Tag: consciousconnections

Empathy: The Essentials of Emotional Engagement

Posted on by andrew

Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Grace Cheng offers a primer on empathy – what it is, why it’s important and how to cultivate it.

 

To me, empathy is the ability to emotionally understand what others are feeling, seeing things from their points of view and putting yourself in their situations. Empathy is one of the building blocks of a healthy relationship. Like other life skills, empathy can be learned and developed. Having the ability to be more empathetic can benefit our lives in many areas. We are able to connect with and understand our spouses, friends, families, coworkers and even strangers at a much higher level when we master how to be more empathetic.

 

Empathy is a powerful tool that helps maintain social order and cooperation. It allows people to understand and relate to others. Empathy can be used to build intimacy, trust and belonging with people. It is also the feeling that makes it hard to see others suffer.

 

Empathy often encourages self-sacrificing behaviors, and empathy-based kindness has been shown to increase cooperation and forgiveness, form stronger relationships, decrease aggression and judgment, and improve our mental and physical health.

 

You can tell if someone is an empathetic person by observing the following behaviours:

 

  • They are good at listening to what others are saying.
  • People are sharing their problems and expressing their feelings with them.
  • They are good at understanding how other people are feeling.
  • They often think about how other people feel.
  • Other people go to them to seek advice.
  • They often feel overwhelmed by tragic news and events.
  • They offer to help others when they are suffering.
  • They deeply care about others.

 

Here are some tips to become more empathetic:

 

1. Make listening to a top priority

 

Listening is particularly important because most of us speak much more than we listen. Empathy starts when you intentionally listen for emotions, so try to pay close attention to the signals people are giving out, because they can indicate what people are feeling. Before you connect with what others are feeling, you must recognize their emotional expressions. Active listening can strengthen your understanding in being more empathetic.

 

The following are steps to becoming a better listener: 

 

  1. Give your undivided attention to conversations: This means not using smartphones, tablets, or laptops when people are speaking. It means actively listening to what they have to say and making eye contact with them. 
  2. Let the other person speak: This means giving them time to finish what they have to say and not interrupting their conversations.
  3. Summarize your understanding back to the other person: Once the other person has finished talking, summarize your understanding back to them and verify whether you understood what they were trying to say.
  4. Ask the other person some insightful and relevant questions: Use your curiosity and ask nonjudgmental questions to better understand their perspectives, thoughts and feelings.
  5. Allow the other person to express their emotions: Let them talk from their heart and share exactly how they feel. This can often give them insights and help them discover their own solutions. 

 

2. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes

 

It is quite easy for all of us to comment on and judge others. Some of us have undoubtedly accused others of overreacting, or told someone, “I don’t understand why you are so upset.” However, if you put yourself in their shoes then maybe you would be able to understand their pain and suffering. Once you do that, you can start to experience the emotions that they are going through and understand things from their point of view.  This would allow you to better connect with them.

 

3. Express your care and concern to others

 

When people tell you their problems, chances are that they do not feel well and want your emotional support. This is the time to show your care and concern for them by asking, “How are you feeling?” or “Is there anything I can do for you?” If you know each other well, you can offer to talk to them on the phone or meet up with them, which can make a tremendous difference. If you are both comfortable with it, you can give them a big hug to show that you care.

 

4. Acknowledge the other person’s feelings

 

One of the biggest issues in communication is that most people do not acknowledge the other person’s feelings. Acknowledging is a way to communicate that you understand how the other person is feeling. You can acknowledge their feelings by simply saying, “I am so sorry to hear that,” or “I can hear your pain.”

 

5. Make yourself vulnerable to others

 

When you allow yourself to be vulnerable to others by getting into the other person’s emotions, it can enrich your relationships and form deeper connections. When you share your experiences of emotions such as anger, anxiety, shame and sadness, you can open opportunities for others to empathize with you.

 

Being vulnerable can build up your empathy by allowing you to feel the value of empathy through reflection. This can increase your commitment to being more empathetic to others. You can gain more confidence and comfort in navigating hard emotions during conversations with others.

 

6. Take action and offer your help to others

 

Having empathy involves adopting the emotions of others, but not their external  situations. Knowing what the other person is going through can help you better identify their needs. If you are able to do so, offering to help others can make a big difference. This puts empathy into action and helps to maximize well-being.

 

7. Show your emotional support to others

 

Most importantly, for empathy to be effective, you need to show emotional support to people. This means giving them your trust and affirmation, as well as encouraging them. You should let them know that, no matter what happens, you will always support them. Sometimes what people are looking for are not your solutions, but your empathy and support.

 

Our world can certainly benefit from having more empathy for others. By learning how to become more empathetic, you can make a difference by creating peace and harmony in our world. So the next time you see someone having a hard time, make sure you listen and share, and identify what you can do to help them.

 

Was there a time when someone else’s empathy helped you? Tell us your stories in the comments below, or in person at a Conscious Connections meeting!

Without Villains

Posted on by andrew

It’s natural to conclude that some people are bad based on negative behaviour. Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Hayley Chan, however, asks us to think more deeply about the world, toward an appreciation of the contextual complexities that humanize us.

 

My mom was telling me about a conflict she was having with one of her friends.

 

She was upset because this friend – let’s call her Emily – basically accused my mom of excluding and using her.

 

What was most upsetting for her was that Emily didn’t use much introspection when coming to this conclusion.

 

One misunderstanding completely painted my mom as a bad friend in Emily’s eyes. In this scenario, it could be said that Emily was a bad person because she didn’t see things from my mom’s point of view, and didn’t try to do so before sending a vindictive email.

 

But with a little bit of empathy, my mom was able to understand why Emily was acting like this. She took the time to see things from Emily’s point of view – to understand that she knows this person has trust issues and is easily insecure in her relationships. This was possibly because of her distant relationship with her mother, who was cold and unkind.

 

Maybe those insights were just guesses and are not correlated to Emily’s behaviour. But what counts is the effort made to understand; My mom had empathy for someone who characterized her as a bad friend and person – something she is not – even though she wasn’t given the same courtesy.

 

As explained in attribution theory, when someone does something wrong, it’s easy for others to attribute those actions strictly to the person they are. On the flip side, when we do something wrong, it’s easy for us to attribute it to external circumstances.

 

The saying “Treat others how you’d want to be treated” is relevant here in terms of questioning whether empathy is the key to ending the good guys vs bad guys mentality, and I believe it is – especially in a society where “cancel culture” is a habitual response. When people make insensitive comments, whether they be racially insensitive, emotionally insensitive, etc. their entire character is not just questioned, but assumed to be entirely immoral. People often rush to these conclusions and then boom – you’re banished from the good graces of Instagram.

 

And ironically, one of the things a lot of people try to promote on social media is self-love, forgiveness and growth. Although these messages are often supportive and positive, when someone does something “wrong,” these same people preaching positivity and growth aren’t giving the same encouragement to those ousted by society for making a not-so-conscientious comment.

 

Maybe if we refocus our energy on trying to understand others and where they’re coming from, we’ll be able to see the words and actions of others more clearly, rather than deeming them strictly good or bad.

 

It seems like it would just be easier to be more understanding to ourselves and others. However, I can understand why most people talk the talk about empathy and kindness without following through. Empathy is not always easy. Taking the time to understand others is probably the hardest part of taking an empathetic response to a problematic situation. It’s so easy to see things through your own perspective because it’s a daily habit. For example, if your friend is talking to you about their partner who is not a great verbal communicator, and you have just come out of a bad relationship with someone who lied to you constantly, are you likely to first acknowledge the fact that their partner is probably busy with school or work and shows affection with quality time? Or is the first thought that comes to mind more likely to resonate with the fact that most people cannot be trusted and if they seem like liars from one observation, they probably are? 

 

How often do we first see things from a different perspective than our own?

 

Some people may be more naturally empathetic than others, but it is not necessarily a subconscious decision to think critically about the behaviours of others. Like any good habit, you must put in the work to ingrain it into your mental library of routines. And with practice, it gets easier to instinctively pull that habit from the shelf.

 

I think empathy can end the good guys vs bad guys mentality, but empathy, putting yourself in someone’s shoes, is not always a natural instinct, and that’s okay. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make Emily, my mom’s friend, a bad person for not being able to practice empathy in the scenario I described. And it doesn’t make people on social media bad people for preaching more about forgiveness and growth than walking the walk. Practising empathy is a skill, and when learned and executed, can help us differentiate between a bad action and a bad person.

Can you recall a time when you were able to understand someone who hurt you? Tell us your story in the comments below or join our live discussions in a Conscious Connections meeting!

Epic Empathy

Posted on by andrew

Critical hits, rolling for initiative, blundering botches and total party kills . . . it’s all super fun, nerdy stuff. But empathy? In Dungeons & Dragons? Low Entropy Volunteer Writer James Phan explains how connecting with others’ emotions is actually one of the keys to a truly epic campaign.

 

As you’re drawn into a story, raw feelings are no coincidence. Emotions are the stuff that connects us to the world and makes for powerful storytelling. To demonstrate this, we could break down emotional story elements in a novel, but here’s a plot twist: we’re rolling for dungeons and dragons.

 

If we are to explore the power of empathy in storytelling, Dungeons & Dragons (or “DnD,” for short) is a surprisingly authentic platform to learn about the subject. Even though books have long been the standard medium of storytelling, and while DnD is a much younger, niche medium, the game shares with books many elements involving immersive story experiences.

 

Getting Familiar with The Game

 

Rowan Yates from Victoria, BC, an expert host for DnD with 15 years of experience, helped me understand the basics of the game. Briefly speaking, the heavily imaginative game usually involves three to seven players who play as a team of characters and one dungeon master (or “DM”), the assigned creator of a given fantasy world with a unique nature that governs it. The DM facilitates the story’s progression. Win conditions vary and are decided by the DMs, but “winning” is extremely subjective. For Rowan, who works at the Victoria Disability Resource Centre, partners with AIDS Vancouver Island to co-facilitate Queerabilities Victoria and spends his free time as a fierce warrior who whets his battle spirit in a modern medieval fighting sport known as buhurt, a DnD win isn’t as much about the results as it is about the players having fun. It could be about battling a dragon, finding treasure or yammering at a tavern for three hours.

 

Onwards! A Unique Storyteller

 

What’s unique about the narrative gameplay of DnD is its candidness as the story unfolds. Events evoke emotional responses almost immediately. A player may sense her character’s life threatened, and her response will shape the next event. At times, the story can have messy moments, like behind-the-scenes footage in movies, due to the game’s nature to incentivize player creativity. Players can fall out of character and revise their talents, or the DM might commit a story blooper and improvise a narrative on that. A novel can tell the same story across the general public, but DnD personalizes its story only to the handful of players, with the story material dependent on the unique personalities in the team. Unlike books, the game seals no fate; the story is fluid and ever-changing. 

 

Onwards! A Sense of Community

 

Once in the game, DnD is storytelling from the heart, with empathy at its core. The setting is revealed, and the conflict is foretold. Danger is afoot. How will the heroes proceed? An introduction haunted by uncertainty and inevitability is a construct in many fictional works. In a book, readers at this discovery stage may or may not begin to empathize with the protagonist, but in DnD’s narrative, the audience members are also the main characters, immersed in a shared, empathetic experience. 

 

As cooperative storytelling, players shape the nature of their teamwork against imminent threats. There’s a sense of shared responsibility, shared excitement for risk and reward, and a common feeling of novelty. Through the forming of a shared DnD story, group members develop empathy with each other. In the real world, a companionate work culture promotes empathy, which improves teamwork and business proficiency. A good DnD story, similarly, improves teamwork that, in turn, feeds back into the story.

Onwards! Individual Revelations

 

In a novel, readers may or may not become more accepting of flaws in a protagonist, while in DnD, acceptance of imperfection is strongly encouraged among the players. Teammates must accept the characteristics of their own alter ego (characters have qualities that are not in their player’s control), but also of the behaviour, temperaments and other nuances of their team members. In a way, this is similar to empathic training, where subjects are encouraged to participate in activities outside of their identity, such as acting or reading fiction. Being in the shoes of others can expand one’s perception, emotionally and intellectually.

 

A player’s chosen character can also reflect suppressed thoughts or personality. By being another identity, the individual has the opportunity to explore unknown desires and values. Throughout the game, the player can become more comfortable with their character development, which can progress to self-empathy. DnD provides a safe platform for this kind of experiential discovery, which can be limited or inaccessible outside of its realm.

 

Aaand Onwards! Narrative Leadership

 

Rowan and other DMs rely on empathy to facilitate their games. They heed their players’ emotional and physical cues to decide what happens next, including when and how to introduce story material to keep everyone engaged. Even before the story begins, a good DM should have a keen idea of who the players are in order to understand what mechanics, themes and play style might work for the group. In 2009, Google wanted to improve managerial performance in research called Project Oxygen. The research team found that the best managers were those who spent time with their team, giving one-on-one attention, providing goal clarity and caring about individual desires and values. Great DMs are like these effective managers, attentive to the players so that the narrative resonates with personalized meaning.

 

Halt! The Conclusion

 

Think of DnD like an open book for a party to colour into, while everyone flips the pages together. If someone has a funny moment, everyone is sharing laughter. If there’s a struggle, everyone feels the heat. If mistakes are made, DnD’s improvisational roleplaying makes imperfection okay, and empathy seeds forgiveness. The story is built with empathy and without it, there is no onwards.

 

Whether or not you’re a fan of DnD, it’s safe to assume that we all lose ourselves in a moment of good storytelling. There’s something to learn and something to gain, and – like in Dungeons & Dragons – the journey is about learning along the way. Empathy is a powerful conduit in all storytelling, as it bridges our sense of connection outside of our own worlds.  

 

What ho! I beseech thee, fly onwards again to our comments section or Instagram account or maybe a Conscious Connections meet-up, where we shall engage in mirthful discourse on the nature and value of empathy! Godspeed!

Toxic Masculinity

Posted on by andrew

You’ve probably heard of the term, and it definitely sounds bad. But what is toxic masculinity, why should we be concerned about it and how can we address it ? Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Elizabeth Atkinson explains.

 

Toxic masculinity is when masculine traits are taken to the extreme, where they become harmful for everyone. When discussing toxic masculinity, it is not an attempt to say that everything masculine is inherently toxic. It is instead a warping of seemingly positive traits into dangerous traits and ideologies. It is also important to note that men are frequently encouraged to engage in such toxic behaviour from outside sources such as parents, family, friends and media. A few examples include the phrases “man up,” “be a man” and even starting as young as “boys will be boys.” All of these phrases encourage and idealize a version of masculinity that is being more and more recognized as troublesome. 

 

Some positive masculine traits include strength, courage and independence. These traits can be taken to the extreme to where they are no longer positive. A few common traits associated with toxic masculinity include lack of emotions, lack of social awareness, aggression, exaggerated competitiveness, domination, violence, isolation and sexism. There is often a disconnect that obscures problematic masculine traits with seemingly positive ones. For example, seeking help for mental or physical health is often viewed as a sign of weakness. Therefore, men who want to show strength and resilience are less likely to get treatment and more likely to suffer emotionally or physically. This is incredibly dangerous not just physically, but emotionally, as men are likely to suffer from body image issues, depression, stress, anxiety, etc., and they are socially pressured to suffer alone. This is one example of how seemingly positive traits can have negative effects. 

 

Toxic masculinity can affect everyone, not just the individual with toxic traits. Toxic masculinity can also take a toll on both romantic and platonic relationships. For romantic relationships, the role toxic masculinity plays may be subtle. Some toxic traits to look for include one partner making all the decisions, especially financially. Financial independence is important, and that independence can be taken away by a partner who wants to feel in control of the finances as well as other major life decisions. Needing control is one example of toxic masculinity that can negatively impact a relationship. Another example is men who do not share the housework evenly. This example goes back to traditional gender roles, in which cleaning a house would be considered a woman’s duty. By not helping, such men are clearly implying, either verbally or through their actions, that they are somehow above doing “women’s work.” This implies that they believe they are better than women, which is why sexism is so prevalent in toxic masculinity and its effects on others. 

 

Toxic masculinity holds perceived masculinity on a pedestal by rejecting and dismissing people and things that do not fit into the box that is “masculinity.” I put this in quotation marks, as masculinity is actually a perceived concept that is up to each person to define on their own terms. There is no one person or source who gets to decide what masculinity means or how it should be embodied. This false feeling of masculine superiority often leads to issues for those who don’t exude masculinity in a traditional fashion. This can lead to violence and bullying. A common complaint with toxic masculinity is that it is antifeminine. The perspective of toxic masculinity is that masculinity is better than femininity. Therefore women, and those who prefer to exude more feminine qualities, are othered and treated as less than equal. Some examples of this that may be enacted consciously or subconsciously include broad issues such as sexism, to specific issues, such as passing over women for job promotion opportunities for leadership positions, based on the idea that men make better leaders. 

 

In order to combat toxic masculinity, one does not have to denounce all things traditionally masculine. As previously stated, masculinity can be defined by every person on their own terms. Simply talking more about toxic masculinity is a way of subverting it, as it goes against the idea that reaching out for help is shameful or bad. Another way to fight toxic masculinity is to reflect and think critically about our daily actions. Focus on why we do the things we do, as this is a way to check your own privilege. By checking your privilege, you are able to adjust your actions moving forward if you find that you are in the wrong. This self-reflection is key for everyone to help put an end to toxic masculinity.

 

One way to avoid isolation and get in touch with your emotions is to hop into a Conscious Connections session, with its diverse and supportive participants. Or if you’re not ready for that just yet, you can reach out to our community on one of our many social media platforms – we can’t wait to hear from you!

Modern Isolation

Posted on by andrew

Right now, we have never been more united, and at the same time never more alone. This global pandemic is impacting everyone’s lives in ways that – for many of us – is completely unprecedented. We have to deal with a reality where we are all being encouraged to stay home, avoid others, and choose who will be allowed within our personal “bubbles” – which of our friends and family will make the cut? Who can we not live without? Who can we not risk visiting, in case we ourselves are a danger to them? Who cares enough to stay in touch?

         As this pandemic continues to impact our daily lives, we need to find strategies to cope. There is a great deal of pressure to find a solution, and find it now. This is a novel experience of isolation and loneliness: even if we are sheltering in place while surrounded by family, we have a sense of being caged and restricted from our normal lives. We have lost the sense of freedom, relaxation, and emotional support gained from our favorite places, people, and activities. With this loss, I have seen a new sense of depression and malaise in many friends and colleagues. With this sense of sadness, it makes reaching out to friends and family that much more difficult. Negative thoughts prevent us from just starting what should be an easy conversation: “Do they even want to hear from me?”  “I could call or message them, but I have nothing to talk about.”

         It is very difficult to break out of a depressive spiral on your own, and even if you have a supportive family or partner at home, sometimes it takes a bit more. It’s okay, it’s understandable, and there are solutions available. When we feel so isolated, having a fresh group of people can bring an objective and uplifting look to help brighten up your life. It is amazing how this situation can feel so numbing and overwhelming, but as soon as you start talking about it out loud, a whole new perspective can be achieved. This is one of the best benefits of meeting with a support group like Conscious Connections – you can speak openly and candidly about your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and connect with other people who are working through the same challenges.

         Conscious Connections strives to be an open and supportive space, helping those in our community who feel alone and in need of conversation and acceptance. If it’s a challenge to just get through each day, it’s so important to know that there are options out there for people who need some positivity, or who would really benefit from a new connection with peers. Your peer-sharing circle will help ease the hard times, and celebrate victories and successes with authenticity. It is always uplifting to know that we are not alone in a world that has made it all too easy to be in isolation.

 

Author: Mike Vanessa