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**Adam Stacoviak:** It's a way to criticize more in an empathetic way... Because I can describe how I feel, and what they've done maybe that made me feel they've wronged me, or whatever it might be... But I can describe it as "When you call me these names, or when you say things to me in this tone, it makes me feel lik... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, exactly. You gave them feedback, and you asked for clarification to get that extra data point. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. "Is that true? Is that what you meant by that?" |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. "Here's where my brain went. When you did X, my brain went to Y, and C, and Q, and L." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So do you think in the workplace then this scenario of the back-story of a co-worker, and you said you don't know what's going on in somebody's life unless they tell you - now, in the workplace in particular maybe it's not always... I don't know what word you use for it... It's not always okay to kn... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Well, I'm so glad you brought that up, Adam, because I wouldn't say that then you have to know, or that people have to tell you what's going on... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. But just know that there's something going on, that's what's important. "Something is happening you don't need to know about, but it's affecting me in these ways, and I need you to give me some slack." |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. But I would say that I always work to hold space for other people in that way. And even if it is fundamentally -- like, they're human too, and I don't have to know what else might be going on with them, but I could say to them "Hey, I didn't understand why you did X, Y or Z." So then... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. So it sounds like pliability and flexibility has a pretty crucial role too in relationships, because if you're not flexible, bendable, pliable, however you wanna phrase that - if you're rigid, that's only gonna come out negative... Not necessarily negative, but it's gonna be difficult for you... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...accept new data, analyze that data, make a new plan and iterate towards a new action. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. And so one of the other things involved with this flexibility would be what researchers have discovered as mirror neurons. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Mirror neurons are these neurons within the brain that help us get access to another person's emotional experience. There is an action component in it that was first discovered actually with monkeys and this sort of mimicry that occurred, by watching somebody else do an action. |
Well, in the same way, I can sort of watch somebody else walk through something in terms of an emotional experience, and if I'm holding space for them in my mind, my body physiologically, these mirror neurons come to play. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Is that why people cry when they watch certain movies, because their mirror neurons are firing, because they're watching somebody go through a situation and they're empathizing with them, and can't help but encapsulate themselves into their scenario and feel what they're feeling? Is that why? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yes. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay. So is that why anybody cries at anything when it's movie-related, because that's what's happening? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, think about it sort of like this emotional contagion. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's interesting to put it that way. We've said mirror neurons several times, but this emotional contagion I believe is actually a better subtitle for mirror neurons. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. Some of this emotional contagion or mirror neurons - the research has been rooted in aspects of pain, because if I can recognize the suffering of another, I'm likely to respond in a different way, because I have an awareness of what it feels like to hurt, and what painful stimuli evo... |
I wanna share this research, because I just think it's super-fascinating and it will be helpful to people... But what researchers looked at was the way in which -- they used rats, and so they worked to look at rats in the sense of how animals were more likely to freeze after watching another rat receive an electrical s... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So the shock freezes the rat, and they're taking on the effect of the shock because they have been shocked before? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Ain't that interesting? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's really interesting. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** However, when researchers inhibited this region, which is similar to that anterior cingulate cortex in the brain, it reduced the responses to another rat's distress, but not their fear of being shocked themselves. So there is this sense of socially-triggered fear, according to Kaiser's wor... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So this is in rats though. Where has the study gone to say that this is true for humans? We don't know yet? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Well, we can't shock humans, right...? \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, okay... But we don't have to shock them, Mireille; maybe we can just prick them with a needle, like you might be doing for a blood test, a glucose test, or something like that. You can do something smaller that is okay to do to a human, but is a similar type of thing. So has any variation of t... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Well, Claus Lamm, who's out of the University of Vienna, looked at the processes that regulate the first-hand pain, and those that cause empathy for pain, through a number of different studies, as it relates to the influence of painkillers. So you take a drug that helps reduce, so an opiat... |
In these experiments, participants who took this placebo painkiller reported lower pain ratings after receiving a shock, than those who did in the control group. So the control group is the one who didn't get any sort of buffering experience to the pain. But when those same participants watched a confederate get shocke... |
What I'm saying is the ones who got the painkiller - they still perceived that similar drop by watching somebody else's. So if you reduce people's self-experienced pain, if you induce this analgesic effect, that not only helps people to deal with their own pain, but vicariously \[unintelligible 00:24:13.24\] also reduc... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So what you're saying is painkillers help to reduce pain, but it also disables my ability to recognize somebody else's pain, because my pain is reduced. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. "I don't give it as much credence or validity, because I don't feel it." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right... Which is happening a lot in society, I would say. There's a lot of pain being expressed that is hard for somebody - or, dare I say it, not possible, because they haven't experienced the pain themselves. |
So to expect or desire or feel entitled even (since I said that earlier) to empathy and compassion - it's a learned behavior for one, but it's also difficult to give because the pain hasn't been experienced themselves. The perspective is in their way. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. So Lamm, this researcher for the University of Vienna, says that empathy for pain is grounded in representing other's pain within one's own pain systems. So if I am very aware of my own pain, like I've got a big, robust file, I know pain, "Hi, you're my friend", I also will use that... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's pretty interesting. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, so this is why I think there's so much more we can look at and talk about with this... And while we could make inferences about what this means, to this or to that, we just -- this is what we know for now. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's always in flux. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. So if I know that -- I think about it even in my own life; if I'm more stressed with what's going on, I also wouldn't necessarily have space for somebody else's pain in this same sort of way... Not because I can't be empathetic - here's that multiple systems - but rather, I'm full, a... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. I'm glad you said that, because that's what really helped me... A light bulb came up when I was reading Aware from Dr. Daniel Siegel, which we've mentioned earlier... And this definition of compassion really blew me away; the definition based on his book says "Compassion can be defined as the... |
When I unraveled that to me, this whole "Name it to tame it", this "Define it" kind of scenario... I think all too often, at least from my perspective, since that's my data file, so to speak, is that I wasn't that aware of what compassion truly was, or what it was to deliver it, what was involved in being compassionate... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right, and I think you touched on something, which is why we have these conversations... It's that our brain's neurocircuitry is always malleable, and can be rewired through this concept of neuroplasticity, this neuroflexibility. One's tendency for empathy and compassion is never fixed. It... |
There's some conflict, because researchers all have different data points in what they discover, about whether or not these are universal... But there are some that, generally speaking -- like, facial expressions are similar across cultures. So if someone is sad -- it's interesting, when I first started graduate school... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's tough... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Well, I would think that it's pretty easy, and that you just could do this, but maybe that's not being empathetic to the variations of people, and that that isn't a skill that everybody has. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. |
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