Time was when it was a bold statement of the obvious that reading a good book expands one’s empathy. It’s summer in the city of Chicago. People are going to the beach, the park, leaving town for the wilderness or… Read More ›
empathic responsiveness
Review: Extreme Empathy [I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy by Cris Beam]
In the book I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy (Houghton Mifflin, 251 pp. (26 US$)), Cris Beam makes empathy present. She brings forth empathy her engagement with difficult cases that challenge our empathy, including her own conflicts. In the… Read More ›
Top four (4) empathy breakdowns – and how to overcome them
Empathy breaks down into emotional contagion. Empathy breaks down in conformity and the closing off of possibilities for flourishing. Empathy breaks down in projection. Empathy breaks down in devaluing and cynical language, in which our humanity literally gets lost in translation. These are not the only ways that empathy fails, but they are the Big Four. How to overcome them?
Top 30 Empathy Lessons for Life, the book
This book contains some thirty (30) empathy lessons for life. A key empathy lesson that explicitly addresses empathy training: remove the resistance to empathy—obstacles such as cynicism, shame, guilt, aggression, narcissism, devaluing language, and so on—and empathy spontaneously shows up, comes… Read More ›
Top Ten (10) Empathy Lessons Trending in the New Year 2018
Here are Empathy Lessons for the New Year ahead. You know what would really interest me? To hear from you (dear reader) what is your empathy lesson? Whether inspired by this list or your own experience over the winter holiday… Read More ›
Historical Empathy and the 2nd Amendment: About Guns
Putting ourselves in the situation of people who lived years ago in a different historical place and time is a challenge to our empathy. It requires historical empathy. How do we get “our heads around” a world that was fundamentally… Read More ›
Empathy Lesson One: Empathy is Not Compassion
Most people think that empathy is compassion; and, heavens knows, the world needs more compassion. But empathy and compassion are distinct.
