, right? So that door is always open. But yeah, so it's a matter of, yeah, if they understand it, I'm, I think, yeah, I guess, I guess they're slowly, I think they're getting it, you know, bit by bit. That was my intention, too. Is that by doing this, I'm cutting it off, or I'm leaving the door open to an empathic relationship. And I had in the back of my mind that in the long run, this might be the best approach, you know, for in the long run, for relationship,

Jodie Jenson

31:21

yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I think that really speaks to the value of the training that we're wanting to put together to get out there, that we're not just talking about a one sided empathy.

Edwin Rutsch

31:35

Yeah, I think that's actually this person who's studying therapy. Is one of the problems with therapy itself is it's one sided. And I think it's been a major problem in the therapeutic, yeah, in in the whole therapy. It made it so susceptible, the way she's talking about it's like the training, therapeutic training, has been sort of taken over by the vote, you know,

Jodie Jenson

31:58

right? Because you just validate, validate, validate, and that's your only job is just to validate the individual. Yeah, and that, I mean, that might not be the full picture, because sometimes maybe the person does need to change some things. Maybe they need to get out of that victim mindset. And if your job is as the therapist is just to validate them, just to reflect back with it to them what they're saying and help them feel heard. Sometimes that's not all necessary.

Edwin Rutsch

32:29

Yeah, it can turn to have a narcissism, a therapeutic narcissism, maybe, yeah, yeah.

Jodie Jenson

32:35

And I've, I've heard of examples of people hiring multiple therapists because they won't give them the answers that they want, and so they'll just shop around to different therapists until they get somebody who will say, Oh, you're right. You know, your your ex husband is the problem. And yes, I'm speaking from

Edwin Rutsch

32:57

Yeah, but Rogers wouldn't, he would only do reflective listening, and he wouldn't do, you know, like cognitive based, CV based therapy, all those, all the ones that sort of where the therapist is sort of like some kind of an expert, you know, that kind of gives you advice. I mean, he never gave advice. His was like, all I do is listen, give you a space. But again, I think the thing that was missing was, was the mutuality, even though he talked about congruence, which was the therapist should say, honestly, what's going on for them if something's comes up. So he didn't talk about that. I think the empathy, yeah, anyway, I think the empathy circle solves a lot of those, those, yeah,

Jodie Jenson

33:39

you can't really do it in a therapy setting, right? It would have to be, yeah. Now you and this group of people are going to go over here and you're going to do an empathy circle, yeah, maybe the therapist can facilitate it, but it doesn't work just one on one between client and therapist,

Edwin Rutsch

33:55

right? The way the whole system is set up, it would be unethical, yeah? Now,

Jodie Jenson

34:00

yeah, that's tricky. That is something that needs to change.

Edwin Rutsch

34:06

I do. I think because the thing that the clients or patients need to be learning is empathy skills themselves. How do they use how do they learn to listen better to people? How do they apply the empathy with their family, friends, who they are in having difficulty with because if you are doing the holistic empathy, it's, I think, much healthier than just the one sided,

Jodie Jenson

34:32

yeah. So family therapy, you have the option to do that kind of, yeah, right, but not, I

Edwin Rutsch

34:39

think it'd be obvious. Yeah, yeah.

Jodie Jenson

34:43

I mean, I I've only been to a couple of therapy sessions with my spouse, and the the therapist helped us, like he helped facilitate interactions between us, and that was helpful. But then the therapy sessions I've gone to that are. One on one, it's more of me, just like verbal vomiting. The therapist just listens, and then at the end, gives some, maybe some observations. That's just how it is. That's like a one sided thing. And I can see some value in that, because, as we know, being heard, feeling heard is valuable. But I've walked away from therapy sessions feeling like I needed you to help me fix myself, though I needed some expert advice, right? So I don't know, I don't

Edwin Rutsch

35:37

know if you had some if they were giving you advice, but you were reflecting what the advice was, then you're sort of keeping in an empathic mode, you know. And I've had, I've had empathy buddies, you know, I just get half an hour of listening, you know, just when I was special, I was working managing the Center in Santa Barbara, I was very stressful, and just having somebody to listen those it's very helpful, you know, so

Jodie Jenson

36:05

and I'm just curious, now that you're not in the center anymore, are you doing everything online? Yeah, pretty much, and you're still facilitating group cafe and all of that. But how have you seen it change? Obviously, there's going to be a difference when people are online versus in person. Yeah, connect as well.

Edwin Rutsch

36:24

Yeah, in person was really good. Yeah, you know, people are staying together for the weekend, and in Santa Barbara, there's still, the group is still continuing in a different location, so they meet in person. But, yeah, it's a lot online, and I'm not doing as much because I'm trying to focus on the the the definition. I just think this is so important to have a clear definition. And I did reach out to Greg depot. I don't know if you know depo. You know him. He was, he, he's,

Jodie Jenson

37:01

I D, E, P, O, W,

Edwin Rutsch

37:05

yeah, and there's a link to his LinkedIn, so he's actually studying empathy. I've just seen some. So anyway, I is like, now as I kind of come across people you know who are studying and I I say, Hey, would you have an interview dialog about definition. So I'm gonna do some kind of say here, here's, here's how I'm defining empathy. What's your take on it with some of the other academics and Jeremy Howick, I don't know if you know him, but he has a center in the UK for empathy and healthcare, so he just started about a year or two ago, and it's really seems to be growing quite a bit.

Jodie Jenson

37:50

Oh, Jeremy Howick, you just, yeah, you sent me both of them. Okay, so Greg Howe is the depot. Is the second link there? Okay, because I pulled up. Jeremy Howick already, let me see, I'll

Edwin Rutsch

38:00

post. And you had talked to was it Darryl, or who is it? And Darryl Cameron. Cameron, yeah, I wonder if we could talk with him sometime. Yeah, I'm going to be

Jodie Jenson

38:09

meeting with him sometime in the middle of this month. I'm presenting, alright, I'm presenting in his Oh, Okay, nice. So just over zoom, we'll meet with him, his his research team talk about some of our, like, definitions of empathy and and anyway, so at that point, I think it would be, it would be interesting to pull him into the conversation.

Edwin Rutsch

38:32

Yeah, could do a recorded call with him, because I'd like to get you know other people's takes on the holistic empathy. And, I mean, yeah, he's been very much into empathy motivation, I think, right, isn't it?

Jodie Jenson

38:44

Yeah, and, like, moral foundations, like, he studies a lot of moral psychology and how empathy and morals overlap with each other. So I'm really interested to get his take on now that I've studied more about moral psychology like I because I spoke with him before I really got into the moral debate of this, and now that I've gotten deeper into it, I'm super curious what his take is going to be on the things that I share.

Edwin Rutsch

39:14

I guess I want you to do a stress test the model holistic empathy. What do people think about it? And get a dialog going about it, and then also to the presentation, I need to add empathic concern, you know, I don't, I did, you know, affective, cognitive empathy, but didn't really address empathic concern. And then I was thinking, maybe Dan Batson has had eight forms of empathy. You know, do a little section presentation, and then I don't you have any thoughts that would be a good next aspect to dig into.

Jodie Jenson

39:48

Sorry, are you talking about in terms of presentation? Are you talking about like within the empathy defining empathy training,

Edwin Rutsch

39:55

and not the training, but the slideshow that I was. Some working on,

Jodie Jenson

40:00

oh, yeah, I think it's that's so valuable to pull those apart. Dan batson's, I think that it's helpful to look through his and see that there are different ways that people define that the same word, and that some of them lead to negative outcomes, you know, like negative interpersonal negative, intrapersonal outcomes, and some of them lead to more connection. And so I think that's a really valuable way to go forward, just kind of pull that apart.

Edwin Rutsch

40:31

Yeah, and then I wanted to also go into some of the criticisms, you know, have kind of specifically, kind of analyze the criticism and, and I'm not sure which one that this whole thing, that empathy leads to victimization, I think, is a one that get is getting a lot of criticism.

Jodie Jenson

40:52

Oh, yeah. And, I mean, I think that that's, that's the big thing that people are jumping on right now is, see, you can't, can't do this empathy thing. It has to be diffuse compassion and recognize that we are all connected as human beings, and just not try, not allow yourself to fall into the empathy trap. Is kind of the empathy trap of seeing one side of things too fully. But again, coming back to your definition of it, that is, again, a lack of empathy. It's a deficit because it's not fully experiencing both sides of something. And so, yeah, that's, I think that that's another really good one to dive into deeper. Because every time we've talked about it, it's kind of been like, these are there. These are, you know, these are the criticisms. This is how we address it, by just focusing on our more, more holistic approach, but maybe going in and like pinpointing exactly what they're saying and exactly why it's a it's it's not a complete picture,

Edwin Rutsch

41:57

because the the empathy circle is like a counter to the Drama Triangle in the sense that the empathy circles. Everyone's listening to each other. In terms of the Drama Triangle is, you know, victim, perpetrator, rescuer. So people think that by listening, that you're going to, it's going to take you into the Drama Triangle and to, you know, make that differentiation, that it's actually the exit to the Drama Triangle, you know, it's the one where you get out of it.

Jodie Jenson

42:28

It reminds me of two things. This is, this is random. But when I was a kid during church, my sisters would sit and make these little paper things that she would make it into, like a little bow like this. And she would, I don't know how we did this during church without drawing too much attention, because everybody's supposed to be quiet, but she would go like this, I can't pay the rent. I can't you must pay the rent. You must pay the rent. And then this guy comes, I'll pay the rent. My hero characterization of that drama, triang, but then comparing that and contrasting it with what Anita Novak has talked about with the circle right, every every point on the circle is equidistant to the center. Right, when you've got a triangle, there's there's an imbalance, but then when there's a circle, you can just continue to expand that circle, and we can all share in that circle, like the circle is so different from the triangle. I

Edwin Rutsch

43:32

hadn't thought of that. Framing it as it we're talking about is the Drama Triangle versus the empathy circle. So yeah, I mean, yeah, visually, it's visually pretty. Yeah, great,

Jodie Jenson

43:43

yeah. I mean, we could dig into that and just talk about the difference between those shapes and and how there is imbalance. There's inherently imbalance when you have, you have vertices versus, you know, other parts on, on the plane, right? There's, there's going to be, if you have a center, maybe the points are equidistant from the center, but not the entire thing, right? So I don't know we could dig into that as well and, like, think through how we could visualize that. Yeah.

Edwin Rutsch

44:13

So, yeah. So this is the thing, yeah, I'm going to really focus on so with, with the, do you have a link to the training outline, or or did

Jodie Jenson

44:21

I said that I would send you that didn't I, I'm sorry.

Edwin Rutsch

44:25

There's no hurry, but no,

Jodie Jenson

44:27

I'm so sorry that I didn't I said I would immediately share it with you. And then I got up from my computer, and that was that, okay. Let's see if I can share it with you as well. I

Jodie Jenson

44:45

It's definitely very, very, very unfinished. So don't look at that and think, wow, she's gotten this so wrong. It's a collateral. We

Edwin Rutsch

44:52

got to start somewhere. So keep iterating. I think it's a continuous iteration. So

Jodie Jenson

44:58

yep, I agree. Right? And I love your approach to just like, Let's improve. Let's just keep making it better. Make it better. Talk to more people, bring more people into our circle, and stress test what we have and see if it, if it stands up to different criticisms. And so far, you've seen that it does stand up, right? Yeah, I

Edwin Rutsch

45:19

Yeah. I would love to be stress testing it with the conservatives, but they won't talk to me as a, you know, the roots of it, the the against empathy, toxic empathy, suicidal, you know?

Jodie Jenson

45:33

Yeah, that's unfortunate, yeah? Well, they're not, they're not the only conservatives there are out there. But they're, they are the conservatives that are talking about, Yeah, unfortunately, I also, I was thinking about this this week, just how interestingly, ironic it is that, like, even within the political sphere, Barack Obama was hailing the virtue of empathy, and then Donald Trump and his cronies are just berating it right, that it's, it's this one value that is understood so differently among politicians. Yeah and yeah, that's, it's, it's problematic.

Edwin Rutsch

46:11

I kind of blame Obama for that, that he didn't like put together an empathy team. It was so central to his campaign that, why didn't he have a group, you know, invite me to, you know, and others to actually work on the empathy. Because, you know, the the concern, the when he said he was going to have a Supreme Court justice that had one of the qualities was empathy. I mean, the Conservatives just went crazy, especially in the judiciary committee, and that was the, you know, the Jeff Sessions, you know, what is empathy and all that? And it was like they they were misunderstanding it. They were it was against. It was again, it was a sympathy, you know, saying, Oh, this is sympathy, and it's, we have to feel, you know, have empathy. We have to care about these poor people, but nobody's going to care about us, or something like, you know, that kind of thing. So if he would have had a good definition, if he would have done empathy circles, he could have done empathy circles in the in the White House, you know, in the Oval Office, or something, it would have transformed the country. I think,

Jodie Jenson

47:15

yeah, wouldn't that have been nice? There are a lot of things that would be nice if, if people like you, ran the country, I don't

Edwin Rutsch

47:22

want to run it. I already tried running stuff. It's too hard. It's better to, yeah,

Jodie Jenson

47:29

that's that's so challenging. And coming back to my I can see that when there's an imbalance in power, it's going to, it's going to shift things considerably, because when you're the person in charge, you feel like you have to stick stronger to your opinions right. You have to be right, because we're in charge. And so I imagine that that drives down people's ability to empathize with other people. And so I would like to explore that as well.

Edwin Rutsch

48:00

Yeah, it's all the hiring, hiring and firing people and the money, you know, because you're not having an empathy circle with everyone all the time, you're having to make decisions, you know, vendors come in. So, yeah, you know, it's how to take the energy of the empathy circle and expand it. And we did that, you know, I think I told you some stories of, you know, like a conflict that happened over the fire, or the grill that kind of was burning. I don't know. I actually don't know if you shared that with me. Oh, okay, so we, you know, we, we had our group meeting there at the center. We had a grill. We had, you know, dinner made, and then the next day, it was the job of someone to clean the grill, you know, friend, one person. And then he sort of sub assigned it to somebody else. And this person turned on the grill, you know, which was outside on a wood porch, and and he turned it on to heat it up. And then he went and did something else, and he forgot. And I'm just like, smelling smoke, and I go over, and I come in, and there's this, you know, huge, you know, grease fire in the grill, you know, going, and it's on a wood porch, and I'm thinking, and so, you know, I got really pissed off. And we did get it out, the fire out, and, you know, turned off the gas and, you know, shut it down. But I was really pissed off and ready to kind of berate the, you know, the person who had left it. Then the other guy said, Oh, we got to have an empathy circle. And

Jodie Jenson

49:35

in that moment, you're like, curse me for coming up with the empathy circle.

Edwin Rutsch

49:39

Yeah. And then we sat down, we had an empathy circle for, you know, an hour and a half and and it actually turned out really well, you know, we were able to, you know, talk, you know, talk it through, work it through, come up with some strategies so it didn't, wouldn't happen again. And so it did work. So that was like an application of the empathy. Circle for a conflict there happened to be somebody there too, Kathleen, who works with conflict mediation in general, and she had been in the other room said, Oh, what's gonna happen here? You know, here's this kind of series, like watching what are they gonna do? And she was like, really taking like, wow. They really walked their talk and did an empathy circle and work through and she did, she did a, you know, an interview piece on it with the three of us, you know, too. So it's somewhere on YouTube talking about it.

Jodie Jenson

50:30

That's very, very cool. Yeah, yeah, I hadn't heard that story. That's a powerful example. And you have to be willing to stick to your value safety time. Now it's time to bring everybody into empathy, shared empathy. And if you are, if you're not walking the talk, then you're not living in accordance with your values, right, right? And that would not, that would represent having low conviction to values, if you weren't to step in and say, Okay, now it's time to empathize. And I

Edwin Rutsch

51:01

have that. It's like, Oh, if somebody calls for an empathy circle, I've agreed this is what I'm going to do. So I have to, I have to do it, no matter what, you know. So that's good. Kind of plugged it in there. Well,

Jodie Jenson

51:13

conviction to value is, I wonder that's something that's a decision beforehand, like when I was growing up, and they would say, you know, say no to drugs. They would grill it into our minds, like say no to drugs every time, and we had already said no. And so when it became a temptation, when we were teenagers and young adults, we had already decided that that wasn't something that we were going to participate in. And it seems like that's what you've done as well, where you've just you've already decided that, that that's a value that matters more than being right, or more than being

Edwin Rutsch

51:48

my anger, yeah, kind of dominating somebody and putting them down, berating them. And, you know, I'm sure

Jodie Jenson

51:56

you would never say that that's something that you value. You don't, you know, nobody would say I value being having the ability to put somebody down, but I wonder if a competing value to that would be like, I, I'm the guy in charge, and I need to, I need to run a tight

Edwin Rutsch

52:14

ship, keep order, yeah,

Jodie Jenson

52:17

and empathy might come into conflict with that, yeah? Or supposedly, and so that,

Edwin Rutsch

52:23

yeah, and plus, you're stressed. When you get all the stress and it's like, you know, then that inhibits the time, because it's time consuming. It takes a lot of time. But the thing is, these people have become great friends too, right? And so, yeah, having that empathy circle really cemented the relationship.

Jodie Jenson

52:45

That's really, really interesting. That's cool. Okay, I gotta go, so let's, let's put a pin in the discussion about the the training, and maybe both of us can be looking at like, the overall, like, outline of it, and then start digging more into the details of

Edwin Rutsch

53:08

it. Topic for next week is training,

Jodie Jenson

53:10

yeah, I think so. And I think that we should dig deeper, like you were saying, like, actually spend some time looking at the criticisms. I'm pretty sure that I have that as one of my topics in here. Let's see. Okay, so yeah, in the first day of the training, this is on page two. At the bottom of page two, why are there such vocal critics of empathy right now, I only have 10 minutes allotted for that, and I think that it's possible that we need a full half hour to really get in and, like, dig into, why are people against this? Like, if this is something that we value, and other people not only don't value they they are trying to actively devalue this thing, then why is that like we need to I think it would be helpful for people to dig into that.

Edwin Rutsch

54:05

Well, there's there's the aspect of digging into it, but until people have a model to operate from, it's going to be hard for them to have be able to build on that framework. So

Jodie Jenson

54:17

you want to talk about, here's a more positive framework first, and then dig into the criticisms.

Edwin Rutsch

54:22

I mean, I with the presentation, I go into the criticisms just to show that they're there, but to go, then go into the model. And then it was thinking of going back into the digging into a criticism later on, once people have the framework. I don't know if that's But

Jodie Jenson

54:38

yeah, so maybe leave it at 10 minutes here, yeah, on the first week, and then maybe in like week three or week two. Dig deeper into why do people like? What the specific

Edwin Rutsch

54:52

some of them? Yeah, go into some and I love that triangle versus circle, if that's. Simple visual,

Jodie Jenson

55:01

yeah, let's think about that. Let's think about how we can develop that some more. Okay, great, um, okay, Ernie, um, reconvene next, but normal time, right? Normal time. Let me just double check that there aren't any conflicts. Okay, yeah, I'm good. I'm not, um, hang on. Um, I think I need to change my daughter's swim lesson. It's supposed to be all next week at 11, which is 10 o'clock your time. Um, every day next week. But she broke her arm earlier this summer. She's out of the cast, but she's, I don't know that I'm ready to let her swim and, like, you know, reach out for the wall and hit her hand on it, because it was pretty, pretty broken. I think I told you that, yeah, multiple places, yeah, yeah, it was pretty bad. So I will get back to you. Okay, let me know. I was already thinking I needed to postpone it a couple of weeks. Um, her, her swim lessons. So if I'm able to do that, then we're good to go, um for next week. If not, I may need to reschedule. Okay, yeah, let's plan on it, unless I tell you different. Okay,

Edwin Rutsch

56:11

sounds good. Okay, all right. Bye. Later. Bye.

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