https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw
Kris notes. omggggggg
What is empathy? And why is it very different from sympathy?
Empathy drives CONNECTION.- Putting yourself in the other persons shoes
Sympathy drives DISCONNECTION.- Understand from your own perspective
4 qualities of empathy:
- Perspective taking- the ability to take the perspective of another person, or recognize their perspective as their truth.
- Staying out of judgement- which is not easy when most of us enjoy it :E
- Recognizing emotion in other people
- Communicating
Empathy is feeling WITH people. Kinda when someone is in a deep hole and they say, im stuck, its dark, im overwhelmed. Another person notices, goes out of their way, and says: “I know what its like down here, and you’re not alone”- your ready to feel with this person, connect with this person, you can relate to this person. No judgement. Being sensitive to all non verbal cues. Experiencing the feelings of another. Emotion.
Sympathy is: YIKES! It’s dark down there! It’s bad huh? Im sorry! That sucks! Lots of judgement, directly, or indirectly. “I hope you feel better”. Overlook subtle signs and only see the surface meaning. Understanding the suffering of another. You Acknowledge anothers circumstances. You want a sandwich? LOL(this wouldn’t be funny in real life but this cartoon is) Sympathy is basically feeling sorry for someone, how does this really help? It doesn’t. That’s why it drives disconnection in a subtle way.
Empathy is a CHOICE, and more importantly a VULNERABLE choice. In order to connect with that person, that person needs to connect with something in themselves that KNOWS THAT FEELING. Sometimes this is not possible.
Rarely, if ever, does am emphatic response start with “at least”. When someone shares something with us that is incredibly painful, sometimes we put a silver lining around it. We all have done this.
“I had a miscarriage”- Not empathy response: At least you know you can get pregnant.
“I think my marriage is falling apart” – At least you have a marriage.
“My kid is getting kicked out of school” – at least your other kid is an A student.
These examples are spot on. How many times have we done this in our lives? Uh oh.
One of the things we do sometimes in the face of very difficult conversations, is we try and make things better. If I share something difficult with someone else, id rather that person say to me: “whew, I don’t even know what to say right now, im just so glad you told me” because the TRUTH IS: rarely can a response make someone feel better. Sometimes saying nothing is better. WHAT MAKES SOMETHING BETTER IS CONNECTION. WOOOO!!!!! BRENE DID IT AGAIN! BLEW MY MIND! THIS IS SOOOOOOOO TRUE!
I know I have felt these exact situations countless times in my life. I can clearly tell the difference between empathy and sympathy now. I typically rolled my eyes at sympathetic responses as they did not really help me. This certainly drove disconnection in a subtle way. I knew the other person was trying to help, but usually didn’t. I could often tell the times when I knew someone could relate to me. Several times in my life these opportunities built strong CONNECTION. Empathy drives CONNECTION. This is so abundantly clear. Just wow.
