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2025-04-29 - Defining Empathy | Otter.ai

2025-04-29 - Defining Empathy

Edwin Rutsch56min

Edwin Rutsch

00:00

I was, Oh, good, yeah, as the as with kids, somebody gets it and it just spreads around. Everybody gets it, so it's

Jodie Jenson

00:09

very frustrating. And it was strep. And I have two of my daughters have really bad eczema. One of them got the strep in her eczema sores, and it got infected, and she still, even today, has bandages all over her hands. Um, yeah. It can get really dangerous if you have a susceptibility to it. They've been hospitalized for the same kind of thing. So,

Edwin Rutsch

00:37

so they're doing okay now, yeah, yeah. Still,

Jodie Jenson

00:43

yeah, she still has to keep the bandages on, which is hard at school. She can't wash her hands at school because she can't get the bandages wet. So it just makes it really complicated. So she was home for most of the week last week. Yeah, I

Edwin Rutsch

00:57

don't know how you have time for all this, yeah, with all the stuff you're doing. So, yeah,

Jodie Jenson

01:02

so last week, thankfully, was finals week, and so I didn't have any classes, so I was able to stay home, but it was complicated with still trying to get work done. Anyway. That actually brings me to a question I have for you, because I have, you know, I'm starting a new semester, and I have classes at different times. I'm curious if, and we also have that big sports camp coming up at the end of May. I'm curious if it might be beneficial if we either find a different time to meet, or just pause our meetings for a month and then get back into it after I can so I can start focusing on it again. Because I feel right now like, like I can't dedicate the time that is necessary to actually be helpful for the project, because I'm just, I feel really stretched

Edwin Rutsch

02:02

thin right now. And then, what's after May? Are you saying may or

Jodie Jenson

02:05

Yeah, so the camp is may 30 and 31st and once that's over, I mean, I'll still have all of my normal things, but it won't be unsustainable anymore. Right now, like for the next month, it's going to be very unsustainable. So

Edwin Rutsch

02:24

go ahead. Oh, just so if we had a different day, it would still be problematic.

Jodie Jenson

02:29

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's mostly problematic right in like, this specific time doesn't quite work because I have the class right after and meetings, um, but so it could work, but I still wouldn't be able to be very helpful, like I could still meet once a week, but as it stands right now, I can't do anything outside of this meeting. Okay,

Edwin Rutsch

02:53

well, maybe we could just every second week or something on a different date to kind of just to maintain the you know, and not expect, you know, do anything outside of this, yeah,

Jodie Jenson

03:08

and I hate to lose momentum as well. So you know, once we have something that's going weekly, anytime, take a break, yeah, to mess with you,

Edwin Rutsch

03:19

right? It's good to have that consistency. So is there another time that works better that

Jodie Jenson

03:24

let me find my schedule I could probably do. I guess you have your board meeting right before this right? See, yeah, after May this time will still work, but we just have meetings. Like I have another meeting that starts right after this, and I always have to prepare for it, and then I have class right after that. So that gets that gets difficult until the camp is done. But then as soon as the camp is done, all I have is classes and normal work and being a mom and my kids being home from school for the summer. So maybe it isn't easier. Let's see,

Jodie Jenson

04:19

I have Monday afternoons or Friday afternoons pretty open. What would those look like for you?

Edwin Rutsch

04:30

Oh, you are muted. Friday what time?

Jodie Jenson

04:36

Let's see if we did any time after 12 o'clock, your time?

Edwin Rutsch

04:48

Okay? 12 works, if that's yeah.

Jodie Jenson

04:56

So starting,

Unknown Speaker

04:59

let's. See

Jodie Jenson

05:02

if we did the ninth and the 23rd would that work? Yeah, because then the 30th is when we have the camp, so I wouldn't be able to do that. So we just double check that both of those days are Yeah, and

Edwin Rutsch

05:12

it's, it's more to just keep the connection going, and we don't get too Yeah.

Jodie Jenson

05:25

Yeah, I like this. So next Friday, and then, so next Friday, the ninth, and then the sixth, no, the 23rd and then in 12 o'clock

Edwin Rutsch

05:35

Pacific, then June, we can go back to normal. Okay, great. Yeah,

Speaker 1

05:41

thank you for being flexible. I appreciate

Edwin Rutsch

05:48

Yeah, glad you know we got to make things work so it's kind of not stressful.

Jodie Jenson

05:57

Well, I mean, a little bit of stress is beneficial for us, yeah, but, but not an over overwhelming amount of stress.

Edwin Rutsch

06:08

Oh, and so for then, with that, dude sent for the October Summit, a an abstract, but I replied, I don't know if you got that email. I did. I haven't had a chance to work on it. Okay, yeah, it's no big hurry, but it's, it's more to since we want to talk about the empathy movement, to think in the kind of the bigger terms, to actually use the word empathy movement, maybe in the title or in the abstract. So it's clear that we're just not, you know, it's just not another summit about empathy per se, but about a bigger picture of movement.

Jodie Jenson

06:49

Yeah, I like it. I will update that. Sorry, I'm trying to find my blue light Walker glasses. Sorry, just second. I um, yes, I will update that and get it to you. Thank you. Bye, yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

07:06

whenever you know it's it's something, it only needs to be a couple sentences, Okay, a couple sentences, and I'll

Jodie Jenson

07:16

look at that this week, and because I'm sure it won't take me very long, I just haven't had a chance.

Edwin Rutsch

07:21

Yeah, I'm trying to get people to think in terms of a movement, especially with all these anti empathy, you know, I think it's a good time to say, well, this is this movement. It's as a counter too. I think you can say, well, we're our goal is to make empathy a primary cultural value. And we would like the Democrats, and we want a policy where Democrats and Republicans in Congress have monthly empathy circles to talk about bridging the divide, you know, something like that, so they have a, like, a strong position, just as you know, the so anyway that that's kind of what I'm thinking. And can we get there's a lot of people working individually on sort of projects and stuff, but think that to get sort of an identity of it, there were part of a larger movement, you know, I think would be helpful. Yeah,

Jodie Jenson

08:12

I agree with that. Did I tell you that one of the classes I'm taking, that I'm starting this semester, is political psychology? I'm really looking forward to it, because we're talking a lot about political bias, and so it fits perfectly with the, you know, with my dissertation project, and with a lot of this political unwillingness to talk to each other. So I'm sure I'll learn some more insights to share with you as well.

Edwin Rutsch

08:43

Yeah, I was really happy that Kevin, the guy that did the the empathy, radical empathy, you know, criticism, was willing to sit and talk. And when we were able to do that, you know, he was, became totally on board, you know, really understood and and having our definition, you know, having that as a structure, having the definition and the empathy circle was just really powerful in terms of having him understand what we're talking about. And that's so cool, to the point that he's now trying to, oh, he's checking to see if he's at Northwestern so he's checking if there's some other students that would take part in an empathy circle. I thought, maybe awesome that, you know, if you're interested, you know, could you could always take part. We'd have, yeah,

Jodie Jenson

09:31

I saw that email, and sorry I didn't respond to it, but I would absolutely be happy to participate in that with him. Did he say he wants to participate in an circle?

Edwin Rutsch

09:39

Yeah, I said we would do one online to show him how it works. And then he actually was thinking of doing it at the university, you know. So

Jodie Jenson

09:50

that's exciting. I mean, especially for somebody who has spoken out against empathy, to want to hold an empathy circle, I think that's, yeah, I felt

Edwin Rutsch

09:58

really good about that. Yeah, that's a huge win, yeah. So I don't get too worked up. My sense is, you know, like Elon Musk was critical, and he was talking with Joe Rogan, you know, they're, you know, kind of critical of empathy, even like Jordan Peterson, if you're familiar with him, but that their definition is sort of, I think, is the problem, you know, and when you're defining empathy, I think what we're doing is really important the, you know, having this clear definition, having it grounded in the empathy circle, and then showing people how it works, and then they can actually experience it. It's like, oh, this is what you're talking about. And it has a, you know, a clear scope of what, what we're meaning. And you know, most people are up for for dialog, you know, generally, and understand the importance of it. And that's what we're basically just asking people to do, is get together and talk with each other. And empathy being a deep form of a deeper form of listening. Yeah,

Jodie Jenson

11:04

I think that's fantastic. I wanted to share with you an empathy experience I had yesterday. I a neighbor of mine, her daughter passed away a few weeks ago, and then a week later, her mother passed away. So within a week, her two very close family members passed away, and then on the day that she was going to dress her mother for burial, on the way there, she fell and broke her foot in several places. And so now she's confined to bed, and so all she can do is just sit and ruminate and, you know, obsess about death, basically is. And I talked to her yesterday, and I found myself analyzing our interaction from from a from the empathy perspective of like, what is my role right now? Because in it seems like the first instinct when you have experienced something like I have like with some very significant deaths Close to close to my family. That caused me to obsess about death for a year, my first impulse was to say, I understand what you're talking about, but I had to hold myself back, because I needed to just listen to what she was saying. And I think that I was, I was thinking about it all evening, just how in our attempts to empathize with other people, in a lot of cases, we try to make a connection of like, Oh, I understand. I've been there before, but like, if we take a step back and and really look at their situation, I've never lost my daughter and my mother and broken my foot in the same two weeks span, right? And so I actually don't know what she's going through. And so I was, I took that time to just listen to what she was saying. And then later I texted her and said, I, I will never fully understand how difficult this is, what you're going through. Number one, I I care about you. And so like separating out empathy from compassion, like, even though I can't understand, I want to listen and I care about you. And number two, I wanted her to know that there is a certain part of her experience that I do understand, and that's that, that feeling of just being obsessed with death and, like, it waking me up in the middle of the night, and, like, panic attacks and, you know, not being able to get past that. Um, and so I it was just interesting. It was an interesting experience for me to take a step back and look at my the way that I've empathized the past and the way that a lot of people in my community do, because I've been on the end of it where people say, Oh, I understand, because I've had this thing, and on the receiving end of that, that doesn't feel like empathy, that feels like you're trying to take the spotlight and like you want me to feel bad for you because you've been through something hard, and what I'm experiencing reminds you of something hard through and so I think that that that's such an important thing when we're talking about empathizing with people, is that that's just Another one of, you know, your blocks to empathy blocking. Is that one that you have on there?

Edwin Rutsch

14:45

It is, yeah, what do you call it? Well, it's identification, okay, right? It's like, oh, identify with your situation, at least that yeah, versus being present, yeah, yeah. It shifts the focus to Yeah. People feel Yeah, yeah,

Jodie Jenson

15:05

because you want to enter into that space where it's like, oh, we're here together, and I'm feeling this with you because of my lived experience. But then not take the spotlight and make it about you and let it be about them.

Edwin Rutsch

15:22

Just listen. You can just listen to and to the point where that you can sense that they're satisfied, that they've been heard to what they want to say, or they've even say, you know, so you do want to share, to what your experience is like in the empathy circle, right? The person is having that struggle. All you're doing is listening to them, right? Reflecting back, reflecting back, and then at some point, you know, it comes to you, sharing too. So it's mutual, but the person may not have the capacity, because they're in such a deep, difficult situation themselves. And I wonder

Jodie Jenson

16:02

if, if, let's say that we were holding an empathy circle, and you can tell that somebody is in that deep, dark place, maybe when it's your turn to share, you don't share as much as you would otherwise. Like, what do you think about that? Like, if you're not as open about your internal experience, because it would take away from it

Edwin Rutsch

16:24

could be that you know that if you're if you're open and honest and transparent, that that could be supportive to them to feel, feel Your honest, uh, your honest experience, too. Yeah. So yeah, and

Jodie Jenson

16:43

that's how I was feeling yesterday. I wanted her to know that she's not alone, because a lot of times when you're when it's the middle of the night and you get woken up by one of those like panic attack moments, you feel very alone because everybody else is asleep and you have to go through it all by yourself. And so I did share with her that I've been there so that she would know that when she is alone, she's not really alone, because I understand what she's going through. Well, that's

Edwin Rutsch

17:17

the core of the suicidal hotlines, right? Is people just feel that aloneness, and they just want someone to talk to, and it's just having someone that listens to them that and then they feel they don't feel as alone. That, you know, is that line where people commit suicide. It keeps them on the other side. Yeah, oh,

Jodie Jenson

17:40

yeah. It's It's interesting how much nuance there is to this, because each situation requires you to be thoughtful about how to empathize with somebody else. So it's interesting. Should we get to your presentation?

Edwin Rutsch

17:56

Yeah, I can. I

Edwin Rutsch

18:16

okay so?

Edwin Rutsch

18:27

I'm just screen sharing it here the be doing next one is going to be August or not, May. Okay? 24th there's the empathy conference on May 24 I'm going to present again, yes, so it's going to be again. I think I get 30 minutes actually,

Jodie Jenson

18:54

and that's the one that's it's an online thing. It's not through the empathy center, right?

Edwin Rutsch

19:03

Yeah, it was to the Australian virtual conference center or something like that. And they were going to have their, it was going to be actually in Santa Cruz, you see Santa Cruz, and then with all this Trump stuff, you know, and visas that they actually cancel it because of that, and they had their hotels booked and everything else so crazy. Yeah, so now it's just going to be online, and we're going to be doing an empathy circle on the 24th so if you're around, if you want to, you can just come maybe for that part. I'm not quite sure how it's going to that's going to work, but

Jodie Jenson

19:41

yeah, I have it in my schedule. Do you by chance know what time the empathy circle will be?

Edwin Rutsch

19:46

See, I'm at May 24 i.

Edwin Rutsch

20:09

I'm not sure of the, yeah, I'll have to send that to you the exact time. I think it's going to be more in the evening. Pacific. Are you in? Is Utah and Pacific? Or which Mountain Time? Oh, mountain time. Okay, so it's going to be a little bit on the late side. I think it's like it's seven or something. Is this circle, right? But I can't, I'm not sure. I have to find there's a I have it someplace. I'm not sure where it is. Um, yeah, so, yeah. So we have it just to go through. So we're building the empathy movement. So I'm setting the stage that this is part of building an empathy movement. You know that make empathy a primary personal and cultural value. And, you know, get some notes. And that's the mission, you know, of our of the empathy center, and that this presentation is about defining empathy in the context of the empathy circle and this and and that there's many benefits to empathy, that, you know, stronger relationships, better conflict resolution, improved teamwork, effective leadership, greater social can cohesion. I mean, it's just a lot of really benefits, but that there's a lot of recent criticisms coming out. You know about empathy, the against empathy, these different books and dimension, Elon Musk, you know, being critical of empathy. So just setting up the you know that there's kind of this negativity out there and and the dark side of empathy, which is, I don't know if you've seen that one, but so I'm an academic. You read it. I haven't read it. I haven't I have an interview with the author. He was willing to do an interview, so, you know, he's just saying. So there's all these different criticism your empathy can fuel revenge. When people deeply empathize with victims, they become more aggressive towards the people they perceive as the perpetrators. And I think that this is where the the holistic empathy comes in, that if you're empathizing for one side, you're not empathizing for the other. So it's not a problem with empathy. It's a problem with a lack of empathy between all the participants. And also, it was a big point with Kevin, you know, in his article was, it was all about, you know, the sort of the woke philosophy is very victim based, you know, it's like singers, oppressor, victim, oppressor, and it brings you into the Drama Triangle, which I think we've talked about, you know that? And it's really empathy, listening to all the sides is what brings you out. But that's, you know, I don't say that here. It's just the so I've been just setting the stage for all the different criticisms. You know, the sin of empathy. Empathy demands that we enter someone's emotional world so fully, that we adopt their perspective on critically, which can lead us away from the truth and and I just get it, I get tickled here with Jeff Sessions, you know, what is empathy? And this was in Congress. So even in Congress, they had big discussions when Barack Obama was going to choose a Supreme Court justice that had empathy as one of their, their, their, uh, qualities. It really is just the Conservatives went kind of crazy about, you know, what is empathy, being very critical about it. And I said, this is sort of a side besides, but at that point, it would have been perfect to have had, like, a hearing about empathy, right? And describe, explain it, and actually have an empathy circle and explain that it's not again, it's again, he is concerned about, you know, victimization that you know, as the victims are going to get all the or people who are seen as victims are going to get all the attention. So, so anyway, I'm just setting it up, you know, kind of thick and heavy about all the criticisms, and then also, the current definitions are problematic. You know, there's a lack of consensus. You know, definitions are obviously not clear to people, as you just see from all these criticisms, it's sort of quite a mess. The academic definitions are right. Can be abstract. So effective and cognitive empathy, I think, are just very abstract terms that, you know, the average person is having difficulty understanding. So, you know, we need a clear and practical definition is kind of the point I'm making. So any comments up to this point,

Jodie Jenson

25:19

I love that. I love taking it out of the cognitive and affective realm, and that's very esoteric, very abstract, and just say, like, here's the practice. The practice is listen to them until they feel heard. Like, if we can just define it in a way like that that is very action oriented. It's like, oh, oh, okay, yeah, I can do that. It might be hard and I might need some reminders, but at least it's something that I now have a roadmap for what I'm expected to do in the situation. So I really like that.

Edwin Rutsch

25:55

Oh, great, yeah, because that's the, that's where I go into the that's where we're headed, is that so? So, yeah, why to find empathy? And also, I want to have to be clear that we wanted to find empathy in the context of the empathy circle. So I want to take it out of the the abstract and to make it concrete, exactly like you're saying. It's like, let's sit down, and how do we actually do it so you can experience it the definition, so it's not so abstract. And I think the empathy circle gives us that practical and we can map other definitions so we're clear on what we're meaning. And then when other people have their definitions and people are critical of it, of empathy, we can bring them into the empathy circle and display experience what it is specifically, you know, they're criticizing and jump in any any point. And the model I'm calling holistic empathy, and consists of these parts, basic empathy, self empathy. And I'm not quite sure this is what would generally be called empathy, you know, like Rogers would call basic empathy, empathy. And I'm not sure they use the word basic or, you know, it's, uh, anyway, there's a little bit of a, not sure. It's just trying to differentiate, differentiate it a little bit. Well,

Jodie Jenson

27:23

I mean, if you if you say what you mean by it, then it makes it clear. So I don't know if you want to have each of the definitions actually up on the screen, or if you're going to just say it out loud.

Edwin Rutsch

27:35

Yeah, I was going to just give the overview, and then maybe I should have it defined beforehand, but I was going to give the overview, and then go into the into the in, in into detail. So, like the next one, here is okay, what is basic empathy? So here's an empathy circle, and the empathy circle works with there's a speaker, there's an active listener, there's silent listeners. The speaker is speaking about, you know, the topic or whatever's on their mind, the basic empathy is the active listener is just listening to them and hearing them and reflecting back. So that's sort of the essence and how the speaker feel heard. And this part can actually, I mean, there's a huge amount that can be done to describe just this phenomenon of just listening to the other person. I mean, it fits with your friend, right, who was, you know, with her struggles, with the deaths in the family that you as the active listener just there to listen to her and hear her, make her feel like she feels hurt to her satisfaction, right, that she's been heard out to the point where she feels satisfied that she's been heard and understood for what's going on for her and and I ad lib, all the rest the details about you know this too. But and then the definition is based this space is definition is based on the work of Carl Rogers. So we have the whole Rogers, you know, framework to build on. You know that in terms as a reference, so in terms of that phenomenon of, you know, the active listener, listening to the speaker, Rogers describes it as the empathy is the listener's effort to hear the other person deeply, accurately and not judgmentally. Empathy involves skillful, reflective listening that clarifies and amplifies the person's own experience and meetings without imposing the listener's own material. So when you're listening to your friend, you know you were kind of holding off sharing your own experience because you don't want to impose your experience on the experience of your of your friend. And so that's that process is. Yeah,

Jodie Jenson

29:54

that part is the basic empathy. Um, by the way, I just have to say I love his definition so much. It. I So prefer to a lot of the other academic definitions that talk about emotion contagion and that it's kind of this reactive process. There's nothing in what he just said that's about reactive. No, it's he uses the term skillful, and let's see effort, right? So effort and skill, that what that says right there is it is a willful process where you're choosing to do something. Mm, hmm. And I think that is such an important difference between this definition and all of the other definitions that people have problems with. Yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

30:42

it's just so foundational. Yeah, it and he has a lot of different definitions, or he describes the phenomenon that we're talking about and just does it quite eloquently. Yeah? So yeah, that's

Jodie Jenson

30:54

a beautiful definition. Do you know where that quote actually comes from? Exactly it's

Edwin Rutsch

30:58

from? Let's see. Defining empathy. So if you go to the finding empathy site, there's different models, and then there's the Carl Rogers model, you can find it, and it's from

Jodie Jenson

31:15

this. I want to cite it sometimes, yeah, this

Edwin Rutsch

31:18

is, this is like so foundational paper. It's like everything that you know, can I do is sort of based, you know, really, on his work. And this paper is one of his sense synthesis, and he also has it in video. Aren't you seen his video of this?

Jodie Jenson

31:33

I've seen some of it, but I haven't seen all of those.

Edwin Rutsch

31:36

So, yeah, there's the whole paper is there. And then he has the second paper that I link to active listening. So in the context of the So, of the so those two papers are really good for in terms of, you know, his definition, but another you know aspect, he says, is an empathic way of being. So I papers about an empathic way of being. So it's more than just this. It's it's more than just the skill, but it's like an attitude, a personality trait, is a way of being with another person that has several facets. It means entering the private, perceptual world of the other, becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive moment by moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion or whatever he or she is experiencing. So I think that, again, it's not sort of the reactions. It's also, it's also not just with suffering, right? It's sometimes they're defining empathy is like, it's about seeing somebody else's suffering. This is like, oh, it's their full experience of who they are. Yeah, because

Jodie Jenson

32:49

that's another criticism I have had, is that it always seems to presuppose that there's some sort of suffering. And I don't like that. And,

Edwin Rutsch

32:58

yeah, so that's so that's kind of giving the basic framework of the basic empathy, and that can be described, like a lot. I mean, there's a lot of description about that phenomenon that can be, you know, expanded on, and it, you know, at later point, I think, just explaining how that phenomenon works, why it works, what the experience is. And then the other aspect, sort of breaking it down, is the self empathy. And that's where, again, we have the speaker and then the active listener. So the active listener is listening to the speaker, but by listening to the speaker, they actually allow the speaker to go more deeply into their own experience. So your friend by you listening to her, if you're doing active listening, you say, Oh, I hear you're, you know, really feeling in distress about these that, you know, these deaths in the family says, Yeah, I feel really sad. You know you're hearing her sadness, so she's able to open up, explore and share the deeper feelings of the nuances that are going on for her, and your listening is actually supporting her self empathy so and Rogers sort of hinted at that, you know, so he didn't, I don't think he used the word self empathy, but he said, by being listened to by someone who understands makes it possible for persons to listen more accurately to themselves with greater empathy towards their own, visceral experiencing their own vaguely felt meaning. So he's basically, you know, talking about self empathy here. Okay, anything else, just,

Jodie Jenson

34:52

just how much I love it. That's all I have to say. I love this so much.

Edwin Rutsch

34:56

It's, I love your lovingness. It's fun to talk to you about it all, okay? Imaginative empathy. So, oh, this is cute. Yeah, I ran it through AI and the part, so you can imagine yourself in any sort of a role, right? So, and this is a different aspect. And this is, that is in a empathy circle. You know, usually we just listen, sort of with this direct empathy. But you can take, there's another level of empathy, and this is, and I don't mention it here, but it's, it's what oftentimes cognitive empathy is referred to, is like, it's an imaginative, you know, they, they say it's an imaginative experience. And what it is is, this is in the empathy circle. It's, it's, it's that we can take on any role in any perspective. So, for example, Meryl Streep, she talks about this experience as an actor is, I've thought a lot about the power of empathy in my work. It's the current that connects me and my actual pulse with fictional character in a made up story. It allows me to feel pretend feeling sorrows and imagined pain. So she's imagining herself. It's another way of knowing. It's not like this direct basic empathy, but it's a way of imagining being in someone else's situation. So she imagines her self being Margaret Thatcher or Julia Child, and takes on that role and acts out that role. And that's a form of sensing into that other person, which is different than you know, basic empathy. It's sort of an imaginative role. And you can even, you could even imagine her. These are four characters she plays. So she takes on the roles. But you could imagine double empathy, basic double empathy, where the act the imaginative empathy. This is a little complicated. They actually empathize with each other, right? So Margaret Thatcher is empathizing with Julia Child as an active listener. I don't know if that this might get a little complicated, but

Jodie Jenson

37:16

yeah. So have you? Have you actually tried this? I know

Edwin Rutsch

37:19

we have. Maybe I should lead with that example. So when we do the when we do and we don't do it a lot in the empathy circle, because I see it as sort of a next step, and I've been focusing so much on the first step, and and we have in the our training. You know, we used to have six sessions, and now it's down to four, but session number five was we want to get people familiar with facilitating a conflict in the empathy circle as a facilitator. So I created a scenario where there's a family members who are their siblings, who their parent just died, and each of the siblings feels that they should get the full inheritance, and they're in conflict with each other. And I give exactly

Jodie Jenson

38:05

one of the scenarios that I'm planning on using for my research. That's so early i and it didn't come because I don't think you've shared that with me, but that's, that's one of the scenarios that I'm going to be using. So that's crazy. Oh,

Edwin Rutsch

38:18

cool. By Andrews recordings of of that lesson, if you're going to take a look at it. Yeah, that's cool. And so the siblings, we give a basic you're, you're the you know, you're a female. You've been taking care of the mother. You feel you spent a lot of time, and you deserve more of the inheritance. Another member is a male. He helped take care of the father, so he feels he deserves more inheritance. So we give the scenario, the basic scenario for each and we say, now you're in conflict. You have to argue with each other about why you should get the inheritance. And the facility facilitator facilitates that those people are imagining themselves in these roles, and so they have the imaginative empathy component, but they're also doing basic empathy by doing the active listening within the empathy circle. And we could, we could even imagine ourselves, not only in the conflict, but we could imagine ourselves, okay, you're a you're a tiger, you know, I'm a cow. Somebody's silent listeners, or, you know, you know, whatever those animals are, the koalas and

Jodie Jenson

39:30

baboon or an orangutan, orangutan, orang

Edwin Rutsch

39:33

Hutan, yeah. And so we could imagine ourselves being them, and then we can act from that, from that role, but we can also actively listen to each other. So it's adding Empath, you know, the basic empathy, yeah, I like that. And the same thing, just to our it, just it just it opens up our imagination. We can be fruit, you know, we can be anything. So that's sort of the imaginative empathy. Sort of that imaginative ask aspect. And then the holistic empathy is sort of awareness of the of the quality of empathy between all the participants. So if everyone is empathizing with everyone else, and also, you know, empathizing with themselves, and being aware of the level of empathy within the group, and empathizing with the sensing into the experience of the group. You know, if when you walk into a room, you can read the room often time, or the people open, Are they friendly, you're sort of sensing into the wholeness of the space. So there's multiple dimensions this whole holistic empathy. And so the holistic empathy well, and holistic empathy is made up of all the different components you know. So basic empathy is sensing into the experience others experience self. Empathy is sensing into your own experience. Imaginative empathy is imagining you know yourself in different roles. And whole empathy is sensing into the community's experience, and all the components of that, and the holistic empathy is very important for a lot of the criticisms for of empathy, like the one that says, Oh, you're empathizing with one person and not empathizing with the other. So if you're empathizing with the victim, but that's only partial, because with holistic empathy, everyone is empathizing with everyone else. So you know, the person who sees them is seen as the oppressor and the oppressed, they would actually be sitting down and listening to each other, and you wouldn't be trying to rescue someone and becoming a perpetrator. In the process, you'd be listening to both. So it actually this holistic empathy really helps with some of the criticism, you know, addressing and, you know, I think that's one of the things to go into depth, how you know the some of the criticisms kind of fit into this model.

Jodie Jenson

42:08

Can I ask a question about empathy? Um, as a facilitator, when you notice that there is not mutual empathy happening, like if you if you notice that there's the imbalance, how do you help them recognize what you're seeing is that something that you just say, I'm noticing? Did that? Did that?

Edwin Rutsch

42:30

When it's your turn to speak, you can speak to it, but you don't want to break out of the structure and with the empathy circle, if do you have a scenario, maybe you could say, for example, what's the scenario?

Jodie Jenson

42:43

Um, I'm just imagining. Let's, let's bring in that hypothetical. You know, Democrat and Republican, Congress empathy circle, and they have a specific way that they engage with each other, and it has been, it has become deeply ingrained in the way that they talk to each other. And so you bring them together, and you teach them this new way of interacting with each other, and they find themselves falling out of it because it's not part of their habits. So

Edwin Rutsch

43:19

they would just stop reflecting, they would just start speaking and not reflecting, or they would reflect, and instead of reflecting, they just share their own ideas.

Jodie Jenson

43:27

Yeah, so would you stop them when it's their turn to do the reflective listening and remind them to reflect?

Edwin Rutsch

43:34

Yeah? If, if there's different ways of doing it, one is, you know, there's this speaker and the listener, and the speaker is saying, Oh, I think we need to spend more money on health care. And then the the listener says, health care is a bunch of bullshit, you know, it's just the government giveaway, something like that. So then you as a facilitator, I would ask the the the speaker did, I might ask, did you feel heard or understood? And they say, hell no. It's like, you know, he didn't hear me at all. I said, Well, say it again. And they said, Well, you know, healthcare, we need this. It's really important. And he keeps going until he gets heard, to his or her satisfaction, and so that's one way of addressing it, right? You can ask if the person is very familiar with the empathy circle practice. They say, No, you didn't hear me. Because the idea is for the speaker to feel heard to their satisfaction, and the speaker didn't feel heard their satisfaction. So if they're already familiar with the practice, they've done it several times, they would know to just say, No, you didn't get me. I'm going to say it again, right? And they keep saying it again till they get heard to their satisfaction. If they're not familiar with the practice, you can ask the speaker if they've been heard. To their satisfaction, they'll say no. So then they say, just go ahead and say it again till you feel heard. So I would help keep them in the practice and or I might, if it's kind of goes on for a while, I might just say to the listener, just reflect back what you're hearing. That would be kind of my last, you know, and then if they just can't do it, then we want to be sure that the speaker does feel heard. You know, maybe they've done 567, tries this listener just can't get it, and the speaker is getting more and more frustrated. I, as the facilitator, would maybe reflect back to the speaker what they were saying, Oh, you think empathy is, I mean, that healthcare is super important for your constituents. They say, Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Then I might say to the speaker, can you just, I mean, the listener, can you reflect that back? You know, just like I did. So there's kind of different ways of doing it. The best is if the speaker just keep saying it. They know how it works. They just keep saying it till they feel hurt to their satisfaction, but you can kind of help with that.

Jodie Jenson

46:08

Yeah, I like that. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your No, that's fine.

Edwin Rutsch

46:13

That's what we're here for, is just to kind of explore, you know this. So, yeah, so the the holistics. So that's holistic empathy, the and the next steps, you know, I'm just advising, or people say, to ground your definitions. So if you're like, we're going to be all the people hit this conference are going to be having doing empathy, you know, talks, I say, you know, the next steps, you can try grounding your definition, how you're defining it in the empathy circle. Or if you hear other people talking about the empathy circle, about empathy, try to understand how it fits into the empathy circle framework. And I did that with the author for that Scientific American article. That was one of the things I really, you know, and she really appreciated. I think it really helped. Because when she was talking to the academics, you know, you just get lost in all these definitions. It's like, where is it, specifically, what's happening in the empathy circle, and how you experiencing it, and, and then also the criticisms, you know, ground the criticisms of empathy in the empathy circle, you know, where do you see it playing out? And that's what I did with Kevin, right? I had the framework of the empathy circle, you know, talked about it and and then his, you know, tried to map his definitions and saying, you know, you're, you're basically, you know, it's not what you're talking about. It's not what we would consider empathy. And then, you know, he also said, well, it was sort of click bait, you know, his criticism, a lot of this criticism is sort of click bait, like, Hey, I'm gonna, you know, upset everybody, all the progressives and and they're gonna all click and he said it really worked. He said he got a lot of attention, you know, out of it, so, but he also sees the importance of, you know, people having dialog. So, you know,

Jodie Jenson

48:10

that's a funny, funny way to approach it, because, I mean, I get the benefit of trying to make something seem more spicy, so that you get more people to look at it, but also it's, I don't know, it's a bit of a bait and switch when he doesn't actually deeply believe his own criticism that he's saying.

Edwin Rutsch

48:30

I think, yeah, he that he believes it, but yeah, it to a certain degree there. Yeah, and I think Paul Bloom is doing the same thing, you know, it's, a bit of a like baby sort of a thing.

Jodie Jenson

48:43

Yeah, that's interesting.

Edwin Rutsch

48:46

So that's, that's it. I was thinking of adding, since I got I did this in about 15 minutes, and I think I last time, and I have about 20, I have 30 minutes for the presentation, what I thought I would do is add, let's look at an example of of the current definition of affective and cognitive empathy, and then put a couple slides in there and see how they they map onto this model. And pretty much the affective empathy. You know, it's the it's a reaction, so it doesn't really fit in that sense, you know, it's a reaction, or it's emotional contagion. I mean, there's multiple things come under that affective empathy, right? It's a emotional contagion, emotional reaction, and I think maybe sympathy comes in. Sometimes people add sympathy. Is there other phenomenon in? I

Jodie Jenson

49:49

mean that it just, what that brings to the surface, for me is that identification, you immediately start feeling it because you felt it before, and it might not. Be the thing that they're feeling, but you're feeling something that you relate to. And so it might be emotion contagion, but it might not be. It might be your misinterpretation

Edwin Rutsch

50:13

of identification, that's we've been using identifying. And then projection, yeah, projection,

Jodie Jenson

50:19

because you might think, well, if I were in that situation, this is how I would feel, but that's not necessarily what they're feeling.

Edwin Rutsch

50:28

Do you think that's kind of wrapped into the affective empathy model? I think

Jodie Jenson

50:34

so, because it does tend to be the phenomenon itself. I mean, I'm just reflecting back on what I experienced yesterday. The phenomenon itself, it's a very much a reactionary process, and forcing yourself to slow it down a little bit and analyze the emotion that you're feeling helps you to see those different possibilities of what affective empathy like, what aspect of affective empathy is taking place inside of you?

Edwin Rutsch

51:05

Yeah. So what I want to do is just, I have a lot of notes, you know, about effective empathy, so I just want to create some slides and give that as an example, you know, basically saying, yes, effective cognitive empathy models, not you know, how does that fit into the empathy circle? And so I just need to, kind of, do, I have it all written down. I just need to create those slides and, you know, and then, then there's a cognitive empathy. So cognitive empathy is the word imagination, imagine yourself in someone else's situation, I think, is there's that aspect, and then there's understanding. To hear understanding, a lot like cognitive empathy, is understanding. And you know, what do people mean by that understanding? You know, it's and how does, I think some of that's a little bit vague, I think,

Jodie Jenson

52:02

because it also doesn't, when you say the word understanding, it implies that there's a process of trying to understand, but you haven't actually talked about the process, like the decision to to put yourself in there and Like, slow your thinking down and not be so reactive in order to try and understand and listen to the other person. And I mean, I with that as well, there's going to be some projection that happens and happens as well, because you might think, if you haven't slowed down to actually listen to them, you might think that you have cognitive empathy, but you don't, because, based on your own, like quick thinking, you know, if you're thinking of it as like system one versus system two thinking, you know, Thinking Fast and Slow, if you're just making a quick decision about this is what their experience is, without having slowed it down, then it's, it undermines, it undermines the cognitive empathy as well, or

Edwin Rutsch

53:08

the understanding you're saying that the your your understanding would not be accurate, because it could be inaccurate understanding that you have if you Haven't slowed it down to listen carefully, yeah, yeah.

Jodie Jenson

53:22

I think that's what it is. Just just using the word, understanding it. It assumes that you have slowed down and gone through that process, but most of us don't, yeah, and

Edwin Rutsch

53:41

that's in the empathy Yeah. In the empathy circle, it's the listening to the other person. And in the process of listening, and I had created that little those models, I do want to expand on those, but that's something we can look at at some point that you remember the little drawings, the figures and the feelings within that. So I think that could be just a lot could be done to, you know, make that much richer sort of a model, so that to make those differentiations and have something visual to see those models, and that I had that little picture of the understanding. So you're building a free sensing into by through your listening. That's the part you're talking about. That's missing is the sensing into and in the process of sensing into the other person's experience, your mind automatically starts putting together the pieces into some kind of a model of who they are, and that, that model, I would think, is the understanding component. Yeah,

Jodie Jenson

54:47

I think that you should add your, your figures in there. Okay, yeah, because I think it's, it's very helpful to see it visually like that, you know, with your empathy circle, with the arrows and all of that. Explaining it that way, it makes it very easy to understand. So putting in those other graphics, I think would be very helpful as well. Yeah, so, and I've got to go,

Edwin Rutsch

55:10

okay, definitely. So, yeah, so we'll see you in two weeks, right? Yeah, so

Jodie Jenson

55:14

May 9. And, yeah, I'm excited to be a part of this.

Edwin Rutsch

55:18

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Really appreciate your your presence and insight too. You know, not a lot of people have the level of insight that you have on this

Jodie Jenson

55:29

when, when you obsess about it for years, like you and I come up with several insights on it. Also, last or two weeks ago, you had asked if maybe I'd be able to facilitate an empathy circle at the 20 the May 24 event. Something that's still happening. Are you still breaking out into breakout rooms?

Edwin Rutsch

55:49

Uh, yeah, that was when I was gonna I can send you the day, but it's gonna be in the evening, so it might be kind of late. It's, uh, it's gonna be, I think it's seven Pacific Time, okay?

Jodie Jenson

55:59

I mean, that's fine, okay, yeah, the night is young for me.

Edwin Rutsch

56:04

At that point. I still have to figure out, like they they charge for the whole workshop. I've been asking if, if, if she would give free admission to just the facilitators to come in and facilitate, you know, so,

Jodie Jenson

56:19

okay, yeah, because I'd be happy to do that, I'd be happy to just attend and watch. But if you need more facilitators, I'd be happy to do

Edwin Rutsch

56:26

that. Okay, great. I'll put you on the list and all right. Well, have a good week. You too. Bye.

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