And I'm happy to let you record as well. So we have two coffee, but I'm definitely willing to share it.
Just send it. Okay, anyway. Just wanted to get that. It's just strange, easy. I just give co host real easy. But okay, we're both recording.
So okay, so you have, you have it recording too. Yeah, just to my computer. Okay. So, I have strong opinions about all of the stuff that I've researched based on a lot of personal experience and a lot that I've read. But I don't want to get into my thoughts and opinions about empathy right now, because, as this is for research, I don't want to like influence your
opinions. I have strong opinions too. So this is
great. Yeah, I figured you probably would. I've
been doing this for 15 years, so I have, I've been thinking about it almost every day for the past 15 years. So I have a lot of, a lot of thoughts on this. Yeah,
yeah. And I love it. I've been, I've been really excited to meet you and talk to you about it, because I figured you're one of the people who has thought about it, maybe even more than I have. So I've been thinking about it every day for about four years, but not 15. So, so I'm excited to hear what you have to say. Um, anyway, so please allow me to just listen to what you have to say, and you guys can kind of have a bit of a conversation. And I'm going to do my best to not like influence the way that the conversation goes, if that makes sense. Okay. So are you ready to hop into the questions? Do it? Okay? So what is your definition of empathy?
Well, I guess I could jump in, because I'm actually been, I've done a lot of work on the definitions of empathy, and I'm thinking of writing a book on it. So I'm actually starting to work on it, because I'm interested in making an empathy Well, we're building an empathy movement right to make empathy a primary social and cultural value, and for that, I think we need easy, good, accessible definitions of empathy. And I think the current definition, which you'll see often, is this affective and cognitive empathy model, and I think it's not an effective, you know, a model of empathy. So I have one, you know, have a whole schematic. I call it the holistic model of empathy, or empathy definition. And there has a lot of different parts to it, but so anyway I can, go in into that, I can talk about the existing problems with the existing definitions, and then also the model. But,
yeah, why don't we have Sam answer and then you tell me more about your model? Because, man, I could, I could geek out on this for the next three hours, but I don't want
I have as much time as you want. Yeah, yeah. I think
we should try and keep it to under an hour. What are your time constraints? On both sides,
I'll have a hard stop in an hour. But so if you guys want to continue chatting after my gun,
please. Okay, yeah. And Sam, especially since this was such a last minute thing, I really thank
you for accommodating. No, this is so helpful to me. Edwin, you may not know my wife's having a baby. She was in pre labor last night, so we had an appointment maybe later next week, but I may not make that appointment. Jody, so that's why it's good. We're connecting now. So thank you for leading me.
Yeah, I think that'll be great. And good luck with that, because I know childbirth can be very unpredictable. Oh
yes, yeah, talk about something you're not in control of. It's great. Oh look, I can jump in with, with a definition of empathy. Like, I'm not a scholar in this sense, and I also going to be far less technical, so please, I
that's, that's what I want. Is I want, like, how it applies in your life and in your work. Okay, yeah,
in Arbinger, we work with the idea of mindset, and that idea of mindset is grounded in a philosophical concept we call way of being, kind of how we choose to orient ourselves in the world toward others, right from the perspective of like like. Emmanuel Levinas points out that there are kind of, fundamentally two, two different types of relationships people encounter as they work in the world. One is they encounter objects. They encounter things that don't have a don't want, that aren't alive, right, like rocks and and to certain extent, plants and other physical objects that aren't alive like we are. And so when we interact with those objects, we use them primarily for our own ends. We use them as tools and we try to accomplish things. And that's fine. There is no like ethical dimension to that behavior, in that sense. But when you get to the other type of relationships we have, we have relationships with other beings like ourselves that are alive and that seem to have an internal life like our own right. They seem to have their own thoughts, feelings. We can harm them, they can harm us. Things like that. There's this interchange, and suddenly it's a very different type of relationship than with objects. And so with when you're interacting with people or other beings, primarily the ethical dimension steps in and says, How should I treat, right? How should I be? How should I think about how the word should an ought, starts to come in. You start to think about what we should be doing. And so I think that empathy, from an arbiter perspective, will be defined as the act as of seeing and being with other people, as people, as acknowledging the inner reality of another person and let that affect you, right? And to whatever extent that that means there may not be a correct level there. There are different levels within that, being with others. But I think fundamentally, empathy would be defined as how we are with others and and, oh, sorry, being with others as people. And that has a that has massive implications in my own life and in the work that we do in my personal life. Being with others as because it's here's the thing. Let me back up. It's possible to be with other people and to see them and treat them as objects. It's possible with other people and see them and treat them as people, and to be with others and see them as objects is to see them in a utilitarian way, right? To see them as How can you further and help advance the things I'm trying to accomplish? How can I use you or somehow manipulate you into doing what I need you to do so that I can get done what I'm trying to get done in the world. And then you have the other way, which is I can see them as people, which is actually other people. It is fundamentally incorrect to use them in the ways that I try to when I see them as objects. And so kind of the opposite of empathy would be seeing others as objects. When we do that, we ascribe to others our own thinking. We imprint, we kind of project upon them our own emotional state. We we assume we know what they're thinking and feeling based purely on our own experiences. We don't take time to, like, really cue into and actually see with people and be with them. So um, in my personal life when I'm seeing others as objects, other people know it and I don't, and they feel it, and I feel like I'm right and I'm justified, and I'm good in doing so, but I'm actually not. And we actually call that self deception at Arbinger. And then when we work with others as people, we end up bonding with them in a way that we can't when we see them as objects, we end up seeing with them, the things that we are experiencing, and we connect in ways that are otherwise impossible when we see them as objects, and that allows us to emotionally commune, to intellectually commune, outside of a of a scientific lens, perhaps some level, spiritually commune. But there's a there's a connection between us because we're allowing ourselves to connect one to another, and one person seeing another as an as a person, invites the other person to do the same. And that kind of opens the channels of connection between two individuals. And then I think that's when they experience what we are calling empathy, which is the this moment of I'm experiencing, to some extent, what you're experiencing, and you're experiencing what I'm experiencing, what I'm experiencing, and we're connecting at a level that's beyond just our transactional human interaction. That was a very long explanation, forgive me, but that's kind of the way I think about it. Well, thank
you. Thank you for sharing that. Edwin, do you want to talk a little bit more about, maybe what the problems are with the current definitions? This is
somebody coming up. I'm just need to get on that. Background. Let's see for a few minutes. Yeah, there. I don't know if you want to continue. Just give it about a couple of minutes. Sam, you want to say more, because there's just some phone stuff going on. It's going to go on for Okay,
yeah, so I'll ask the next question, then I'll come back to you. Okay, um, so Sam, if you could answer this question, in what cases do you think a person should empathize? And then the flip side is that of that would be, when do you think a person should not empathize? So thinking about like it is, are there? Is it a situational thing, or is it an always thing? Oh, you are muted.
Sorry. Thank you. Okay, we've been, we've been at this for like, how many years now, after COVID, good grade. Okay, so I think that running with the definition that I gave of empathy, I think that empathy, being the being with others, and seeing them as people, as as real and as as legitimate as ourselves, is to is to say that that should always be done, because the fact is, other beings are beings like they are people. That's like a default truth in the sense that I'm real, I have an inner life and experiences and emotions and thoughts and feelings, all of that, and other people do too, to live in acknowledgement of that, I think is ethically necessary to be like, to be truthful in the world. If you don't do that, then you create within yourself a discord and a need to just. Defy that way of living right to yourself and to others. And so I think that there is never a time running with my definition. Of course, that's limited running with my definition, I'd say that that there's never a moment in which you shouldn't be seeing another person as a person. Now you cross into the next question, is there ever a time you shouldn't see someone as a person? And I'd say no, but I do understand that the kind of the roots of that question going to are there moments in which others are engaged in behaviors, or others are, to an extent, being in a way that is detrimental to me connecting with them or understanding them, or really diving in there and allowing myself to be opened to and and kind of affected by them? And I think that there's a difference between seeing them as a person, and then, you know, and also then accepting everything that they think and believe and do, redeeming everything that they think and believe and do. I think I can separate those things out and say, You are a human being like myself, and I see the full breadth of your potential, and I understand that you're like me. And so you make mistakes, you have you have thoughts and will, and you decide what you want to do in the world. And I can see those things without allowing them to damage me, right, or allowing them to come in and ruin my life in some way. I can even do difficult things while also seeing you as a person. I have to arrest you as a police officer. I can do that. I don't have to see you as an object in that moment, right? I can empathize with the fact that you're getting arrested right now, and I can take you to jail because you've broken the law that we've agreed upon, and all of that kind of makes sense. Or I can see you as an object when I take you to jail. You know a good for nothing criminal, and you deserve this. And I'm going to be extra violent and extra mean and and make your life harder as I do something difficult to you. So I think that there are, there are moments in which we do have to turn toward another person and see them as a person, but maybe take a step back at the same time to say what you're thinking, feeling and doing is not something I want to participate in and be a part of, but I do see you as a person, and I think that opens up, actually, channels of solutions to problems that maybe arise from the dissonance between people and their beliefs and their ideas and their actions. And when we see people as people, we can look at them and find productive solutions to disagreements. Where, when you are seeing someone as an object, you've already put the lid on the pot and said, I know who you are. I know what you're about, and I'm going to act in ways that are maybe going to make it worse. You know? I think that's maybe what I would say. I'm yeah, that's it, yeah.
And, I mean, I do want to dive deeper into what the process is like in inside of you when you're parsing out, like, how do I act in this instance? But we'll get to that in a little bit. Okay, so by Edwin or Ed Edwin? Okay, yeah, yeah,
yeah, what do I want to kind of focus on? I just the I don't know if you saw the article about our work in Scientific America. Yeah,
I saw the headline, but I didn't read the whole thing. Okay, so I'd
love to read that. Do you have a link to that somewhere? Sorry, don't. Don't do it now. We can do it at the end. It's okay. We just did go ahead. Yeah,
it's so anyways, the author, you know, when she interviewed me about empathy, I said, Look, I explained to her how the empathy circle works like a basic stroke. So an empathy circle is maybe four people in a group, so if we had one more person, we could do an empathy circle. And we use active listening to talk to each other. So I would be the speaker, Jody, you're the listener. I would share a little bit you know about our topic, and then you would reflect back your understanding of what I said. You're using active listening, you know, based on the work of Carl Rogers. And we have timed time limits. So there's maybe a five minute or so time limit for me. So I speak a little bit. I pause. You reflect back. But then we, we have an overall time limit. After five minutes, my turn is up, and you Jody, become the speaker, and then you would speak to Sam, and Sam would reflect back his understanding of what you're saying so and then we'd have four people, and we, you know, have the conversation goes on like that for the time allotted. You know, sometimes you go for as long as, you know, two hours or even more. And this is, you know, the work of Carl Rogers was, I think, quite seminal in terms of empathy within the therapeutic context, because he would listen to his clients, you know, for like, an hour, using active listening. So we've done is put it into a group context, and within that group context, so using that is a framework we're looking at, what is empathy? Let's define empathy within the context of the empathy circle. So all the stuff you're saying, Sam would be like, put it in, show us in the empathy circle where that is being manifest. So instead of it being sort of abstract, you know, out there we. You know, we and I love what you're saying, by the way, is, but instead of being abstract that we bring it down to, where do you see the seeing each other as objects and is not as it as humans? Where do you see that actually happening? Or can we even role play it happening within the context of the empathy circle? So we have a context to talk about. You know, what are we talking about? Instead of getting so abstract, because it gets so abstract, usually with the definition. So within that context, you know, the core of what I'm seeing is empathy, is sensing into the experience of self and others. It's a form of sensing into so it's kind of a quality. It's a way of being like you're talking about. So I see it, see that very similarly. So if I if I'm speaking and Jody, you're listening to me and reflecting back. You're really focused on what I'm saying, and you're sensing into what I'm saying, and you're empathizing with me, right? You're, you're and the reflection sort of deepens that empathy. It really means you have to be present. You have to really focus on what I'm saying, and you have to hear me to my satisfaction. I have to have a sense that you really got me in terms of what I'm saying. So that's like one. This is what I'm going to call the holistic model of empathy and a way of being. I love that. I use that term way of beings. I see empathy as a way of being, and so it's a holistic way of being, you know, sort of model of empathy. So you're listening to me, you're empathizing with me. By you listening to me, I'm actually sensing into my own experience by having your presence and attention, I have sense into my own felt experience, you know, to share. And besides, sort of unobstructed, and so I'm empathizing with myself, sort of a self empathy. So that's so there's a other oriented empathy, which you'd be empathizing with me, and as a silent listener, Sam would be empathizing, and if he's paying attention, he'd be empathizing with me as well, but you'd be kind of more directly, intensely deep, more deeply empathizing with me, because you're having to be really present to reflect back, and then I'm having the self empathy, sensing into myself. So somebody empathizing with you helps you actually empathize with yourself. And you know, Carl Rogers talked about that as well in his work in therapy. So that's and so the the holistic model has different components that make up up the model, and the the other part would be, usually empathy is defined as an individualistic term, like, oh, you as an individual are empathizing with someone in the world, right? But it leaves out the relational part of empathy, and a wholeness of empathy, I think, is the the that we're all in the empathy circle, empathizing with each other, and that creates a whole space of mutual empathy and a whole empathic way of being for the group. So that's the other so the mutuality, the wholeness of empathy, is when we're all, if we're four people, we're empathizing with each other. So that's another part. And then what's often called, you know, cognitive empathy. They say, Oh, imagine being, you know, someone else. And I think a better term for that would be imaginative empathy. I mean, my sense is the cognitive empathy was created by a bunch of cognitive psychologists who want to make they they like it because that's their that's their bread and butter. You know, they're cognitive scientists, so let's call it cognitive empathy. But I think a sexier, actually more accurate term is imaginative empathy, in the sense that we can imagine ourselves in the role of of anything, or anybody or anything. So for example, Meryl Streep is an actor, right? She, you know, she's imagining herself in the role of Julia Child, and she's acting from that role. She's not Julia Child, but she's imagining herself and get, really gets into the role or Margaret Thatcher. So, you know, we could have, you know, four versions of of Meryl Streep being different actors and role playing imaginative empathy right here in the in the circle. And they could be like talking to each other, or I can imagine myself being you Jody and Jody. You can imagine yourself being Sam and we can actually role play each other. Or we could imagine ourselves being fruit. Right? I could be a banana. Sam could be a pear. Jodi could be, you know, pineapple. And then we could have a role playing. We can imagine ourselves, so we have that capacity for imagination. And so that's another so I would call that imagine imaginative empathy. So that's sort of the framework. And then when I mentioned Elizabeth, who wrote that article, I said, Whenever the academics or others tell you you know their definition, have them put it into the context of the empathy circle, right, so that you can actually role play it and see it in a more concrete, you know, sort of a framework. So, and then all your questions too, we could answer within the context of actually role playing it, you know, or sensing it in an empathy
circle. So anyway, I want to try that sometime. Yeah,
we should hold an empathy circle. You get one more person, we can do it, and then we can sort of identify and experience and actually try role playing or these others. Yeah, we'd love, yeah. I
really love that idea. And I mean, I have plenty other people who I'm planning on having these conversations with, so I think it would make a lot of sense to turn one of these conversations into an empathy circle. It, the thing is, it probably will take more time, right? Is that something that, like, I would we not be able to get through all of the questions because we're doing we're actively reflecting back,
yeah, in the it takes time. And also it's like, whatever you can have a question, but it's also whatever is on your mind, so the conversation follows sort of what's alive in people, but yeah, but then you can also maybe have a circle on each of the questions, and kind of try to role play the questions too.
Well. I love the idea, and I definitely I'll talk to you about this after. I want to join one of your circles sometime, because I know you do, you have them monthly. We
can organize them, you know, I actually did one with Elizabeth. We had a special empathy circle, you know, just for her, you know, for her project, for her article. And then she's even saying, Now her parents want to have an empathy circle with her, so she's now my mother. Faci Yeah, yeah, that's conflict with her father. And empathy circles are really good for conflict. Yeah.
And like I told you, Edwin, they that academic that I was telling you about. She's a mediator, and she her background is in conflict management, and so I think it would be really interesting to get into conversation with her as well, so we can discuss all of that later. It sounds like from what I'm hearing from you, if I can just put this in terms that within the context of what I've studied, a lot of the definitions currently are very reactive and are very affective. So it's very much focused on emotion and feeling with the person, which kind of leaves out that imaginative component and that active listening component to it, because it makes it seem like it's just a a quick and reactive process. And I, for a long time I've been wanting to push back against that and so again, like I said earlier, I don't want to impose too many of my ideas into this conversation, but do I understand from you both that you're saying that this is actually a more of A purposeful, active, sometimes cognitively laborious process. Would you say that it's it's sometimes more taxing to engage this way with people? Depends on your the word,
yeah, Joey, I think the word taxing is interesting because I think that when you're really cued into another person, I love Edwin's point about active listening. When you're really listening to another person, there's such a positive feedback within yourself, like Edwin's describing, like you end up benefiting from that interaction so much. And I don't think you walk away from an active listening situation going, Oh God, I'm so tired, like I just did a lot of labor. I think it actually feels rather liberating and in some cases, healing if you need it, or if there's moments where you're you're gaining understanding, I think you end up feeling ennobled or or edified by the experience, to the extent that I think seeing people as people, and operating in the world that way, at first may seem more laborious, because It will require you. It will require more of you from a time perspective, but I think from an energy perspective, it's an illusion that it will take energy from you, that actually is an energy giving activity. And what is a energy sapping activity is actually maintaining the illusion in your own mind that other people are objects, the constant need to. Justify oneself and to block out sort of the humanity streaming toward you from others at all times, the effort to block that out is actually quite taxing. To take that pavilion down and just allow it to stream toward you and to actively engage with other beings, I think, is an energy multiplier. To some extent, it gives you more than it takes from
you. Yeah, thank you. I love that. What's your thought on that? Edwin, yeah. Again, I would take that question and put it into an empathy circle, like, how do we see that playing out in the empathy circle? So if I'm speaking, you know, sharing my feelings, thoughts, whatever, on some topic, and Jody, you're reflecting back, you're having to really focus on what I'm saying and, you know, be able to, you know, hear it and be able to reflect it back to my satisfaction. And people who are new to the empathy circle, often, they do feel some tiredness from that because of the focus and attention that it takes. But then there's like, me, I do it and I enjoy it, I have fun with it. So it kind of depends on, on that mindset, you know, if you sort of been trained in that mindset, and, and there's, I mean, it can be very pleasurable to, you know, hear somebody else and say, Oh, I've really heard them. I really, you know, they, I can see that they feel really heard. And there's a sense and there's a pleasure of connection that happens. And people always mention that within the empathy circle, the conversation gets more real, and that there's a depth to it that's very satisfying. So it kind of depends, you know, it's more like if you're used to it, and then it's, it's not so taxing, yeah, so that that's, it can actually be enjoyable, yeah? And
I like Sam, did you use the word invigorating? I like that idea edifying,
but invigorating. Edifying, yeah, both of them invigorating, yeah, yeah. And
I definitely have seen that in my conversations with people as well, that it really does boost my energy when I get to the end of actually really connecting with a person. Do you mind if we move on to the next question? I wanted
just one more thing that did come up. Jump into that. So you were saying that they in the definitions are talking about the affective, or the how your your feelings are affected. So I don't know if you're familiar with Paul Bloom's book against empathy.
I actually just finished reading it a couple Okay,
so you know I had, I he wrote his first article in New York. Or first thing I did is I reached out to him. I said, Oh, you sent me an email. Do we have I want to empathize with you, about your art, about your article, you know, he says, Oh, I don't have time. I've tried for five years, you know, over five years now, to talk to me. Won't talk to me. I did have an email exchange, but he would never do a video, you know, recorded video, kind of interview dialog, and especially not an empathy circle and but I couldn't figure out what he was talking about, but what he's finally I kind of saw what he's what he was criticizing. What he's saying is, you go to your therapist, say you're my therapist, Jody, and I come to you, and you're not you're like the Rogerian doing active listening type therapy that, you know, I come to you and I'm angry, I'm like, pissed off, I'm raging, and then I have all this anger, and it comes over. And you sense my anger, and you take it on. Or you become angry, you start pounding. And I think he actually uses that example, right? Or I'm in total tears and anguish, and then you go into tears and anguish. So you sort of either use through emotional contagion, or, you know, state matching, or just maybe it triggered something in yourself. But at that point, we put that into the empathy circle. So instead of you listening to me saying, Oh, I hear you're very you're feeling angry, you're feeling upset, you know, tell me more. You know, I'm here to listen and and then I'm going into, yeah, I'm angry because this person cut me off on the road. And it reminds me of my father, who, you know, all this other stuff. So you'd be kind of exploring into the experience, my experience, and being present with me. But when you do the state matching or the emotions that you know he's talking about, you're actually not listening to me anymore. You're getting you're also always becoming in your own self centered experience. So that's so actually, the his criticism is, I agree with what he's the phenomenon he's criticizing, but I think it's not empathy. I think he's mislabeling it as empathy. So anyway, and that, again, you can play it out in the empathy circle. So it's really good. That's one. Is, I think it's so important to have a clear definition and a way of modeling. It is because there's all these criticisms coming, you know, again, some there's two other books coming out, one called toxic empathy and another one called suicidal empathy, that are coming out more from the political right. They're being critical of empathy, but their criticisms like to actually agree with their criticisms, except it's not what I would consider empathy, though, yeah,
yeah. And that's that's the hard thing going into this, and that's why my first question in each of these focus groups is, what is your definition? Because it seems like even among researchers who this is the thing that they research. There are like 50 different definitions of it, and so I think it's, it's very it's very confusing and almost ironic that we're studying this thing where we're supposed to try and understand each other, and we don't understand each other because we're speaking a different language to each other. So I find that really interesting. And I'm actually really happy that you brought that book up, because I went into it the same way, like with my dukes up, like, Hey, you can't be knocking on empathy. But then when I got about two chapters, and I was like, Oh, actually, I believe I agree with everything that you're saying. We were just speaking a different language going into this,
yeah, and that's why I don't know if you know Dan Batson. So I interviewed him. He has an art paper out on eight ways the word empathy is used an old paper in 2015
Yeah. I read that paper recently as well, yeah. And it's confusing, and the way that he talks about it is empathy and altruism. It's empathic concern is the only one that he hypothesized actually leads to altruism, whereas the other forms of empathy tend to be more self focused, and so I mean, the a term that I'd like to see is something that's more transcendent, so like, I don't know transcendent empathy, or something like that, where you're actually focused on understanding the other person's perspective, as opposed to just getting caught up in the emotional state that their pain has brought on for you. So that leads me to a question. I'm going to take this out of order, does a person have to be in need or in pain in some way in order for you to need to empathize with them, and I think I know the answer from both of you just based on what you've said. But what are your thoughts on that? Because a lot of the research does talk about it as like you feel bad for a person because there's something wrong with their life. So what are your thoughts on that?
I disagree. I think that you don't need to have someone in need in order to be empathetic with another person or to be with another person. I mean, who's to say there's any difference between bearing with someone's troubles and tragedies and emotional like distress and also rejoicing with them and something wonderful that's happened to them? Right? Someone could be have just won the lottery, or gotten a promotion, or been married or and you can go, I'm so excited for you. I'm so with you in this moment. I can really, I can actively listen to you just as much as I can when things are hard, like you may want to talk a lot about something wonderful that's happened. All the work you've put into it, everything that's finally culminated in their success and life has been a binary of tragedy to success, right? There's, it's a three dimensional space where we move all the way around that. But it's, I don't think someone needs to be a need in order for me to empathize. I think it's easier to sense ourselves being pulled by the humanity of another person. I think that I love Edwin's idea of sensing with someone sensing in like we kind of radiate our emotional state. We believe ourselves we quite transparent, quite opaque, but we're actually really transparent. And so we radiate a lot of what we're feeling and thinking all the time. I think when things are more difficult, it's perhaps easier, or maybe there's a better cultural repertoire in the west around identifying like emotional distress and then trying to that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to jump in and help you, versus when someone's excited or having a good time or something else. We don't think of it traditionally as empathy, but I think it's a similar mechanism the case. One thing I wanted to mention from the previous comment was, at Arbinger, we think about when we're seeing others as objects, we tend to place ourselves in relation to them in four major categories. We either believe we're better than them, which means we deserve things, or we think we're worse than them, which means we need to be seen as not being worse than them. We try to compensate for that insecurity, and I think much of what constitutes empathy from a self perspective, self focused perspective is actually about portraying oneself as being empathetic rather than actually being empathetic. I think there is like a sort of platonic, foreign version of this empathy that exists that's true, and then there's a version of it, sort of counterfeit that we take on in order to represent ourselves in the world, or arrange ourselves in the world in a way that says, Look at me. I'm a very empathetic and. Emotionally in tune person, which is all about me, not really about the other people. Because I think some extent, I'm almost to some extent, I almost become invisible in some way. When I'm truly empathizing with another person, I'm truly connected and actively listening to them, my inner voice kind of quiets on my my, my experience becomes less as the most important thing in the world, and I take on the experience of another. But wanted to mention that, just because I love that idea of it being there's ways to be self focused and empathetic at the same time, which may actually be counterintuitive to the empathy and the whole the whole thing. But
yeah, and I think that goes back to batson's eight different definitions that he puts in there, at most of them being more self focused, and then the empathic concern being more transcendent, more focused on the other person. So I think, I think you're spot on with that. Edwin, did you want
to use that question again?
Let's see which one was it. So does a person have to be in need or in pain in order for you to
empathize with them? Yeah. So like, if we're in an empathy circle, let's say, just to bring it back into this context, I think that we're all we're empathizing all the time. It's kind of like ongoing. It's like a CPU process, right? It's got a certain amount that's running, and then at times, it can be more intense, you know, and more and deeper. So I just see empathy is sort of an ongoing process that, and that's why I'm more interested in empathy than compassion, because sort of by definition, compassion is so it's relating to people who are in pain and suffering. And, you know, sometimes it's like, oh, all of life is suffering, which I don't think. I think we have a variety of experience, and we have joy that Sam was talking about, that we have this whole range. And empathy is fencing into the fullness of someone's experience, their full spectrum, and it doesn't have to be so it's, you're sort of born with empathy. It's like, oh, I guess it's more. The metaphor is the muscle, right? We have muscles. They can atrophy or they can be strengthened, so and we always have muscles, and so in the same sense that we're sort of always empathizing, and it's sort of the empathy is sort of that way of being, that, what are the qualities of that way of being?
I just have to ask a follow up question to this, when I know that we already talked about this, but I'm just so curious about it, because this is, I mean, there is research that shows that empathizing and actively putting yourself in the place of another is mentally taxing, and if there isn't some sort of reciprocal like reward, like with a relationship or something, it we are less likely to Do it. At what point do you have to put a lid on it? You know, because you could taking that CPU analogy, you could say, I'm just empathizing with everybody all the time, and I'm taking everything in. At what point do you need to say, Okay, I'm going to empathize with this person, and not with all the other people around.
So what you're describing, yeah, I get exactly what. So it's like, what you're describing, and people talk about it like a lot in our circles, it's like, I'm in my family, I do all the empathizing, and nobody listens to me. So it's like, you just hear that all the time. But So the definition, the holistic definition of it, could be here we have four people, let's say in this group, an empathy circle, and we're all doing we don't have the structure of the circle. We have four people, and one person does all the talking, and everybody else is doing all the listening, right? So that's sort of the model, right? It's like, there every you're you're listening, or you're one person is just listening to everybody else and not sharing. So I see that that is an empathy deficit, because the fullness of empathy is the group all empathizing with each other. So that's like the fullness of empathy. And if somebody is not being heard, then there's a deficit. It's actually a deficit of empathy. Some people say, Oh, I do all the listening empathy is bad so, you know, because I don't get heard, but it's really the deficit of empathy that's the damaging part. So the empathy circle is structured in a way that everyone gets heard, right? We take turns and we go around listening, so that the empathy circle itself means that everyone will get a chance to speak and be heard to their satisfaction. So it creates a an actual structure that maximizes mutual empathy and creates a mutual space of empathy. So I think the. But your kind of concern is, if somebody does all the empathizing with the whole world, and they don't get heard back, it's not that there's a problem with what they're doing. The problem is that the world is not empathizing with them, because that's that's actually an empathy deficit.
So what's the response to that? If they're the person that's doing all the empathizing, how do they change the people around them? One
thing is, you join our empathy movement to make empathy social value. Yeah, we change the culture to make it inherent, so that parents are learning to empathize. Have empathy circles with their family, right with their kids. The schools are having empathy circles with their students. So they're learning mutual empathy that we have Congress, that we have the Republicans and Democrats holding empathy circles with each other to demonstrate, you know how mutual listening works. So it's a cultural shift at the bigger picture, but at lower at another level, is we all need to be heard and be empathized with. So in that case, you go to an empathy circle, and you get your empathy battery filled in empathy circle so that you're not just by yourself. So you do create a subculture, a mutually empathic subculture, where your needs for empathy get Oh, and here's what, my sister in law had his bipolar. So she just went through an episode where he was just, you know, kind of losing it bipolar, how it kind of can be getting very demanding, you know, just just pretty downright nasty. And I said, Okay, you know, you're in need. I'm going to offer you an empathic listening, active listening. I listened for over two hours just about all her concerns. What was going on. And I said, Well, I want a mutually empathic relationship, so let's have mutual empathy now. And she wouldn't do it. And I said, Okay, our relationship is over, you know, until you can have it, unless I want a mutually empathic relationship, and we didn't talk for four months. And, wow, we just held an empathy circle. I said, the only way I'm talking with you is if we have an empathy circle, and we just had one with her, my brother, her husband, just yeah last week. And so, yeah, so that's it. You can also say, I'm, you know, I'm ending the relationship unless it's mutually empathic. You can also be sure to charge your empathy battery by having community so you're not, as you know, needy of empathy because they have more space. And the idea is to try to bring others into the mutuality. And you can actually ask for that mutuality.
Wow, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Sam, do you have any ideas
on that, not specific to overhead? Jody,
yeah, go ahead. I just realized that our time is running short for you. So I want to hop to a few other questions. So keep
this for 30 seconds. Really quick. Comment specifically, I agree fully with everything Edwin said. It's and I love the idea of empathy circles in Congress. I think that's awesome. I know I love it too. So let's hopefully the movement can keep going. I think that going back to what I said before, when someone is seeing others as objects and living in that space where they need to justify that way of seeing and seeing themselves right as I'm the kind of person who's who's empathetic. I'm an empathetic person. I'm someone who listens. There's a certain need that we create when we live in that space, when we're not seeing people as people to justify the way we see ourselves, and we do that by extracting from other people the behavior we need, or even latching on to and focusing on things that they are or are not doing in order to say something about myself, and the fact that, for example, if someone says I want I'm the empathetic person in my family all the time, no one ever listens to me. There is a certain advantage to that for the person who's attempting to posture themselves as empathetic to say, I'm actually really the empathetic one. Because they're not empathetic, they're comparing themselves categorically to the other other people in their lives and going. It actually helps them reinforce the portrayal as someone who's very empathetic and emotionally in tune. Because no one else does this. I'm the one who does this. So to some extent, they need people to not be empathetic so they can say, more poignantly, that they're the ones who are truly empathetic. So there's a there's a trap, intellectually, I think, when we're self focused and empathetic, in which we can actually set people up for failure. Because, you know, I know in my own personal experience, I've experienced that before, and then I reflect as I reflect outside of those moments when I'm complaining about people not listening to me, it's like, yeah, but Sam, you didn't actually end up volunteering any information. You didn't end up talking at all like you just listened, and then you walked away and then you walked away and complained that they didn't ask you any questions. And it's like, well, so there's ways I think we can self sabotage in our empathetic efforts from that self deceptive point of view. And so I think it's important that we get to that being empathetic is is an outgrowth of seeing people as people. When we really see others as people, we live in that truth. If there isn't necessarily an as strong as of an expectation of reciprocity, there's still a need for reciprocity, but it exists in like, a healthy level where we can set appropriate boundaries and we can have those conversations that matter. Because, you know, if I'm not having those boundary conversations, maybe I actually need people to not be empathetic with me so I can, you know. And so there's something like, I'm not pulling a lever. Why? Why am I not pulling the boundary lever? Why am I not saying, hey, I need empathy from you. Maybe it's because I don't want them to actually provide it. I don't know something in there that may be interesting.
Yeah, I'm glad that you spoke up, because that was gold. Thank you. I really appreciate that perspective on it. You
can, you can ask for it too, like you're having a dialog. Say, you know, I'll reflect sometimes what people are saying to make sure that they feel heard nice. And I'll say something. I said, Can you let me know what you heard me say? And so, in a sense, I'm asking for for that empathy. So they're asking for it is,
yeah, I love that. That's that's such an important point. I know you need to go. I was going to
put that article. I'll grab
it right now. Keep going. Jody, you're good. Okay.
I just want to make sure that I'm hitting. We've talked about a lot of this, but I just want to make sure that we're hitting all the different aspects of this that I am looking at for my research. I'm going to ask numbers nine and 10 here, is it possible for a person to be both empathetic and retain strong convictions in their beliefs and ideologies? So the where that question comes from is this idea that within the research, I'm not seeing this anywhere like what happens after you empathize with the person? Do you have? Do you adopt their point of view and keep and run with that and so then you have no principles, and you're just kind of going wherever empathy takes you. Or is there a way to still remain grounded in what you know to be truth as well and and have it be edified by that other person's perspective. So this is, this is a philosophical question, and I would really love to see what thoughts you have on that.
Yeah, I'll jump in with my thoughts, and then I may have to jump out, but you and Edwin can keep talking. Yeah. So the first question is, how do you empathize with someone who has different views on your own and maintain your views at the same time? And then, how will you do after you've empathized, you know, how do you how do you basically digest that empathy moment and move forward with your life? Do you just abandon your principles? Is that what you're getting
at? Jody, yeah, because I don't think, because there are different constructs within psychology that I've been looking at. Some of them are looking at, like, how strong are your values and your convictions? And then there's the empathy construct, and they don't really talk to each other. So what I'm really interested in, like, really prying apart here is, what do we do after we empathize like we've learned something from this other person that is, it might shatter our worldview. Um, so what do we do at that point? If it's if it's something that maybe it should have been shattered, then maybe we follow, you know, and we go to their side. Maybe we allow ourselves to be persuaded. Or if we know that we are right, and whatever that might mean, we feel very strong convictions toward a certain perspective, do we then incorporate what we've learned from them, or do we go back to where we were before? And, you know, and it's kind of a it's a tricky question, because I don't think there's one right answer, yeah,
for sure. And I'm not going to pretend to have the answer here. I think it's just an idea of when I see another person as a person, when I am acknowledging that reality. You know, I sort of need to make sure that my convictions are aligned with that truth, that other people are people? Are there? Is there anything about my structure of beliefs that ultimately invalidates the humanity of another person? If that's true, then maybe I need to reevaluate some of those. Maybe you do need to change. Maybe there is a need to change. That's kind of the core of what it means to be with other people as people. It's only possible when we're open to being changed, and I think it's only possible to help others change, when we're open to being changed by them, right? They They open up to the extent that we do, I also find that so there's, there's a bit of debris that kind of forms over our truly held convictions and beliefs, that's driven by our, what we call inward mindset, or a self deception. There's sort of this, like debris that needs to be cleared away. And I think when we empathize with others, we clear away that debris, and we can very clearly see what our values are. And it's a great way to stress test them and see if they're legitimate or not. However, if you do run up against something that's like, hey, empathizing with this person, like, for example, this is a very visceral example. I'm. Sitting in I traveled to Saudi Arabia about four or five times a few years ago for work, and I'm sitting in the car with one of our partners for Arbinger, and he starts and he's he practices Islam and I practice Christianity, right? We're in different different camps in terms of our religions. We have very deeply held beliefs. And there's one sticking point in particular around the identity of Christ within Christians and Muslims. Right? For Christians, of course, the center of the faith the Son of God, for Muslims, a very prolific prophet, but definitely not the Son of God. And we're talking about this, and we're having this moment of kind of like tension. And then at one point, he tells me about, when he was younger, how he wanted to go off and join al Qaeda. He was like, I love my I love Allah, and I love God, and I was going to go join the jihad and join Qaeda, and I'm in the car, kind of like reaching for the door handle. Like, Okay, sounds good. I'm a little worried. But he starts to tell me more about his experience, and what I did is, instead of shutting it down, I I listened to him. He said, Well, tell me more about that. Why did you want to do that? He's like, because I felt that my faith was under attack from another culture, and I wanted to stop them. And I love my family, and I love my faith, and I love my country, and I want to stop them. He's like my father, very luckily helped me. He said, realize that the true Jihad was within my heart, was not with the West, was my own soul. I had to battle against. I thought, I think that's beautiful, and we kind of like came together, and it actually helped me improve my vision of Islam by listening to his desire to go join jihad, because I realized how strong and deep the convictions are, and I resonated with that. So I have deep convictions and strong ideas my own, so I'm empathizing with him, but I'm not, all of a sudden, adopting Islam simply because I've now seen his conviction for it, not because I now recognize he has a legitimate claim to his his desire to defend his family and faith. That isn't a commentary on the truthfulness, ultimately, capital T, truthfulness, of Islam or Christianity. It's just a commentary on the fact that I'm seeing him as a person. I'm resonating with the fact that he has convictions like I do. And those are real convictions. And so now, as we operate in the world, I'm going to probably be more helpful and respectful around his convictions when they come up, for example, when he says, You know, I can't make that meeting. I need to go to prayers. And I'll say, great, go for it. Understand that's really important to you. Go do that. It doesn't mean that I suddenly am going, Yeah, al Qaeda is right. Allah is God, you know, I gotta read the Quran. It's like, No, it doesn't mean anything. I don't have to take on his faith, necessarily, but I do get to respect his convictions. And as a person having convictions. And then there may come a moment where his convictions, maybe there's a certain moment where his convictions overlap with the safety of my family or, you know, maybe there's some moment where mine threatened his, and we have to work on that together. But having seen him as a person and empathize with him, we're in a much better spot to have that conversation where we're seeing and understanding each other more deeply than if I had just assumed when he said I went to go join al Qaeda, and I just said, Yep, he's a terrorist, and I shut my brain off, not going to listen to him anymore. So there's something about that. I think we can we can see others, we can understand them, but we don't have to take on their point of view, unless we choose to, unless we really deeply want to shift our point of view and take on what they believe. I think the religious idea is so interesting because it applies to so many parts of our identity in ourselves. There's so much about our internal experience that we that we have, that others cannot see and experience. And so we the only way we can communicate it is through our words and through our actions. And so to a lot of large extent, most of what my what, most of what empathy is is a sort of act of faith to step into the world of another person and see it and kind of understand it, but it doesn't mean I need to relinquish my own right. I can still love him, even if we believe different things about the nature of God and the purpose of society, and you know where things are going and how we should run things economically, we can have a deep respect for each other, and we do. He's actually taken on and read quite a lot of books on Christ, oddly, and it was a great conversation. But I think after that moment, you know, I'm actually better as a person for having done that, and I haven't given one inch, and if anything, I've strengthened the convictions that I have around seeing people as people, and how that benefits, you know, because I yeah, anyway, what are you so glad that you
shared that example, you actually had me pretty emotional over here. Thank you. That just reminds me of the end of the book The Anatomy of peace, where they come to that understanding that their convictions are what they have in common. It's the fact that they feel convictions for something that is something that they can connect over. So I really appreciate your your real world example in that, because I think that's, that's quite beautiful, and it's, it's, it's very touching. So thanks for sharing that. Oh, I'm glad, Jody, and glad, and you can go ahead and hop off and there's anything else that you want to share in the last like 30 seconds.
No, just really grateful for the conversation. Jody, thanks for reaching out. If you would like more, or you. Go to go. I know we only had an hour, so if you need more time or you have additional questions, reach out. We'll have another call, no problem. And then Edwin, so great to meet you, and so great to learn about the the empathy center. I've been clicking through your links as you're as you've been as you guys have been talking, learning about you, and I love it. So thank you for taking the time. And I've grabbed that link. I'll be reading the the article too,
probably Sure, Sam just hearing your stories and meeting you, hopefully you can connect again.
Great, yeah, I hope to keep these connections alive. So thank you very, very much cool and yeah, you can hop off. And I want to pose the same question to Edwin. Great, bye guys. Yeah, see you later.
Yeah, the within that story that Sam was talking about. So they had different opinions, right about things religion. And if we bring that into an empathy circle again, to be able to role play it within the circle, so it'd be, it could be the four of us, you know, with the two of them and so and us being in the circle, and we all have different opinions, and when we do the and actually, the empathy circle is used for conflict mediation, so we're creating an empathic space. And that's what it sounds like he had with that that person. There's an empathic space where they're willing to listen to each other. And I think it's that empathic space that becomes the becomes the shared value, right? It's like seeing each other's humanity, having that shared empathic space, and that each person has their own ideas, their own values, their own, you know, strong opinions that say, but they're willing to set those aside to bring forward their empathic the value of of empathy. So a lot of times I just hear like, oh, empathy is this neutral thing, or it's like, you set yourself aside, and then you're you're with someone else. But I think that empathy is a state that we're bringing forward. So, and I think that kind of gets it, and it's not neutral. It itself is inherently positive, and it has positive physiological aspects. Right? When we listen to each other, our oxytocin level goes up. So there's all kinds of stress goes down. There's all kinds of physiological things that happen with in an empathic state that are physically, emotionally positive. So let's say we're in the empathy circle. They're talking with each other like they're speaking, they're listening to each other. And then, you know, the empathy circle is over, and everyone goes their own, you know, direction, say, afterwards. But, you know, like Sam was saying how he was affected. He was affected by seeing sort of that person's humanity, and that stayed with him, and it sort of changed him, you know, seeing that person's humanity sort of changed him so that his actions going forward are different than previously. He has maybe less fear. Next time he comes across Muslims, he has, you know, more sense of seeing their their humanity, and likewise too. So, so it's not like, you know, suddenly everybody's working on some project together, but everybody's been changed in a way that their actions, you know, out of out of that you know, going forward, have changed the way that they relate to others.
Yeah, and it sounds like, from what you're saying, that it's we don't need to be afraid of empathy, because empathy doesn't need to change us in negative ways, like when we when we open ourselves up to hearing about somebody else's lived experience. We don't have to be afraid that it's going to shatter something that didn't need to be shattered in the first place. Because, yeah, go ahead. Just
that. It is the value of empathy is, is the state that you're holding on to. When I go into it, I'm valuing empathy as a primary value. So by doing it, I'm sort of re I'm strengthening that, that value, even if it's in a conflict that I'm really pissed off with the other people, you know, and in pain, and they're in pain, it's still that, like with my sister in law, it was like, I'm holding that empathic space, you know, with her saying, and so it's, yeah,
I have about, probably about 10 more minutes, because I have, actually have five kids, and it's Saturday, and so They're, they're all hearing why I'm in here to begin with. But I want to ask you about the relationship between compassion and empathy, because you, because you brought that up, and that is actually something I'm really interested in. What is compassion without empathy? And what is empathy without compassion?
No. To ask you, let's say we're in an empathy circle where we're creating, if you have a scenario with compassion, like, what would be the scenario? Yeah,
so where this comes up for me, and I'm glad that you asked that, because, like, I told you at the beginning, my background is in international development work, and so I worked with a lot of people, Americans who had really big hearts, who were not really interested in finding out about the strengths of the people that they were helping, and so they kind of over helped. And so that's the context that I'm coming at this from, where I saw that as compassion without empathy, and I saw it as pretty empty and somewhat damaging, or not even somewhat damaging. I saw it very damaging for people's sense of self worth and their ability to get themselves out of difficult situations, and it drove people down more. And then I've also seen examples of people who have empathy without compassion, and you can have somebody who's very like emotionally savvy, and they can read people really well, but they just don't care about about what is good for the other person. And so, you know, you end up with somebody who's psychopathic or sociopathic, who's who has that skill to empathize, and they don't care about the other person. So that's where I'm coming from with those questions, and I'd love to see your perspective on it,
yeah, so we could bring those people into an empathy circle again, right? Let's so we've got that person, and then some people that who are from that community, let's say it's a developing country, and then, you know, what is the dynamic of, how's the conversation go? It's kind of like someone says, oh, we have this problem with our well or something water. And then the, what does the the compassion person say? Is it like, Oh, I feel so sorry for you, like you should do this, this and this or something. It's usually what it ends up being, okay, yeah, it's like, and it's like, so, so what they've done at that point, it's like the person, instead of empathizing with the people, there's a little bit of empathy, because they've heard that pain about how we don't have water. But then the empathic approach for the listener is, Oh, I hear you have struggles with having clean clean water. Tell me more. You've got five minutes still to keep telling your story. So you're just staying present and empathizing. They fully hear what the person is is saying right about their water, uh, problem. And instead of just, you know, jumping right to some kind of, uh, feeling sorry for the person and throwing out, you know, they're sort of so it can be that compassion can be sort of a sympathetic compassion, which I think has that can have that destructive problem, because it's shifting from listening to kind of a self centered feeling sorry for the person and losing connection with it. So if I'm saying that problem, you'd be saying, Oh, I feel so sorry for you, instead of listening to what I'm hearing the promise. But then it's also we want to make it mutual, because the person who has they can also share they like. If you're the that person, you can say, well, I have these ideas for how you can address that, and I would empathize with you, with your ideas. And then I would say, well, those ideas don't actually work, because this, this and this. And then you have to stay present and listen to my, you know, response to your ideas. And so it becomes a mutually empathic relationship and a dialog, you know, geared towards problem solving, and in terms of designing solutions, I was human centered design, it's a whole design process for projects, you know, and it's based on empathy, if you know, it's not a Silicon Valley design school at Stanford and IDEO, big design company that when you design, if you design anything, you have to empathize with the people you're designing for. You go through different phases, and you have to test, you know, you create prototypes, and you test and and then it's an ongoing empathic approach. So it's a whole systematic process for sort of bringing in empathy, so that yeah, that's Yeah. So that's that's the compassion part. And the compassion, by definition, is feeling somebody's pain, right? And you want to hear the full person, their pain, their joy, their you know what? What's working. So that's where I see. Empathy is much broader than this focus on pain. It's also, you know, it's definitely. Definitions of compassion, but that sympathetic compassion, I think, has that destructive quality that you know you're you're talking about. So, yeah,
so your definition, the way that you define compassion, is, is feeling bad for a person, is that, is that what I'm understanding,
that's one way. I think I've that I've seen, I think there's different definitions. That's one definition, and I see the problem with that approach. Yeah, but I think there's other definitions people would disagree with that definition. So I think there's a whole spectrum of definitions there too. But the one thing that seems to be consistent that it's addressing someone's pain. It's a response to the pain. And and I think there's also you brought that up before that. The Empathy is, you know, if you're if I'm speaking, and, you know, saying, Oh, I have this problem, and then you go in and say, Oh, I'm sorry for how you feel. Instead of reflect back what I'm saying, you've gone into your own feeling sorry, right? Then it's about me again, right? Yeah, or I feel, I feel like, Oh, I'm really distressed about this water. So then you say, Oh, I'm really distressed too. Instead of you just staying present with my distress, you've gone into your reaction. So there's unlimited reactions that you could be having, but you have to kind of hold back those reactions and just stay present with me and what I'm talking about, at least for if, in the context of the empathy circle, for the time sort of allotted, so it creates sort of a mini, again, it creates a little mini, minimal viable, you know, structure, I think, for demonstrating empathy. Um,
can I ask a quick this is off script, but the empathy circles are you? You have said many times that it's it works best with four people. How have you come to that? Because I can see that we can do this one on one, yeah. Why is it for people? There's
with one on one, you don't have an observer, so at least three people, you have an observer. And then I found that with four, you have two observers who are observing, and you're bringing in more perspectives, and it creates that variety of perspectives, seems to create a richer sort of experience. And you can go and you can go into five, six, we've got eight, whatever people. But there's the second part of that. Is with four people, people get a lot of time to speak. The more time to speak you have. It's sort of a sweet spot for me. You know, it's just you have enough perspectives to add a richness to the discussion. And everybody has time to speak, more time to speak, and everybody wants to everyone wants to talk and share and be heard. So, yeah,
okay, that makes sense. I think we'll just, let's just finish up with this last question, and I'll give you a little bit of context from my personal experience on this. And I, I'm super interested to know how you have addressed this. So a couple of years ago, we had a massive tragedy with some friends close to us, with a murder suicide, and I being a self proclaimed and self identified Empath, I and, you know, being really interested in empathy, I was like, Okay, this is my crash course on, like, really diving in and empathizing with everybody. So I empathized with with the perpetrator, with the victims, with the family, the neighbors, with all of the people who were throwing around vitriolic comments online who didn't even know the family. I was empathizing with everybody. And what happened to me is I got to a really, really dangerously dark place where it kind of crumbled my mental health. For about a year, I would wake up in the middle of the night, almost every night with panic attacks, with just this overwhelming fear of death. And it took me a while to dig myself out of that pit that I kind of created for myself, whereas my husband, who was not empathizing with everybody, and I actually kind I, I tried to shield him from all of the different perspectives, because this was his best friend. And so I was like, You know what? You don't need to read that. You don't need to listen to what these people are saying. Just don't worry about it. So I was I was protecting him, but I wasn't protecting myself. And so that's where this question comes from. Is it possible for a person to both feel with someone else and return to their own emotions. And how does a person do that?
Yeah, so what you were doing, I would say, was partial empathy in this, in terms of the holistic empathy model, because the holistic would have been, you were bringing in all the participants, perpetrator, victim, you know, participant. You'd be bringing them into a mutually empathic dialog. That wouldn't have been you doing all the empathy and taking on all that that you would have had time for you to speak and for others to empathize with you, that would have been that mutual, that mutual empathy, so you would have gotten support for what was going on in you. So again, I see that as, like, partial empathy. Yeah, that's a good point. And that's what we do with, you know, in conflict mediation, you're bringing all the participants together and creating a space, you know, for them to have an mutually empathic dialog. And that's, again, the empathy circle, because I just keep seeing that as a minimal viable structure. So you could have brought in the participants, you know, the person who, you know, the different parties who were involved, and you could have brought them into a larger empathy circle, and had that structure, which would be sure that each of them would have been heard. So you would have listened to one person, they would have talked to someone else. You would have been had a chance to speak and be heard by others. And you know you need that for your own sanity, to create that self other distinction, instead of just sort of taking, taking all that in, plus, you can have your empathy buddies so you're not by yourself, that you have people you can go to that will listen to you and just empathically listen so you can get heard too. I have empathy buddies, and I just talk about what's going on for me, just like, almost like a therapy sort of a session, but just being heard kind of vents and gets that stuff out of your out of my head and out of my body. So, yeah,
what about in cases where it is just impossible to get people to come into that shared space together? You know, once you're there and everybody's on the same page and they're willing, that's great, but in this case, they the the family of the victims were not willing to enter into conversations with the family of the perpetrator. Yeah, and so they completely cut them out of their lives and would not enter into anything that was ever and they have vowed that never in the future will they ever talk to them again. And so it's so tricky, because I can see the benefit, and it would be, you know, an emotional two hours or something, and it would heal everybody,
but more like a four or five hour,
yeah, yeah, you're right, but if they're not willing, then it's never going to happen. So what's your response to that when people are just aren't willing to empathize?
That's why we need an empathy movement that make make this mindset a primary social cultural value, so that all the parties and would have had family empathy circles, weekly family empathy circles, as students the kids would have learned had these empathy skills, they would have learned the skills for conflict mediation and probably the conflict that ended up with the killing of someone, very likely would have been headed off before it got that point, because they would have had an empathy circle with each other to talk about the problem. So that's like we need to create the overall context, you know, for the future to head, you know, like my parents were Germans living, kind of, in the eastern part of Germany, you know, when the Russians came in. So, you know, this is one of my motivations for the empathy work. And, you know, every one of my father's family were just shot, you know, in their house. And on the mother's side, they were, you know, sort of gang raped by by the Russian soldiers at that time. So, and you know, that was kind of in the family psyche, but that was one of the motivations, I think, well, that's a lack of empathy, right? And we need to create a culture that values empathy and institutionalizes, you know, brings empathy into social structures, so that we're learning it all throughout the culture, right? So that that's, it's kind of like you can't wait till the to till that problem happens with one person kills the other, and say, well, MPC doesn't work, because we can't bring those people if there's a whole context that needs to be built, you know, around to head that off in the future, like and so there's there's, there's things that could be done to in bring in empathy into that situation, like you can have maybe family empathy circles with one side of the family where they're doing a family empathy circle where they can just talk about their concerns, so that they're learning the skill. Of mutual listening and developing that benefit. And then you do it with the different parties, or even just the people who are willing to on the different families, you know. So there's all kinds of different strategies of bringing them into that space. And, you know, it's, it's a whole big cultural shift. It sort of happens a lot of strategies, you know, could be the religious organization, if they're part of a that they're those organizations are holding, teaching this. So, yeah, so it's and then each, each situation is, you know, unique too. So
I'm so curious. This is kind of shifting a little bit, but you just made me think of this. You have a very practical approach, whereas a lot of people who study empathy are very much removed from the day to day of it. What recommendations would you have for academics for how to approach this?
It's the empathy circle, because it's a practical it's like, Bring, bring the discussion into an empathy circle, and role play it, you know, and actually show what you're talking about in an empathy service. It's sort of like the minimal. And this is, you know, if you're familiar with Carl Rogers, you know, he his whole person centered therapy was all based on active listening with the clients, and we articulated all the benefits, and all we're doing is bringing, taking it out of the therapeutic and putting it into the relational. And here's this structure is sort of the minimal viable structure that I see for for an empathic relationship. And you know, we can model it. So I would love to see the academics you know, sort of bring in their theories into an empathy circle and articulate specifically what they're talking about, and be part of the empathy circle to make Yeah, in fact, I already know, do you know William Ickes Ike's,
no, I can't see it. It's, yeah, it's blocking it out. Let's see. Oh, there we go. No, I am not familiar.
He does. He has a book on, on, yeah, he has, you know, the way he called it his is accurate empathy. So just in terms you just mentioned academics, I'm interviewing him next week. So, oh, he's one of the people working on this for 40 or 50 years, you know.
So, wow, oh my gosh, if I could be a fly on the wall for that conversation, it'll be recorded. Okay, I would love to hear what he has to say and what you can share with him as well. Okay, so I've got a goal, but I really do want to keep in contact with you, and I want to be informed by the real hands on work that you've been doing. Because as I get deeper into academia, I start to lose my practitioner lens. And that scares me. It really does, because I come from the practitioner world, where it's hands on, boots on the ground, like actually interacting with real people, and I don't ever want to lose that. So I just really appreciate the work that you're doing, and I appreciate everything that you've shared today. Is there anything else that you want to say before we I thought we're
going to be talking more exploring the definition of empathy, because I am looking working on this book now, just in the last couple I mean, I've been thinking about it, you know, writing a lot of stuff over the years, but I'm just saying that there's a need for a definition, a clear definition, and so I'm, I'm just love to talk about it, kind of run it by, kind of get feedback.
I'm happy to share with you what I have compiled. I've been going through a lot of different academic articles and just compiling their definitions, and then I actually wrote a paper. This was just for a class, so it's not something that's going to be published, but I can, I can send you my definition that I have compiled from all that I've read and what resonates with me? Yeah,
I'd love to hear your definition, because I'm it's like when I interviewed Dan Batson, or I think he wrote about it too. He says, you know, there's all these different definitions. You pretty much have to articulate what your definition is and stay with it. And, you know, so that's kind of what I'm looking at, yeah,
and where I'm at right now is trying to understand where empathy ends and compassion begins. Because they're within the literature and within even the scales that people use, even some of Dan Batson scales, they're very there's a lot of overlap. So he has an empathy scale. That's a state measure, and which means it's just like a list of five words, and it's like during this activity, I felt these five things or and so you just rate like from one to five, how much of warmth and how much of compassion you felt. And. Those, those are not empathy. You know, those are, those are affective state words that are not empathy words. So it's, it's interesting that even Dan Batson, I don't know that I 100% agree with his definitions as well, and the way it's been operationalized in the in the literature, and a lot of people listen to what he has to say. And so what concerns me is that a lot of researchers who are not really focused on empathy, they look and see, okay, who's doing it, and let's just use their measures, or let's use what they've used in the past. And so Davis's interpersonal reactivity index is one that is widely used, and the thing that concerns me about that is it ends up being a measure that includes how, how prone are you to get caught up in fantasy, which, yes, that is related to empathy, especially when you're talking about, like imaginative empathy, like being able to untether and launch yourself into somebody else's reality. Yes, so that is part of it. But then something that really concerns me is that one of his sub scales is emotional reactivity. So just it so it looks at like when, when there's a an emergency situation, you fall to pieces. And to me, that's not empathy, yeah. And so if we're calling it empathy, and then we're measuring it with something that's not empathy, then I mean the there's a cascade effect of, I was even thinking about this the other day and getting a little bit horrified by horrified by some brain scans that I was seeing. And it was like, this is where empathy happens in the brain. And it was a composite of all of these hundreds of different brain scans where they were measuring empathy. And I had to think, Well, what measures are you using? You know, yes, you're taking pictures of the brain, but it matters what questions you're asking the person in order to get at what their internal experiences. So we might be mapping it in the brain inappropriately, because we have a mismatch of definitions and scales within it. So I see that this problem is, it's something that needs to be addressed. And it's, it's very concerning.
Yeah, there's so many different definitions, and, yeah, it's just, it's very confusing. And I hear that that the ripple effects, you know, other research is basing on, on something that's inaccurate, so it's kind of effect all the way through. So
yeah, if you might don't mind, I'm going to share my screen with you. Let's see. I
wonder if I can very good, hold it next to an empathy circle, get two others and do an empathy circle and maybe discuss so, because that's how I'm sort of making it practical, is, you know, grounding it in the empathy circle is going to be central to what I'm the definition, and it's something anybody can take part in and then have an experience, map their experience onto the actual terminology.
Yeah, I think it. I think we need to get a lot of people involved in this conversation where we're talking about definitions, because the more, the more people we have in the room when we're having an empathy circle kind of experience, the more we'll be able to understand where our misunderstanding is rooted. To show you this, yeah, I wanted to show you this really quickly. I've been working on here are a bunch of different measures, and so I've been looking at what the pros and cons are of these different measures. And on this tab, I've actually been going through and trying to organize the questions that they have, and I've been looking at it by topic. So this is, like, empathic concern. This is emotional reactivity,
which I don't think is empathy. And even concern can be empathy so it's, yeah,
I so these are all um, self defined empathy measures, but they have things that are like attached to empathy, but they're not empathy, yeah? Um, there's fantasy, there's perspective taking. I'm happy to see that a lot of these questions are in perspective, taking so that I see as something to be happy about this. I love this part of it. Meet them where they are. There's only one question that even gets at that so far, and I have, you know, I'm not at the end of this research, but these ones are action oriented questions. These are, you know, active listening, which is kind of under the action oriented questions, cognitive understanding of emotions. These ones are focused on, kind of that emotion contagion. And
are these questions that they pose, or that, you
know, so these are all questions that I took from different Oh, okay, so these are empathy measures. Measures, and so I'm just trying to organize them, to try and understand what is out there, and so that I can, because I'm going to create my own measure that is going to be more reflective of the kind of empathy that you and I are discussing. Because I don't really see any of the measures out there talking about this really active, action oriented, reciprocal empathy that you're discussing.
I would love to have it tied in with, if you with the empathy circle is
somewhere, yeah, I would, you know, I'm going to keep working on this, because I just started, I started on this a few weeks ago, and I'd love to continue working on it, because there are many measures out there, and there are many definitions. And so I'm just scratching the surface on this. This is also interesting. Some of these are questions that are actually asking about social skills. Like, are I am sociable? That doesn't mean I'm empathetic, right? Yeah, good manners, that is not the same thing.
I really hate all those questions. I know, I know, yeah, it's, it's just, it just doesn't go anywhere, and it's just, and it can be read so many different ways and and actually, there's plenty of, I think, research that self assessment is in it very inaccurate. Anyway.
I know, I know that's, that's a part of the problem here. So I have, I have where I'm starting to look at other reports. So this is, there's not very many. These are the only two that I found so far. And I actually haven't even been able to find the actual measures. So I see that as also very problematic, because 95% of them are self report measures, whereas you need to get at what are other people saying, You need to like, a 360 view of, how do I see myself as an empathic person? But then how do other people see me in the way that I'm engaging with them? Because I might see myself as a highly empathic person, but that might just be because I want to believe that about myself. Well, in
the empathy circle, the the measurement is by the Speaker, if they feel heard or not. Yes. So the speaker, every time the listener, is reflecting back their understanding, the speaker is assessing whether they feel heard their satisfaction, you know. So that's sort of the the test there. And
so far, I have not found any academic measure for anything like that. And so I wonder if it's a matter of, you know, if we need to work together to create something where it would be, and maybe we could even use your empathy circles as a way to test this, to like, operationalize this and and get more of like, an academic view of how this is working, if we could ask people after the fact, how much so, I know there is one. Let's see. There's a self report measure that is similar to this.
There's some that Rogers did to karkov. He had in terms of active listening, he had like five or six different levels of how the active listening works that he would
How do you it was Rogers and car cough.
It was knows her, cough, empathy. Let me see if I can.
I wonder if I have that in this other you know, I'm going to stop sharing so I can find this other document that I've been working from. Because I that those names sound familiar.
Is it to look it
up? Karak with a K?
I think this is C
okay, I yeah, I haven't come across that one yet. Let me look over here too.
Okay, I'm putting in two links. The first one is the empathy Summit. You're welcome to speak at our empathy Summit. It's that's the last one we did, and
that was the one I know I was communicating with you on LinkedIn about that, and it ended up that I wasn't able to to join for that. We
have a we're doing it again, January 4, and then April 5, and then we're going to be doing it for at least, maybe ongoing on the empathy circle, so you can you're also welcome to speak at some time. Yeah, that would be really, really exciting. And the second list link there is, that's the karkopf his scale for assessing facilitative interpersonal counseling. So that's
okay, so empathy summit, I had pulled up the wrong link. I I clicked on the one that was just empathy center, okay, car cuff, okay, I'm going to look them up. Um, because I have not come across this before. So this is really, really helpful.
Yeah, he was a contemporary of Rogers, and they worked together. And he, he was sort of focusing on the work that Rogers did, you know, the active listening and and how it was in the therapeutic context. Like, how do you measure that. So he came up with some, oh,
that's great. But has it been so this is really focused on that therapeutic setting, okay,
so nice to take it outside of that, put it into the context of the empathy circle or something, yeah, which is peer to peer, you know, taking it out of the professional, putting it into the just relational,
okay, I'm just going to look him up really quick, car cough, because I have access to databases, archof
and empathy, scale,
helping dimensions and occupational therapy. Okay, yeah, I don't need to take your time with looking up
there's another one. I actually put together a list of papers on this old I was in that phase too, just all the literature that that's actually, it's my empathy lit review Google site that I created. I just put the link in, and that's car cough and trucks, some links. Oh, okay, there's all kinds of other articles and books and people there on that site.
Yeah, we should definitely be sharing with each other, because there's no need for us to do this work in a vacuum. We should, we should work together and, you know, share everything that we learn about it. I'm definitely in that world of wanting to just make make the world a better place and help people to get along better.
Yeah, we're really looking at the whole and empathy movement, and I think it's really time for it. You know, within the political sphere, there's, there's some, you know, on empathy. But I think what we're doing is really making it more than just an academic study. It's like, how do we apply this and really trans, you know, make that value? Yeah,
that's my value with academia, it's, it's so much of so what? Why are we even doing this? Because we in a lot of the different contexts that I've not just empathy, but just academia in general, we study, we study people. So within the social sciences, we study people, and then we write about it to this very narrow group of people, and nobody else outside either has access to it or even can understand what we're saying. And so it ends up being like our goals are to publish and publish and publish and publish, but it's just to these like 10 people who care about the topic that we're researching, and they read our stuff, and then they write back to us, and then it's just this conversation about among academics, and we're not connecting with people who can actually benefit from the work that we're doing. And I see that as fundamentally flawed,
yeah, and I do see that a lot of times there are studies that come out, and then there's the science writers who take that and then they turn it into a more accessible, you know, article, you know about the study. So I just see that process all the time. And then it does influence the, you know, the policy makers. I think that the policy makers, they want some, you know, something to base their decisions on and then they reference the academic. So it does have, you know, some, you know, ripple effects like that. I think that just especially, you know, for, you know, politicians and so forth, they're the people who make the policies that they're they're going to reference that. But I think, yeah, I agree there's can be more it could be done, that it's even more practical,
yeah, and that sometimes feels kind of impractical as well, where it's okay, it's policy. But how does that affect me and my daily life and my interactions with other people? And yes, it does affect us, and I'm not going to downplay that, but it's I think that we could, we could be better about translating the work that we do to to be something that is tangible. And I think what you're doing with the empathy circles is actually teaching people the skills for how to apply empathy. That's
very reproducible. Yeah, it's very reproducible too, that anybody can. We're trying to make it as accessible as possible. And the goal is to teach all 8 billion people in the world how to take part in an empathy circle, you know. And so if there's any kind of a study that kind of helps, you know, articulate something you know about the empathy circle, it helps to strengthen it, you know, just like that article in Scientific America. But, you know, I think that's really helped give us real credibility. Bucha talked about our empathy circle with the policing community and also with the empathy and all those activities are based on our work with empathy circles, because we did empathy circles with the police, you know, community as well as the empathy tent. You know, we're bringing the political left and right into empathy circles in the tent. So
that's very cool. I have so many thoughts that I want to explore with you, and I think let's, let's set up another time that we can talk about this, because I have, I've been looking into a lot of different ways to measure the outcomes of these kinds of interactions. And I think that, like you said, the more it can be studied academically, it's going to add more credibility to the work that you're doing as well. And it, you know, and it's going to, I just think that we just need to stay connected, and we need to connect with more people within academic as well.
I'm all for that. Glad to meet anytime. Do an empathy circle have more discussions, especially about I'm looking for, also for a space to talk about the definition, so I can get clear on it. And, you know, kind of hear the pros and cons, the different ideas and, okay,
yeah, well, let's set that up. Okay, and I have a few friends who who are academics as well, who are studying this that maybe I've been trying to see if I can bring them together to have this conversation. I hadn't envisioned it being an empathy circle, but I can definitely see the benefit, like I had asked them if they would be willing to answer my questions, like for my own research. But I can definitely see the benefit of of all of us working together to come to an a shared understanding of how are we even operate? How are we defining and operationalizing this word that we are all calling empathy, but we all seem to believe is something a little bit different.
Are we having seen different facets of it? Because what Sam was talking about, I really got what he was saying, and I agree with it. And, you know, so he's but he's speaking of one facet of it. So, yeah. So
yeah. And the interesting thing, the reason I wanted to bring him into this, in this conversation is because in I've read, I think, three of their books at this point, and I've never seen the word empathy. But when I'm reading it, I'm like, this is so important. This mindset of seeing people as equally human is a very important part of what we're getting at here.
They're basing their work by on Martin Buber work. I thou,
yeah, they talk about that. In which Book did they? I think they talk about it in all of them. But yeah, that's, that's definitely something philosophically that underpins what they're working on. Okay, so I will let you go, and let's just keep in touch and send
me some dates and times, and we'll set that up. Hey, thank you so much.
