Empathy Lessons

Recent Posts - page 2

• Review: The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang

  By Lou Agosta on January 12, 2020

  

  Esmé Weijung Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays (Gray Wolf Press, 2019: 210 pp.) are an articulate and clarion cry to bring empathy to an arena in mental health where it has been missing. My take on it? Ms Wang seems… Read More ›

• Top 10 Empathy Trends for 2020

  By Lou Agosta on January 3, 2020

  

  10. Empathy is the new love. You know how in fashion gray is the new black? Same idea. Empathy is the new love. What people really want is to be “gotten” for who they authentically are as a possibility. In… Read More ›

• Top ten empathy gifts for the holidays

  By Lou Agosta on December 23, 2019

  

  How is Christmas like a day at the job? Give up? You get to do all the work; and the big guy in the suit gets all the credit. Pause for laugh. [Note: if I have to explain the joke, it is… Read More ›

• Empathy tip: Empathy is a dial, not an on-off switch

  By Lou Agosta on December 10, 2019

  

  People treat empathy as if it were an “on-off” switch. Turn it “on” for friends and family; turn it “off” for the “bad guys”. Turn empathy “on” for coworkers, customers, and insiders; turn empathy “off” for competitors, for compliance, and… Read More ›

• Compassion fatigue: A radical proposal to overcome it

  By Lou Agosta on November 17, 2019

  

  One of the criticisms of empathy is that is leaves you vulnerable to compassion fatigue. The helping professions are notoriously exposed to burn out and empathic distress. Well-intentioned helpers end up as emotional basket cases. There is truth to it,… Read More ›

• Review: Building Empathy in a Fractured World: The War for Kindness by Jamil Zaki

  By Lou Agosta on November 5, 2019

  

  Short review: two thumbs up. Zaki and his work are the real deal. Zaki “gets it” as regards empathy. The most important take-away: empathy is trainable, teachable, malleable, acquirable, and an expandable competence and skill rather than an unchangeable personality… Read More ›

• The one-minute empathy training (no kidding!)

  By Lou Agosta on October 27, 2019

  

  People want to know: Can empathy be taught? People complain and authentically struggle: I just don’t get it—or have it. In spite of the substantial affirmative evidence already cited, the debate continues. The short answer is: Yes, empathy can be… Read More ›

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