It's Edwin Rutsch, Director of the Center for building a culture of empathy. And I'm here with Ashok. But you're right, right. Yeah. Is that you are pronounced me. Sorry.
that's a really good effort that is actually Arctic Bhattacharya. So it's quite fonetic. But Edwin, if you go to India, they won't understand that it's it's offshore budgetary, and that I'm just not going to go with that in North America. So I just go with ASHA, can you can use that for the rest of the interview? And we'll be we'll be talking.
Okay, great. Well, let me give a little bit of background about you. You're a psychiatrist, and the founder of the empathy clinic, which is why we're talking, I try to talk with everyone that's interested in empathy. And your website is empathy. clinic.com, so anyone can go right there and check that out. And you're located Ontario, Canada. And here I was just looking at the description of the clinic, which is really makes my heart sing this, your description, the clinic, empathy clinic is committed to teaching, practice and enhancement of empathy.
Empathy is the starting point for compassion. And what we do when we care about each other appreciating the experience of another person is that capacity and skilled whether it is in a relationship, family, friends, or the workplace, all work better and smoother with empathy, when empathy is being practiced. So we want to kind of you do want to say more by way of just introduction?
Yeah, well, I've been a psychiatrist for about over three decades. And the reason why I'm interested in empathy is, is largely because it's not really a huge part of practice, in psychiatric diagnosis, and treatment. And I realized this years ago, much to my dismay, and I'm not saying that psychiatrists are initially interested in the Word. But if I talk about empathy to my colleagues, I often try to offer an empathy course, at some of my my professional organizations, and I usually get laughter. And one of the reasons I get laughter is, is my colleagues think that empathy is on teachable. And I personally think that might be wrong.
I think empathy might definitely be teachable to people who are receptive, and may even be teachable to people who are not so receptive. I'm talking about people in the narcissistic spectrum of personalities. And I know this because I've done it. I think if we look at empathy as a, as a capacity, that about 80% of the people who who of the population has a pretty robust capacity for empathy. That's a good 100 out of 100. But that means 20% of people who may not have such a good capacity, but I'd really like to talk about a definition of empathy, if we can get that conversation going.
Great. Yeah, that's the headline is talking about. So what I'm hearing is he, as a psychiatrist, you're sort of giving the context in psychiatry, empathy is not really valued, it's not highly valued. And, and that even they're saying they empathy is not teachable. Maybe that's one one thought there. And I'm hearing to you, you feel that it is a teachable, and I will second that, because I have talked to psychiatrists. And they will say that to there's no real training for empathy within psychiatry, even though you think it'd be found fundamental to it. So I didn't want to say, you know, before we start, that there's, if you can check out your website, you know, find out more about your empathy work. There's also a great interview with just how I found out about you from Anita Novak, she interviewed you and really gave a look at a lot of sort of your background, as well, as you have a video called, is empathy. Empathy is teachable.
So you're making the case. And what we weren't really kind of big into here was sort of the definition of empathy, like what are we talking about, you know, we talked about empathy is I'm finding it, there's sort of a, I wanted to create a an MPC movement, right? Or have been working for 14 years, whatever working, how do we create this movement? I keep coming against this issue of unclear definitions that I find is really inhibiting a movement. So I'm really wanting to do a deep dive, I saw your interview, and I thought, Oh, I love talking with clinicians, because they have experience. It's just not theoretical. You're talking from your real experience of working with empathy. So I thought you'd be a good person to talk to about how you see, you know, definition of empathy.
Well, what I first normally do when I talk to people about empathy as I get them to tell me their definition, but I won't put you through that admin, because I think you're asking me so I'll be I'll be as clear as I can think. My biggest disk agreement with people who and these are people who are teaching about empathy sometimes, or you'll see this written in books, that empathy is the capacity to experience somebody in their, in their shoes. So if you put yourself in somebody else's shoes, you're being empathic, that is not empathy.
At the very best, that is sympathy. Sympathy is the capacity to share emotions. And this would be at a wedding, when everyone is laughing and crying and joyous. Or at a funeral when everyone is crying, and people are all feeling simpatico, they're feeling the same feeling. And there's generally an agreement that everyone is feeling the same thing. The same thing happens in comedy clubs, when someone is making a joke, and everyone's laughing, and if you notice, people look around to validate that they're having the right emotion to the joke, and that someone isn't laughing inappropriately, which can be very socially embarrassing. Now, for me, what therefore, if that's sympathy, what is empathy?
And, and the most unpopular thing I say that empathy is, it requires a capacity to self negate, which means you actually have to get yourself out of the way to begin with to empathize with somebody else's experience, from their point of view, not yours. So if someone's telling me something, let's make it simple. Let's say they say I feel cold in here. And I'm feeling kind of warm, and I'm thinking about turning on the air conditioning. And I'm thinking, well, they can't possibly be cold, because I'm not, I have failed to empathize with them. If I think well, from that person's point of view, they don't have a lot of warm clothing on, it is sort of a bit cooler in here, possibly, I am seeing my air in my breath in the air, so maybe it's quite nippy, maybe they are feeling cold. Let me try and imagine what they're experiencing, from the way they're experiencing it. Get me out of the way. And the more I do that, and dive deeper and deeper into that person's experience of themselves. In that moment, I'm actually beginning to empathize. And I think
reflect again, appeared me periodically, I'll pause here, what I'm understanding as well sort of throw in some, you know, of my perception perspective. So we have sort of this empathic dialogue. So I'm hearing you're saying that there's, people often confuse standing in someone else's shoes as if as sympathy, which is you have a feeling and they have a feeling and a sort of this matched feeling that you have, sort of, and then you're saying, That's it, that's not empathy, that sympathy. And that empathy is sort of sensing what the other person is experiencing and feeling. Is that that I get that or I didn't try here,
Edwin, you got that perfectly. So just just to be even more confusing. If two people happen to be feeling the same thing. And they're empathizing with each other. They can be experiencing empathy and sympathy at the same time. The only time it breaks down, is if someone is saying to somebody else, I know exactly what you're feeling, because I went through the same thing last week. And they think that empathizing, they actually may not be, in fact, what they might be doing is alienating that person from the telling them how they experienced it.
Because they may be experiencing differently than the way this person's telling that they had this same thing. And that's how they felt. And so they might be very scared to discuss that with the other person will reveal it, because now their feeling has not been validated.
And when I say that sometimes called identification, right? It's like you, instead of just listening to a person sensing where they are hearing them, you're saying, Oh, I've had that experience, you sort of disconnect from them, and you go into your own mind, remembering your own experience, so you're no longer sort of present with them is,
I think that's also a very, very astute thing to say, I don't I think the other way to put that as well. If someone is telling me something, I might say, wow, you know, something very similar happened to me like that a week ago. But how did your experience feel to
you? Okay, so you're bringing my back to attention, bring it back to
the unique, unique experience that they have. So I'm a musician. So some something I'm fascinated is something called Musical empathy, which happens when musicians start playing together regularly and they just know where each other is gonna go next. They know where the drummer is gonna go. They know where the bass player is gonna go, where to go. And when they play more, more and more regularly, they can become a smooth team, just like happens in sports. When they work together. They begin to anticipate each other and I call that directional empathy that can happen in music and also in sports. But it goes once again again to the idea of where am I going, I suppose to where's that person going.
And if each each each member is following where the other person is going, where they're talking about direction, or music or emotions or thought, different types of empathy, then they can, they can follow each other. And I don't want to snow you with that with examples. But the one example I have of this fascinates me, is that big ball of birds that we see in the fall of the year, and they're practicing flying cells on this big ball. And remember, this is a sphere. It's not just a circle, there is a sphere of birds, it's there, it's deep with birds, and they don't bang into each other. How do they know that? And they're dealing with three dimensions left, right, up and down. You can imagine 1000 people in a ball not banging into each other, they all have to go in the same direction, in a moment's notice. And so, birds have incredible directional empathy, they're able to sense where each other is able to go how they do it, I don't know, to me, that's magic, well, you're
kind of associating that with musicians, musicians become very attuned to each other, they're very sensitive to each other. So the moment to moment flow, and they're able to relate to what's happening in the other person. And it's not only one directional, it's mutual, right? They're mutually in tuned to each other, just like those birds, just my like, Jackie, right, following all the other birds, it's like they're all attuned to each other. So there's sort of this, this sort of relational aspect there,
exactly what I'm trying to say. And if you only think about yourself, direction you're going in, you're going to be not only messing up yourself, you're gonna be messing up the team. And human beings are essentially a team player. We live in groups, we live in tribes who live in communities, we live in families, we're constantly in the vicinity of each other. And this is why empathy is so relevant and important, especially if you want to be a functioning and compassionate member of that team. So I have one more example of my definition of empathy. And it sort of bore the
audience with one or more definitions to better off for it.
And that is the sound of our voice. So I'm listening to you and when to speak, and you have a lovely voice, I'm hearing your voice. But when we listen back on the recording, you may think, you know, yes, that's what my voice sounds pleasant. But that's not the way it sounds to me when I'm speaking. And that's because when we speak, our voices is being carried through air, but it's also being carried through our body. In fact, if you put your fingers in your air, you can still hear your voice quite clearly. Because you removed your voice coming to air and it's just going through your body. Empathy, is trying to hear the way somebody his voice sounds to them, not the way it sounds to you. And that's impossible. But when you're actually trying to do that you're actually empathizing with somebody else.
Okay, so that's the thing, the point about not stepping into someone else's shoes, you're trying to hear them with their point of view is not likely internally. And yeah. So yeah, the See, there's two to come. One thing that came up is I in terms of definitions, what I find is that the definitions are often pose from an from an individualistic point of view, that you're seeing as an individual, whether you're empathizing or not. And something I sort of noticed in your website, is that you're also looking at the relational sort of empathy, like in couples, right? It's not it's not just this individual, you're emphasizing you're not in the world, there's actually a relationship going on. And that the and that part is usually sort of left out in general, especially the academic sort of definitions. It's very individualistic, Lee formulated, it seems to me, Well, we
call that a one person psychology and I am a big fan of, of two or more person psychologies, because I think human beings are so intimately connected to each other. So if I'm working with with a husband, or wife in my office, as an individual, if I'm successful, I'm going to be affecting their relationship at home, even if one of them never comes into me. And the children if they have children and their friends and family, because you can't you can't cut one fiber of a spiderweb and not affect the shape of the web, the whole thing is going to shift a little bit. And I did write a book called A Guide to reciprocal empathy for couples in 2006, so I'm totally I'm totally oriented towards empathy being at least a two person psychology and more could because I think that that's how we're designed. We're designed designed to be aware of each other.
It seems like it's more real realistic that we're and that's how come you know I call it my center, the Center for building A culture of empathy is I see the relational aspect of empathy, that if we're here together, you know, I'm sensing into who you are, I see your enthusiasm, I see your smile, you know, and, and likewise, you see my hand waving. And there, it's not just me. Yeah, it's like just me being empathic, but we're in sort of this relationship, because we're constantly seeing each other and are so like emphasizing with our empathy, each other's empathy and the sensitivity to it.
And I, the I started a project on defining empathy, it's actually a website called defining empathy comm. So you can always check that, I love that, I love that. And I And, and so when I serve evaluate definitions, I can see if they're coming from an individualistic point of view, or if they have relational, a sense of the relationship. And what I want to do is define empathy within what I call the empathy circles, which is four people in a circle. And empathically dialoguing with each other using active listening. And then where is the empathy within that relationship? Because it's not only two people relating to each other, but there's also often observers who are empathizing with the couple, like you're actually empathizing with the, the couple when you're doing, you know, with your with the therapeutic context, there's actually an observers, too. So the empathy is more of a multi dimensional relating. And, you know, can we define empathy and look at the name the different components of what's happening? Instead of it being this sort of detached academic definitions that, oh, I actually have
an example in my book, cake. And it's, it's a couple exercise, and it's a directional couple exercise. When I talk about directional empathy, I mean it more in the abstract in human relations in the sense that maybe a couple get married, and then one of them gets a job out of town, and are they going to follow are they going to keep there, and they have all these directional issues that they have to decide in order to have a smooth relationship. So the game is called a beanbag game. And you take two couples standing on the four corners of a ping pong table, and remove the ping pong table, you don't need the table, you just need those distances.
Each couple ties ties themselves together with a piece of wool as piece of rope that you would make a parcel with the take to the post office. And so you've got one team against another team, these they're tied with the string these. And so phase one is one beanbag. So this person throws a beanbag, and this couple has to catch it. And then and then they throw it back and forth. The goal is to not break you're not not break the string between the two of them. And as you as the game progresses, you are to beanbags, three beanbags. And for me bags. And that means that you have to be aware of if your partner's gonna catch or not. While they're throwing at the they're trying to throw the other couple they're trying to receive, and it gets pretty messy towards the end of it.
But it you're talking about that four person empathy that has to happen for that, to be able to six to be successful. And I thought about that, because life was always coming at us like beanbags are also attached to somebody else. In fact, we're attached to a lot more people than just one. And what we do affects everyone around us, whether it's a big thing or a small thing, where it's a cognitive thing, or an emotional thing, especially in emotional.
Yeah, so that's the urine relationship tied with someone else. And if you're going to move, you start to have to be tuned. And I think that is part of what empathy is. It's that it's how we attune to each other. So the mechanism of attuning so we know where the other person is, it's actually not just a tuning but almost like an integration of, of our brain or cells, or if that resonates with you.
Do you remember When Harry Met Sally, near the end of the movie, they got these old couples and they're finishing each other sentences. We've been together so long, there are cognitive emotional, being as almost like the third entity is what I call it, that you, me and us, and that that the awesomeness or the weakness of a relationship can be so strong and powerful that they you can it's a powerful way to smooth out difficulties that couples have. And it's a wonderful way to connect what I call that empathic level that fourth level in a relationship.
Well, you think about how I define empathy and sort of my my work is, I would say grounded in the, the, the work of Carl Rogers who did active listening, empathic listening and a client therapist. process, but he was sort of expanding that into schools and to couples into, you know, work environment, other intake conflict mediation. So for me the the empathy, that sort of the core definition is sensing into the experience or the moment to moment experience of someone else. And that's sort of the seems to me is sort of a, a sort of a foundational, you know, process of how we do it. And that there's just different things that actually block that flow.
And there's things like, you know, judgment that if we judge, the person, we're kind of cutting off that flow, if we're doing the identification, is you're saying, like, oh, I had that experience, and I go off, I'm no longer present with you. I'm off in my own journey you're wanting to tell about my own journey. And so there's a whole series of sort of blocks, I think there was the other block, you mentioned sympathy, there's two different even definitions of sympathy, I think one is like, Oh, you're telling me a story, as like, I feel so sorry for you.
I, you know, it's that sense of feeling sorry, that's one sort of definition of sympathy that I've seen. And the other is sort of a state matching, like, we both kind of go into the same, like, I'm really angry, and you get really angry. And, and that actually kind of blocks me just being present with you in this sort of empathic presence of sensing into who you are. So, and there's a lot of other definition blocks that I'm seeing. So I don't know how that kind of resonates with you. But it's, well resonates.
It resonates beautifully with me, Edwin, but I also practice. And this is me, right? I'm definitely a bit of an odd duck, but I try to practice empathizing with, with things besides other humans. And, you know, I love fish. And so I'm often wondering what it would be like to be a little fish and then, or maybe even a big one. There's plenty of evidence and animals outside of human beings empathize with us with nature and with each other all the time. Dogs are probably the easiest example. You know, how would a dog know that someone's about to have a seizure? For example, and or how do we have service dogs they're being so sensitive to, to what's about to happen, and human being they can sense what's happening inside the human being before the human being? Do we have the same capacity to sense what's about to happen in the dog?
Well, I just don't think we practice it enough. I think if you start practicing that. I once watched a movie years ago with Matthew Broderick, and he was he was, he was pretending to be a dog in the scene. And what he did is he closed his eyes, and he got down on his forest. And He sniffed along the carpet to see where his, his girlfriend had walked. And he wanted to see if he could do it, he actually could, he realized that if I actually tried to do that, if I, if I try to conjure the essence of being this animal, maybe I can amplify this capacity, we know that when human beings lose certain senses, they can amplify other senses, in its place. Typically, sense of smell or hearings is common. But I've had to practice all the time, because I'm always trying to amplify my senses, because I'm trying to amplify my empathy.
So you're sort of expanding the empathy, this not just sensing into someone else's experience, but sensing into the experience of an animal for
or for trade, or the rain, or the ocean, or other things that are, they're just teaching us. Yeah, so
there's, that there's that there's also the another aspect of So the model that I use for empathy is is self empathy. So sensing into what's going on in myself, and I actually find that when someone listens to me, empathically, I'm able to sense into my own experience to share more of that. So there is sort of this is self empathy going on when somebody's emphasized. And that happens within the context of the empathy circle, too. It's like some people like say, wow, I've heard so deeply and it just has opened up more doors and more creativity by someone listening to me. So that's sort of that, that self empathy, you know, the empathy sensing into someone else, or I guess others animals, and there is another quality of empathy that I see that is I would call it imaginative empathy.
Then we can roleplay ourselves in any situation. It's like an actor, like I could sense into an ant maybe the how fast they're moving, I could sort of feel the energy that they're having if they're slowly sort of struggling or if they're moving fast. So I'm sort of sensing into that. But I can also roleplay the aunt and like maybe your friend did is the dog where you're actually sensing into it or like Meryl Streep, you know being Julia Child or or You know, facture you know, she, she just embodies the role. But she's sensing What is it like to be in this role? And so it does seem to me that that's another aspect of empathy is that we can imagine ourselves, you add imagination into empathy, and then you sense what feelings arise for you in that situation situation. So yeah,
well, I differentiate actors from movie stars and, and method actors. And Meryl Streep is good. Because when she's doing her, her her part, Meryl disappears. And you don't see her she negates herself and becomes the character she's acting. And other actors, I won't name names, they never quite disappear. That is still a fabulous performance. But you never forget that that's the the actor that's doing the performance of fill in the blank. And it's funny I was thinking about and says, You just said the word. And it's funny how that happens sometimes, when we're our minds are obviously
connecting properly. But what I think also with empathy, as you were talking about imagine of empathy as I, I think about future Empathy means imagining your future self. And using that, to, to help yourself in the moment, especially if you're feeling depressed, especially if you're feeling anxious, to build confidence, because confidence really is imagine yourself in the future being successful. And if people use self empathy and self future empathy, they can actually start to practice and succeed at being more confident.
Yeah, I think we use that self future empathy all the time, like I'm working in the backyard on a fence. Right? So, and I imagine myself working on that fence and getting the wood. What's the weather? Like? What are the challenges, I'm going to have an I sense it, I know, I can feel what the situation is, is it going to be too wet? Oh, it's going to be uncomfortable, oh, it's gonna be dry, I'm going to need this tool. And I'm going to be struggling with this, but I can get this tool. So I sort of imagined myself in the future, you know, working on that. And the whole scenario, and by doing that, I sort of practice that. Yeah, and I think we're doing that all the time, people are just imagining, all the time, this future self empathy.
I think that's fabulous. I think that's how some athletes very successful, and some aren't so much, because they can imagine themselves succeeding and in a particular action. And if they see it in their mind, they can re approximate it in their behavior.
It's these these sort of definitions are different like that, I thought, when I saw your I would resonate a lot with with, you know, how you're seeing, and I feel a lot of resonance, you know, in our discussion, but there's these other definitions, they're very popular out there is this affective empathy and cognitive empathy? Which, you know, it's I think, it's a way for academics to kill and about empathy, let's call it act, and, you know, affective and cognitive to, you know, the very dry, boring sort of words. And I'm just kind of so that's a model that's out there, right? It's like, it's even even that model, that academic model is very confusing. So I'm just wondering what you think of, of that model of the of affective cognitive empathy?
Well, I mean, I think there actually is a is utility, in breaking empathy down into into various areas, in the same way that we can break a photograph or, or a painting down into colors and lines. And if I told you this painting is good, because there's 4780, brush, brush strokes, and we have, it's 5%, green, it's 10%. Red, I could tell you all about it on a cognitive level. And you might say, That sounds amazing, but what does it look like? And what does it make you feel like to look at it? So when we break things down, we can have a very good cognitive appreciation of saying math. But when we look at it, and we want to get meaning from it, we may have an emotional reaction, like poetry or literature. So I was I was good at math and lousy at that literature when I was a kid.
And I began to realize, wait a minute, it's just empathy. A good novel, a good novelist is a is a good Empath petition, if you will, that they they know how to make the reader feel things. And if you think about it, no good novels are little packets of empathy. They're little little capsules of empathy that when we read, we can start to imagine and feel and think and cry, and laugh. You know, when we're reading that novel, it's just words on a page, but what's happened is we've turned a cognitive event into into an imagine of event, and then a cognitive and an emotional event as well. And that's the beauty of empathy is it really is that it's the duality of those processes put together and also many other things too.
But I really think that there is some utility in separating it out, particularly if you're working with people who have alexithymia, which is, which is an incapacity to and to be able to label or feel their own emotions. And I work with a lot of those people. And after a while, I'm using their cognition, to get them to understand their feelings. And then after usually, usually about five or 10 sessions, they're starting to say, I feel this, I'm feeling this because I basically taught them how to put put words that can help them find those emotions, in the same way that I've given them a code to find that book in the library that they didn't even know existed before. Okay, so
there I'm hearing you're you're seeing value in sort of making nuanced distinctions between different experiences and naming those different types of experiences like we did talk about self empathy, you know, empathizing with someone else, we talked about imaginative empathy, we are, we are making these distinctions in these sort of nuances. And then there's this nuance of the emotional, and the cognitive. And that's the thing I'm really struggling with, because I don't think it's, it's sort of comes from maybe a philosophical differentiation between an effect of the cognitive and the emotional, and I'm not sure how accurate that is, or because this, that, I think that the the so called cognitive has a felt experience to it.
So when somebody is doing math, they're not in a cognitive state where they're not feeling anything, you cannot not feel right there. And people who do math is like, Oh, God, this is horrible. This is painful. This is a, so they have all this emotion, tucked it, you know, into it, this is my brain is hurting from the, from trying to calculate this, or someone else might be really good at math is like, Oh, this is fun, I just had a moment of creativity. And this is this is exciting, and a lot of curiosity about what's going to happen next. So I'm having trouble sort of seeing the difference between the emotional and the cognitive that that they seem to be so intertwined. If there is sort of a differentiation. And the I don't know, if you can have cognition without a felt experience, it being a felt experience, too. So I'm just wondering how you would kind of untangle that? Well, it's,
it's quite from my perspective, admin, it's quite easy to untangle that. Because what we're really talking about, again, the way I see it, I'm not trying to push this on you. But the way I see it is that what we're really talking about is intensity. And if someone has intense emotions, or if they have intense pain, it's much harder to get to get them to be empathic towards somebody else. And in fact, intense emotions and pain makes someone much more, it makes them go into themselves, it makes them be less, much less likely to, to want to be empathic towards somebody else.
So what I do in my office frequently, I work with a lot of couples and couples therapy, is if if the intensity is getting a bit high, I'll stop the session right then and there and point out what they're doing. And, and it always works really wonderfully, you try and get the intensity down so you can get back to an emotional cognitive conversation. If the emotions get too high, you lose the cognition. And I kind of call it the the toothache syndrome. If your toothache is really really bad, it's really hard to pay attention to anything else.
Okay, so let's say the couple or someone who's really angry, I'm like, pissed off, I'm so angry at you. So you're seeing that is that as as an emotion, that's a strong emotion. It's like they that a strong emotion, they can't even hear the other person is like, I don't know who you are, I don't care who you're so angry and seething. Now, that is an emotion, right? You're saying that's an emotion? Where is the cognition? Where at what point do you see cognitions kind of step into that?
Well, you'd have to get the person to calm down, you'd have to take some control. And if you ever saw me in a session, you might be bit shocked how, how, how controlling I can be if a couple are out of control. In other words, if I get frightened in a session, if I get scared when I working with somebody, that's that becomes my priority. And I imagined being those children around that couple fading, and I also had have my own issues around couples fighting as a kid in a home growing up. So so I'll let them know how I feel I'm feeling scared right now with you being this way. And sometimes that has a quick dampening effect on the experience.
And sometimes that's the first time someone's actually being able to take an emotion and just stop. And then look at it from a little tiny bit of distance with memering How they were just a few seconds ago, and, and have almost complete 180. Using bring it back to cognition on how that their partner and I might have been feeling in that moment. And the two minutes of powerful intervention, it works again, about 80% of the time, not always, I've had plenty of people leave my office and slam the door, but come back later and have a chat about it. But I think what we're talking about is the intensity of emotion. I think emotion can always override cognition.
Okay, I'm gonna keep pounding on this, because I gotta have some insight I gotta get, I've been dealing with this, it just does not make sense. Maybe I can sense the anger that someone might be having, I can see that I can see that they might be sort of consumed by that anger in their whole body is just sort of filled in with that. And then, in my case, I might wait in an empathy circle, I, I we reflect back empathically, reflect back, say, Oh, I'm hearing you're really angry. Is that accurate? And then with that, with that, they might sort of like take a pause and check, Oh, am I feeling angry. So they've created a little bit of space between themselves and that anger. And it's, they're not like totally consumed with that one feeling, they have another feeling they have sort of a right, I'm checking, there's another feeling there. So it's almost like you're saying that cognition is having multiple feelings at the same times, or multiple states at the same time.
What I'm saying here, Edwin, to be clear with you, is that we want to start a state of reflective capacity. So the minute someone stopped, the minute they're not noticing themselves, like in a car, we have mirrors all around us. So when you start looking in your side mirrors in your rearview mirror, you're a danger. So what we were trying to do in a session, for example, for trying to get someone comment with getting them to look at themselves, look at yourself, what I sometimes do, I suggest the couples if they're having a fight, go in the bathroom, and have your fight in front of the mirror and look at each other. Looking at your face, what my what my partner want to make up with me, if I've got two faces looking like this. And look, look at my partner's face.
What would they feel like I would want to make up with them if they had a face like that. And when they actually try that, it completely changes the tone of the conversation. I will never forget when I was a kid, and my mom was mad as heck at all of us, because there were five of us. And she would be she was British. She'd be yelling and screaming at us. This is like in the early 70s. And someone would phone the house, a friend of hers, and she will pick up the phone. Oh, hello, Julie, how are you doing? Yes, her emotions will change completely. And I realize that emotions are temporary. And they can change on a dime. And if and I find that, it was hard to believe that but I saw it so many times, I began to realize in my practice, I could do the same thing. Again, not all the time. But I could I could prove to a couple that they could get out of the fight very, very, very quickly and get into a softer, sensitive empathic place again, and truly begin to take in each other's experience that made them upset in the first place. And Sue's that rather than sort out the fight with with bullets and guns and fists kind of thing.
So if I'm hearing that you're saying that cognition is sort of detaching from a felt experience, and you're in sort of a another, you're looking at it from another point of view you're in you're seeing it not sort of consumed by it, but that you're seeing it from, from I don't know from Yeah, from a different standpoint, or from another position
any other standpoint than being dragged by a PRC.
So, so as long as you're sort of seeing emotions, is it from, from my experiences, like, I kind of see the world as a 360 degree space. And it's like, there's feelings all it's like, there's in different parts of my body, there's different feelings, like sometimes they'll have like anxiety, like, you know, it's kind of localized here, but overall, I feel sort of a spaciousness, or you know, might have a little headache or a little stress and, you know, in the head, so I sort of sense the overall space that I'm in and when I'm with someone else, I sort of sense the space, you know, between us and, and sort of their what I'm sort of sensing their space is, and usually is maybe having also maybe feeling it curiosity, who is this person, you know what's going on?
And with them what, you know, how do we maybe create a sense of connection because that connection would feel kind of might feel nice or curiosity, or maybe some creativity will sort of happened. So it's kind of this multi dimensional space of feeling and experience that I sense in the sense that I can get angry and be totally enraged. Or in tears, where everything just falls apart, and you're just like, totally lost. So I guess that's just sort of describing the, how I'm sort of how I see myself in that space. And I'm trying to identify the effect and the cognition, right, it's like, yeah, so put my finger on it, I want to get, I want to get this really nailed down.
There's a great researcher named Daniel Stern, who wrote a book called the interpersonal world of the infant. And so when we're first born, our cognitions, again, I don't remember being a baby myself, but our cognitions are much more rudimentary, but our emotions are fully there. So the first thing that we deal with with the world and how the world deals with us is our emotions. And hopefully, and because and because we're born helpless, we have to have other people look after us, when we're babies until we're quite old. If you think about it, from the animal kingdom, how long it takes a baby giraffe to be independent versus a human being.
And so the way that we're dealt with emotionally, and the lessons we learned as a child have a profound impact on the belief of how our emotions and our needs and our wishes will be dealt with as we get older. And so what we actually see over time, our defenses against how our emotions were either handled properly, or how they were handled less than ideally, and especially if there's trauma involved as well. And that's why we can have such a range of people's empathic capacity. If they've been, they haven't had the perfect experience growing up in childhood. Because Because initially, our emotions are the only way that we explain ourselves to the people around us. We don't have words yet until we're about at least a year of age. And so it's only our emotions that the emotive part of us, that is how we interact with and then we grow up and those things just become layers and layers and layers on top of our, our inner child, if you will.
Well, there's the the developmental model of empathy that has the baby, which I think you're sort of addressing is, you know, you're born, you're just sort of feeling the whole world is one big, you know, and then I think, what if, if somebody comes into this space, and they're very anxious, you know, that the baby sort of feels the anxiety, it triggers its own tears, right? It's like, oh, I'm starts crying, I'm just feeling anxious, because they're sort of feeling that. And then there's a time when they start, I think, a year and a half, they start having a self other differentiation, there's like the some tests, where can they sense that the other person is separate and sees the world from a different point of view?
And I guess, instead of calling that sort of a cognitive M, cog cognition, it, that's where I use the word imagination that we can imagine ourselves in that other person's state situation, and what does the world look like to them? And if you look at like, you know, Dan Batson who, who I've interviewed, too, if you're familiar with him, he did a lot of early studies on empathy. And he laid out eight sort of definitions that academics have used for defining empathy. And two of them are, they're sort of under the cognitive empathy camp container have been imagined using the word imagination. So it seems to me that it's actually cognitive is more associated with imagination than our own, then some abstract something or other. I don't know if any of that makes any sense.
But it does happen when we're emphasizing we're trying to imagine the other person's experience from their point of view we are we have to use our imagination. And this This brings the conversation to a very difficult issue. And that is the capacity to empathize with an experience that somebody else has that you can't possibly have, or that you've never had. And there's a number of people who think you cannot empathize with with another person's experience unless you've had it yourself. And I think that that's that's sad that people think that because we have to empathize with other people's experience.
I'm a doctor. I had to tell people they had cancer when I was in my training. I don't have to have cancer to, to be able to empathize with somebody else who, who has it in order to realize or empathize with what that person might be going through. And if I don't know what they're going through, I can always ask and help them with those feelings if I'm able to be both sympathetic and empathic with how they feel. But I think one of the biggest problems we have in in, in in psychiatric diagnosis comes to the issue of post traumatic stress disorder, which I, the more I think about it is, in fact, an empathy disorder. In the sense that if you haven't experienced that nobody else could possibly possibly relate to, you might find yourself alienated by your culture, because people cannot respond empathically to because you have an experience.
And this has happened to history with child abuse, the sexual assault of women, war trauma, where we had all these euphemisms for men, men and women coming back from war, because we couldn't relate to it. Oh, my gosh, you know, we can't relate to that. I think the more I think about post traumatic stress, and I've been working with this, this, this diagnosis for over 30 years, it actually is a disorder also of empathy. Aside from the anxiety and the depression, and flashbacks, and all the cognitive stuff that begins to happen.
Yeah, well, that's one of the reasons I think I got interested in in empathy is that my parents were German in the eastern part of Germany during World War Two. Wow. So when the Russians came through my father's side, the other he was they hit him because he was just getting into his teens. And then but the Russians killed everyone in the soldiers killed everyone in his family. And then on my mother's side, so the same, it was different because it was made a lot of women in the family. So there was like mass rapes. So that sort of that, that stress. I mean, I've sensed that, you know, over time, I thought, you know, we really got to work at keeping this from happening again. And I do see empathy is, you know, it's it that those wars are empathy deficits. And, and I can see how the trauma is like you didn't you didn't receive empathy, you get the experience deeply on empathic situations and the distress that comes in it does seem that the empathy is so the healing mechanism to kind of reconnect, reconnect, people,
absolutely the healing mechanism to reconnect people to each other, and to reconnect someone to themselves, especially in PTSD, from shame based abuse, like like childhood sexual trauma. And I've been doing this for 30 years, and it's amazing to watch someone come back to themselves and have that that inner integration when for years, they haven't been because they finally been able to empathize with parts of themselves and show sympathy and forgiveness for themselves.
What do you see is sort of the process for doing that. It's being able to share the experience and to have that experience be empathized with. So it's like the pain and the disconnection for that to be seen and empathized with is kind of what it seems like to me, right? You're, you have pain, disconnection. And when your disconnection is empathized with and it's seen, it creates a sense of connection sort of heals the disconnection.
Yeah, I think there's that kind of confession aspect to it, where if you tell them if you tell someone a story, I've never told anyone ever. I think that's a powerful, and potentially healing experiences, particularly if the listener is trying to actively listen and is being empathic and the way they listen, and receives that story with sympathy and, and reflects it back with empathy, and encourages the person to deliver the whole story. And that's what I think I've really honed in my practice, is to get people to deliver their stories in a way that feels in an environment that's safe.
And I don't know how many times people have come to my office with essentially the wrong diagnosis. And what's turned out is that they've had a story buried inside of their soul for decades that they've never felt so safe to tell anybody. But to go back to answer your question, yes, I think there's the experience of telling somebody else. But there's the witness of telling themselves in the presence of somebody else, telling that story, who themselves in the presence of somebody else. I think it's a very powerful healing part of it because when they leave my office, that experience continues to ruminate in their mind in a positive way that they did that they can begin to heal in between sessions that that healing continues to happen.
Yeah, there's so many benefits of them. See? And that seems to be the so the energy that kind of heals and connects. I guess we bring it back to the definitions, where do you stand on kind of a state of definition of empathy? Because I see so much confusion happening. And not only where do you see the situation, but what how do we address it? Because you have, like this book against empathy by Paul Bloom, right. Okay. Yeah, well, you know, got a Yale academic says, empathy has got all these problems. And there's all everybody quotes, there's a lot of quote, naira, there's a lot of quotes now about what he says, and people just hear against empathy, it's bad, etc, etc. But it first I was kind of confused where he's talking about.
And then when you really look at, he was actually talking about sort of the sympathy that you're talking about state matching. Like, if your therapist is raging, know that if you're with your therapist, you're raging angry thing, your therapist becomes raging angry, and he's calling that empathy. And his whole book is sort of built on that has problems actually agree. And one of the main problems with what he's describing is it inhibits empathy. So it's a kind of a crazy sort of a definition of empathy, his that his thing that he's criticizing, actually, I would see as a block the empathy, that emotional state matching or sympathy. So, yeah, I think like that after thing after that, I could go down the list of all the situations like that, that I see where it's so confusing. Yeah.
Yeah, I've tried to engage some of those people and have conversations with them. And and yet, I have to have much success with that. But for me, empathy, what is the purpose of empathy? Well, I think the purpose of empathy is, is so that we can tribe up or so that we can do things in groups. And we can sense the needs of others, human beings, and other other creatures do this, but we, we have to rely on each other in case we're sick, or we're, we're feeble, or we, we lose the use of the limb. So we have to, because we are essentially reliant on each other to look after each other.
And you know, after we die, we look after each other, even after we continue, we are living being has stopped. So this is empathy. But I think the purpose of it of empathy is potentially to do to do to have a compassionate thought that can become an act of kindness. And I think what happens is that empathy is simply a state of feeling, you actually don't have to do anything about empathy, you don't want to, you can you can send somebody else's feeling, you can recognize it registered and do nothing about it. When you start to contemplate what you might do about it, then that's feeling a sense of compassion. And once you actually start to do something about it, and that's kindness. So I think what we're talking about really is a lot of people talk about compassion, fatigue. And that is if someone is empathic, and then they feel a lot of compassion, you know, I need to do something for that.
And they they have, they do an act of kindness, there's a limit to how much you can do that. And I think that's why sometimes empathy by itself isn't necessarily, you know, every one has to be empathic. Because I think we there was actually a dimmer switch on empathy that we have in our car, a part of our brain. So they've done a study with dentists who have to be empathic with their patient when they're doing the history, but they have to turn down their empathy dial, when they're going to be drilling and hurting this person, that they can't do that, and then have trouble doing that procedure. And when it's over, they can go back, they can turn that up again, and be sensitive to the person in a compassionate way. So I think I kind of like that, because it means that being a therapist, I can't have my empathy button on full all the time, I won't make it through one day, you know, I have to, I have to be able to control it.
So I can empathize. But at the same time, manage how drowning I get with that and made sure I can be, first of all useful to my clients, but then also not a difficult with my family when I come home from work, and have to expunge my soul from all that energy and some of it's very negative. So I think empathy by itself isn't necessarily the bad guy. It's what you do with it that might become problematic. And there is I believe in a condition called hyper empathy, and hyper empathy and parts of people who kind of feel too much and they and some of those actually, people are not that much in tune with themselves are much more in tune with the people around them. A certain personality conditions where that can be quite problematic and working with those people is sometimes it feels like they're actually in your skin because they're feeling your emotions almost before you
And that that's a very painful position to be in if you if you're stealing too much if you have too much empathy and too much compassion, as well. And the other final thing I'll probably talk about is is empathy and psychopaths. psychopaths are not people who lack empathy narcissists are psychopaths lack the capacity for remorse. And in fact, some psychopaths enjoy and can really enjoy the feeling that they're causing somebody else are empathizing with it, but they don't care. They don't care, in a sense of feeling bad for it, that they might even luxuriate, in some pain that causes somebody else. So this is why I think it's important to have some clarity, especially if you're therapists on what you're doing, because Because empathy is something you can do something with, but you don't have to. And I think that's the trap that people think once you've went, if you have an empathic one, you don't have to do something about it all the time.
Yeah, well, that does a really a lot there. They put a week. So
I would say that next show, Edwin?
Yeah, we have, we only got about five minutes here. So maybe we can do another discussion about this may kind of go into that I really enjoy, you know, the discussion, I do have, each of the things you're talking about the MPC itself, I do think is inherently constructive, in the sense that if we put it into the relational, right, you're talking about sitting with somebody, you're empathizing with your clients, you're taking in everything that is not mutual empathy, you have not been heard about, hey, I'm getting a little overwhelmed, I'm getting a bit stressed here with hearing all these negative thoughts. So they are not listening to you.
And that's taking it out of that individualistic empathy and putting it into the relational. And I do think that that's part of the problem with therapy is it's not doing both sides of the empathy coin. It's not a relation. You know, maybe the therapist is there for emergency empathy. But the person who's coming actually needs to be learning how to listen to others and be building mutually empathic relationships. So I think that that's kind of missing from the therapeutic world.
Yeah, I'm not that kind of a therapist, I often talk about myself and talk about feelings. And sometimes, sometimes I cry during sessions. And I don't hide it. And if the person can see that I'm crying about something, I think they know that something's happening is moving me. And if I have a huge event in my life, like if I lose a parent or something like that, I don't think it's, I don't think it's such a bad thing for your client to know. I mean, heck, it's gonna be in the newspaper anyway, or it's public information. We've forgotten the the issue that we used to live in small tribes, like we used to live in small communities, we would know everybody.
And if you saw the local priest or the shaman, you would know that person's life, you would know their their family, and this whole idea that therapists have to hide behind a kind of veil of secrecy was really started off with Freud in his earnings anxiety of people being able to look at him and talk to him while they were speaking, because he was a bit shy and embarrassed. He was blushing during some of his patients. And so I think that whole idea of therapeutic absence and silence, I think, really came from, from from something that happened in the 1800s. Not today.
Yeah, I need a new way of approaching and I think that's what we do with the empathy circle is try to make it this mutual, I think, sort of a next step for the, the, for mutual support. I do it daunting over, I have other appointments and so forth. I could talk for hours, but I'm glad to you know, if you want to get together again, you know, continue to dialogue. I am meeting with a couple of PhDs who in empathy and we're working on this definition problem project. You can take a look at it. You're welcome to you know, chip in on that actually put this interview there too, as part of that definition project. And yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I when I saw the interview with us, I have a lot of fun talking to you and it has been definitely.
Well, I had a fabulous time talking about it when I look forward to our next conversation.
