148. Seeing Deeply: Exploring Empathy from How to Know a Person by David Brooks

[00:00:00] Welcome to Episode 148, which is a girl Take the Lead, somebody.

[00:00:14] And as somebody, there's a shorter episode that builds on a previous topic like our episode

[00:00:19] today or it can be a quick inspiration.

[00:00:23] And I'm your host, Yolanda Canny.

[00:00:25] In our previous episode with Bernadette Smith, we talked about diversity, equity and inclusion

[00:00:31] and covered a variety of topics.

[00:00:34] One of them was about empathy and sympathy.

[00:00:37] While we've covered that topic with Renee Brown's book, Atlas of the Heart, I found

[00:00:42] another which you might find interesting.

[00:00:45] David Brooks' book, How to Know A Person, The Art of Seeing Others Deeply And Being

[00:00:53] Deeply Seen.

[00:00:55] And in today's episode, I'll concentrate on his chapter called The Art of Empathy.

[00:01:02] David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and a writer for the Atlantic

[00:01:07] and appears regularly on PBS NewsHour.

[00:01:10] He said several bestsellers including the Second Mountain, the Road to Character, and

[00:01:16] the Social Animal.

[00:01:18] The jacket cover of How to Know A Person Says This.

[00:01:22] There's one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community,

[00:01:30] organization or society.

[00:01:33] The ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen.

[00:01:38] To accurately know another person to let them feel valued, heard and understood.

[00:01:45] Sounds wonderful.

[00:01:48] And here are the questions Brooks poses for all of us.

[00:01:52] If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them?

[00:01:59] What parts of a person's story should you pay attention to?

[00:02:04] What kind of conversation should you have?

[00:02:06] And we talked a little bit about this in our series about listening for Candor with

[00:02:10] Peter and Sue, who told us about listening with sincerity.

[00:02:16] But like we've said before, many times in this podcast, we can get in our own way by

[00:02:22] being defensive.

[00:02:24] And here are some examples that Brooks provides.

[00:02:27] Avoidance.

[00:02:29] He states that this is usually about fear.

[00:02:33] Emotions and relationships have hurt us.

[00:02:36] So we minimize them.

[00:02:39] People who are avoidant feel very comfortable when the conversation stays superficial.

[00:02:46] Deprovation.

[00:02:48] At the root of this, our beliefs like my needs won't be met.

[00:02:53] Which is closely related to I'm not worthy.

[00:02:56] I know this one pretty well.

[00:02:59] They often carry the idea that there is some deep flaw within us.

[00:03:04] That if other people knew it, they would run away.

[00:03:08] When we're treated badly, we are likely to blame ourselves.

[00:03:13] And I do a lot of bio and Katie work to turn these beliefs around.

[00:03:16] I'll have it in the show notes for you.

[00:03:20] Overreactivity which is based on hyperactive threat detection system, they can overreact

[00:03:26] the things and fail to understand why they did so.

[00:03:30] They can see neutral faces as angry ones or ambivalent situations as menacing.

[00:03:39] Passive aggressive.

[00:03:40] Oh my gosh, I can remember the day when my daughter told me, Ma, you are being so passive

[00:03:46] aggressive.

[00:03:47] And I was like, what?

[00:03:49] And I realized I learned that way of being from a master.

[00:03:54] It is a form of emotional manipulation, subtle power play to extract guilt and affection.

[00:04:00] And it's a way to sidestep direct communication by a person who fears conflict who has trouble

[00:04:07] dealing with negative emotions.

[00:04:10] No, that one too well.

[00:04:13] You may remember in our episodes about internal family systems, IFS, we learned there are

[00:04:19] parts of us that served us at one time.

[00:04:22] So these defenses work for us and help us defend ourselves.

[00:04:28] And if you remember, we made the point that there's no bad parts.

[00:04:32] But if we don't heal these wounds, these are problems.

[00:04:37] Get the way of being defensive.

[00:04:40] One, we can be in warrior posture perpetually being the first to retaliate.

[00:04:46] Two, we don't control these postures.

[00:04:51] They control us.

[00:04:53] And three, these models get outdated.

[00:04:57] They can be obsolete by the time we hit adulthood which leads to conceptual blindness, which

[00:05:03] we all can have.

[00:05:06] People trying to grapple with the adult legacies of their childhood wounds need friends who

[00:05:11] will prod them to see their situation accurately.

[00:05:15] They need friends that remind them, the most important part of your life is ahead of you,

[00:05:22] not behind you.

[00:05:24] I'm proud to know you and proud of everything you've accomplished and will accomplish.

[00:05:32] This is introspection, isn't the best way to repair ourselves.

[00:05:38] Communication is.

[00:05:39] You can see that right at first I was like, whoa, like if we have trauma resulting from

[00:05:45] a relationship going within, won't necessarily change the situation because it's a relationship

[00:05:52] involving someone else.

[00:05:55] Quote from the book, the problem is that a lot of people don't know what empathy really

[00:06:00] is.

[00:06:01] They think it's an easy emotion, you open up your heart and you experience the scusho fellow

[00:06:07] feeling with another person.

[00:06:11] By this definition, empathy feels simple, natural and automatic.

[00:06:17] I feel for you but he says this is not quite right.

[00:06:23] Empathy is a set of social and emotional skills.

[00:06:27] These skills are a bit like athletic skills.

[00:06:30] Some people are more naturally talented at empathy than others, but everybody improves

[00:06:36] with training.

[00:06:39] Here are the three skills he says we can improve with training.

[00:06:43] One, mirroring.

[00:06:45] The act of accurately catching the emotion of the person in front of you kind of like

[00:06:50] the way Melody Wilde talks about sensitive strivers in her book Trust Yourself and

[00:06:56] we covered this episode 82.

[00:06:59] People who are good at mirroring have the ability to finally distinguish between different

[00:07:06] emotional states.

[00:07:07] Two, the second skill is mentalizing which comes from relying on our own experience and

[00:07:16] memory and we project our memories onto another situation.

[00:07:22] For example, we don't see a woman crying.

[00:07:27] We see a woman who has suffered a professional setback and a public humiliation.

[00:07:33] Three, the third empathy skill is caring.

[00:07:39] His example of this is that con artists are very good at reading people's emotions but

[00:07:47] we don't call them empathetic because they don't have genuine concern for the people

[00:07:54] they are reading.

[00:07:56] If mentalizing is me projecting my experience onto you, caring involves getting out of

[00:08:03] my experience as an understanding that what you need may be very different from what I

[00:08:10] would need in that situation and that's the hard part.

[00:08:15] The world he says is full of people who are nice.

[00:08:19] There are many fewer who are effectively kind.

[00:08:25] If you've ever wondered if your high or low in your empathic listening, Brooks provides

[00:08:32] the barren Cohen statements that can help you discern that and all that in the show

[00:08:38] notes for you.

[00:08:40] I'm going to guess though that if you're listening to this podcast and enjoying it,

[00:08:45] you're more than likely a high empath and are usually aware of the subtleties in any situation.

[00:08:53] Sense, tastes, emotional tremors in the room and can locate the person who is feeling upset

[00:09:00] and left out.

[00:09:02] You make people feel seen.

[00:09:06] Some practices Brooks gives us to work on our empathic skills.

[00:09:13] One, contact theory.

[00:09:15] I read this as creating a shared purpose as we mentioned in our episode with Peter and

[00:09:22] Sue about listening with Kander.

[00:09:25] Two, draw it with your eyes closed.

[00:09:30] In other words, take the time to observe others around us like the way actors do when they're

[00:09:37] learning a character.

[00:09:40] Three, literature.

[00:09:44] Researchers have found that people who read are more empathic.

[00:09:49] We get enmeshed in the emotional life of the characters.

[00:09:53] I know what I do when I really hate it when my favorite characters are not treated well.

[00:10:00] Four, emotion spotting or mood reader.

[00:10:07] Leaders who are good at recognizing and expressing emotions have a huge effect on those around

[00:10:14] them.

[00:10:15] Research has found that employees whose supervisors score low on emotional intelligence

[00:10:22] feel inspired about 25% of the time, whereas employees with supervisors with high emotional

[00:10:30] intelligence feel inspired about 75% of the time.

[00:10:35] And five, suffering.

[00:10:39] There are certain things you simply have to live through in order to understand.

[00:10:45] Think about someone you know and maybe it's even you who you think is very empathic.

[00:10:52] Many times those people have been through hard times, but were not broken by them.

[00:10:59] They made themselves more vulnerable and open to life.

[00:11:04] These things have given them understanding and credibility without our wound where would

[00:11:11] our power be.

[00:11:14] So Brooke says he's trying to emphasize how physical emotions are.

[00:11:21] That becoming more empathetic is not some intellectual enterprise.

[00:11:28] It is training our body to respond in open and interactive ways.

[00:11:35] And I'll leave you with one more interesting point.

[00:11:39] Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist says in her book How Emotions Are Made that most

[00:11:46] of us think that in everyday life, the things you see and hear influence what you feel.

[00:11:55] But it's mostly the other way around what you feel alters your sight and hearing all

[00:12:04] of this from just one chapter you guys.

[00:12:09] I think we'll be coming back to this book.

[00:12:12] There's a chapter about energy we bring into a room.

[00:12:15] I cannot wait to cover with you.

[00:12:20] Next week, Andrea Wilson once joins us to talk about her Blue Fairy Foundation and the

[00:12:26] recent launch of a book she edited called I'd Rather Be Dead than Death.

[00:12:33] The book is the journal of Adrian Wilson, a teenage poet, artist and Andrea's beloved sister.

[00:12:44] For her death from liver cancer at the age of 15, Adrian expressed her funny bright

[00:12:51] soul in this prolific journal.

[00:12:54] We'll post this episode on Monday, April 8th which would have been Adrian's birthday.

[00:13:05] Thanks for joining us today and talk to you soon.

[00:13:08] Bye.