Good morning, everybody. It is 4 a .m. How are
you doing this morning? So, the only reason that
I haven't been able to do a recording in the
last three days was because I was studying for
a test, and let me tell you, I aced it. So, moving
on with what we were talking about before with
empathy. We previously covered empathy and defined
it as a feeling with someone. As feeling with
someone. Being able to put yourself in their
place as if you were them and feeling those feelings.
Okay? There are several different elements that
make up empathy. There are also, however, different
types of empathy. Right? That have been defined
by psychologists. These are cognitive, emotional,
and compassionate empathy. In today's podcast,
we're going to cover these. As briefly as I can,
I'm going to cover each one of them in segments.
Again, this is Thoughts If It Were You, Food
for Thought by Neogentrix. And let's go ahead
and begin and start with cognitive empathy. Also
known as perspective taking. It's not really
what most of us would think of as empathy at
all. Cognitive empathy is basically being able
to put yourself into someone else's place and
see their perspective. It is a useful skill,
particularly in the negotiations, for example,
or for managers. It enables you to put yourself
in someone else's shoes, but without necessarily
engaging with their emotions. It does not, however,
really fit with the definition of empathy as
feeling with being a much more rational and logical
process. Cognitive empathy is empathy by thought
rather than by feeling, so this makes this just
as effective. However, a dark side to cognitive
empathy, it is possible to show cognitive empathy
without having any fellow feeling or sympathy
with it. It is fair to say that most of us would
understand this fellow feeling to be a key part
of empathy. Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional
Intelligence, notes in his blog that torturers
would need to have good cognitive empathy to
work out how best to hurt someone, but without
having any sympathy towards them whatsoever.
And this, in fact, is a thing. Hold up, hold
up, hold up, hold up. I can understand that you,
at this point, you're like, well, with that in
mind, cognitive empathy doesn't seem like empathy
and it's not exactly a good thing or it's cold
-hearted. Well, in reality, it does actually
help doctors and nurses keep them from becoming
too attached to their patients and overreacting
to the point where they can't help you. However,
it also helps them balance out. their emotional
empathy as well emotional empathy is when you
quite literally feel the other person's emotions
alongside them as if you had caught the emotions
as well emotional empathy is also known as personal
distress or emotion contagion this is closer
to the usual understanding of the word empathy
but more emotional Okay. Emotional empathy is
probably the first type of empathy that any of
us feel as children. It can be seen when a mother
smiles at her baby and the baby catches her emotion
and then smiles back. Less happily, perhaps,
a baby will often start to cry. And if he or
she hears another baby crying, especially, or
if the others hear them, they start crying too.
Keep in mind that with emotional empathy, it
can also be good and bad. Okay. Emotional empathy
is good because it means that we can readily
understand and feel other people's emotions.
This is vital for those in a caring profession
such as doctors and nurses, as I mentioned before.
But to be able to respond to their patients appropriately,
this is also a major issue. This also means that
we can respond to friends and others when they
are distressed. However, emotional empathy is
bad in the sense that because it is possible
to become overwhelmed by these emotions and therefore
unable to respond, This is also known as empathy
overload. Those with a tendency to become overloaded
or overwhelmed need to work on their self -regulation
and particularly their self -control so that
they can become better at managing their own
emotions. Good self -control helps doctors and
nurses to avoid possible burnouts from empathizing
too much. There is a danger, however, like I
mentioned earlier when I talked about the good.
that they can become hardened and not respond
appropriately. There have been several cases
in the UK, such as South Staffordshire, where
nurses and others were accused of being uncaring.
This may have been a possible result of overprotection
against empathy overload. In which cases, it's
not entirely a bad thing, but considering the
number of people that they see daily, I can understand.
Moving on, compassionate empathy. Finally, compassionate
empathy is what we usually understand by empathy.
Feeling someone's pain and taking action to help.
As the name suggests, compassionate empathy is
consistent with what we usually understand by
compassion. Like sympathy, compassion is about
feeling concern for someone, but with an additional
move towards action. mitigate the problem compassionate
empathy is the type of empathy that is usually
most most appropriate but as a general rule people
who want or need your empathy don't just need
you to understand okay which is cognitive empathy
and they certainly don't need you to just feel
their pain or worse you know to burst into tears
alongside them which is emotional empathy instead
they need you to understand and sympathize with
what they are going through and crucially either
take or help them to take action to resolve the
problem, which is compassionate empathy. That's
basically the whole gist of that. Then you have
to find the balance, okay? Cognitive empathy
can often be considered under -emotional. It
involves insufficient feelings and therefore
perhaps too much logical analysis. It may be
perceived as an unsympathetic response by those
in distress. OK, as for emotional empathy, by
contrast, is over emotional. That's one of those
things that we mentioned earlier. Too much emotion
or feeling can be unhelpful. And I will cover
how to manage your emotions. Don't worry. Emotions
are very primitive. Feeling strong emotions,
especially distress, takes us back to childhood,
more or less by definition, that makes us less
able to cope and certainly less able to think
and apply reason to the situation. It's very
hard to help anyone else if you are overwhelmed
by your own emotions. So, with that being said,
in exercising compassionate empathy, we find
the right balance between logic and emotion.
We can feel another person's pain as if it was
happening to us and therefore express the appropriate
amount of sympathy. At the same time, we can
also remain in control of our own emotions and
apply reason to the situation. Okay? This means
that we can make better decisions and provide
appropriate support to them where and when it
is actually necessary. Okay? And I point this
out specifically because it's one of those things
that people tend to overlook. Alright? So with
that, I am finished with covering empathy. Next,
we're going to cover understanding others and
how to manage your emotions.