<div dir="ltr">Thanks for the video, Natalia (I also enjoy RSA videos). At the risk of seeming that I lack compassion (I hope not!), I have some thoughts on it. :)<br><br>To me it seems like Brené Brown is conflating empathy with compassion and/or understanding, and is completely mis-defining sympathy in order to prop up empathy as a better alternative. (This makes me think this is a technique for argumentative fallacy, maybe "reverse straw man"? "Begging the question"?)<br><br>Specifically, these are the example conversations she uses for sympathy:<br><ul><li>"I just had a miscarriage."</li><ul><li>"At least you know you can get pregnant."</li></ul><li>"I think my marriage is falling apart."</li><ul><li>"At least you have a marriage."</li></ul><li>"John is getting kicked out of school."</li><ul><li>"At least he is an A-student."</li></ul></ul><p>I'm not sure that sounds like sympathy to me (<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sympathy" target="_blank">wiktionary defines sympathy</a> and empathy as basically the same thing, where the former is weaker than the latter). Is a silver lining the defining aspect of sympathy?<br></p><p>In any case, the risk expressed in <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/when_empathy_hurts_compassion_can_heal" target="_blank">the article I linked is</a> that empathizing can lead to poorer decision-making (bias) and emotional burnout on the part of the empathizer:</p><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><p>Negative emotions did not disappear after the loving-kindness
training; it’s just that the participants were less likely to feel
distressed themselves. According to Klimecki and her colleagues, this
suggests that the training allowed participants to stay in touch with
the negative emotion from a calmer mindset. “Compassion is a good
antidote,” says Klimecki. “It allows us to connect to others’ suffering,
without being too distressed.”</p>
<p>The main takeaway is that we can shape our own emotional reactions,
and can alter the way we feel and respond to certain situations. In
other words, says Klimecki, “Our emotions are not set in stone.” </p></blockquote></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 3:09 PM, Natalia Harateh <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nharateh@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">nharateh@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Thanks for sharing, Max! I’ll definitely read the article. If I can add to the discussion, here’s a <a href="https://youtu.be/1Evwgu369Jw" target="_blank">short 2:53 min video explaining empathy in a way that resonated with me</a>.<div><br></div><div>TL;DR:</div><div><br></div><div><i>What is the best way to ease someone's pain and suffering? In this beautifully animated RSA Short, Dr Brené Brown reminds us that we can only create a genuine empathic connection if we are brave enough to really get in touch with our own fragilities.</i><br>
<br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div class="h5"><div>On 23 Feb 2017, at 23:53, Max Binder <<a href="mailto:mbinder@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">mbinder@wikimedia.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="m_7409860427988372267Apple-interchange-newline"></div></div><div><div><div class="h5"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>I ran across an article claiming that empathizing with others on their issues can be a slippery slope to bias, or at the very least unnecessary absorption of another person's issues and feelings. The article was political in nature, so I won't post it, but it did make some claims that I thought to research.<br><br></div>That let me to this article on compassion as an alternative to empathy:<br><a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/when_empathy_hurts_compassion_can_heal" target="_blank">http://greatergood.berkeley.<wbr>edu/article/item/when_empathy_<wbr>hurts_compassion_can_heal</a><br><br></div>I can't attest for the reputation of the site linked, but it makes some interesting arguments. I thought those arguments might be relevant since we often operate in an environment with, and espouse values using, words like "empathy." <br><br></div>TL;DR:<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px 0px 15px;outline:none 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">we can better cope with others’ negative emotions by strengthening our own compassion skills, which the researchers define as “feeling concern for another’s suffering and desiring to enhance that individual’s welfare.”</div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px 0px 15px;outline:none 0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">“Empathy is really important for understanding others’ emotions very deeply, but there is a downside of empathy when it comes to the suffering of others,” says Olga Klimecki, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany and the lead author of the study. “When we share the suffering of others too much, our negative emotions increase. It carries the danger of an emotional burnout.”</div></blockquote></div></div></div>
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