Empathy is oxygen for the soul (see Chapter 6: Evidence-based empathy training). So, if you are short of breath due to life stress, get the expanded empathy delivered in this book. Just as the body needs oxygen to live physically, the soul needs empathy to live emotionally.
My empathy lessons started when I was about four years old. My Mom would tell me bedtime stories. Right before bed, she would weave a narrative out of the significant events of a day in the life of an “on the go,” four-year-old boy.
As a young man, Arthur J. Clark heard Carl Rogers speak and was inspired to devote his life’s work to applying empathy in education, counseling, and talk therapy.
A new year and a new virus variant? Being cynical and resigned is easy, and the empathy training is to drive out cynicism and resignation – then empathy naturally comes forth. If given half a chance. People want to be empathic. The prediction is that with a rigorous and critical empathy (and getting a very high percent of the population vaccinated), we are equal to the challenge.
First, these recommendations are about getting back your power—or at least some of your power—in the face of bullying. Sometimes that looks like making a tactical retreat, much as one might dislike doing so, in order to reestablish boundaries and integrity. The idea is to de-escalate the potential confrontation. What de-escalation looks like is different according to the situation.
Professor Turkle, Sherry, launches a Jeremiad – remember the Prophet Jeremiah? – against buzzing, beeping, interrupting devices, which give us acquired attention deficit, and carries her concerns in the direction of online therapy. If empathy is being copresent with another person, where is the empathy online? Find out in the engaging conversation between Lou and Arnon about Sherry’s penetrating and incisive work!
Cross the street away from the neighbor to “down regulate” your empathy, and experience less empathic distress; and cross the street towards your neighbor to expand your empathy in the direction of creating an inclusive community of persons, who recognize the value of cooperation.
Empathy is never needed more than when it seems there is no time for it. Empathy is never needed more than when it seems the budget does not allow for it. Empathy is never needed more than when the cynicism and resignation about life, whether in the family or the corporate jungle, are so thick you can’t catch your breath.
Even in politics empathy is always empathy. However, politics brings along a whole new set of questions, issues, and challenges by with which empathy is confronted and to which empathy gets applied.
A rumor of empathy learns about a report of an alleged example of empathy in the work, actions, or conversation of a person or organization. I then reach out to the person and talk to them in detail about the work they are doing to confirm or disconfirm the validity of the rumor.
Empathy Lessons 