Empathy as a Superpower

EMPATHY
as a Superpower
@davestrock
So grateful for Angela’s talk, and for Amber and Erika for putting on this conference.
Many confs have only a single “touchy feely” talk so it’s great to see so many. After all, people are the
hard part of software.
!
Just as Angela said in her keynote, I don’t fart rainbows and I’m a also a JERK. That was the reason for
the journey that led to this talk. A few years ago, I was thinking about the “learn a new language every
year” idea and decided my language for that year would be People. Its been over 2 years now, and I’m
still not sure how far down that path I am yet.

“A human being is
part of the whole
called by us universe,
a part limited in time
and space.
A human being is part of the whole called by us universe,
!
a part limited in time and space.

“We experience
ourselves, our
thoughts and feelings
as something
separate from the rest.
“We experience ourselves,
our thoughts and feelings
as something separate from the rest.

“A kind of optical
delusion of
consciousness.
A kind of optical delusion of consciousness.

“This delusion is a
kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our
personal desires
“This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires

“and to affection for a
few persons nearest to
us.
“and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

“Our task must be to
free ourselves from the
prison
Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison

“by widening our
circle of compassion
to embrace all living
creatures
by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures
!

“and the whole of
nature in its beauty.
and the whole of nature in its beauty.

“The true value of a
human being is
determined by the
measure and sense
The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and sense

“in which they have
obtained liberation
from the self.
in which they have obtained liberation from the self.

“We shall require a!
substantially new !
manner of!
thinking
if humanity is to survive.”
-Albert Einstein
“we shall require a substantial new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive”
!
Speaking the post world war 2 problems and the atomic bomb
Humans have a tendency to entangle themselves with ideas of SELF. Who we “are”

EMPATHY
the ability to
understand and share
the emotions of others

REQUIRES
presence
and
lack of divisiveness
Presence - The ability to focus attention on EXPERIENCING the current moment
!
Divisiveness - Judgement BLAME

an epidemic of
disconnect
Technology enables us to “connect” twitter, facebook, instagram
Yet we are more disconnected than ever before.
And the problems we face are bigger, and more difficult than ever before.

CONCEIT
better than
The western definition of CONCEIT is thinking oneself better than another person.
!
I had a real breakthrough when I learned the Buddhist definition

CONCEIT
better than,
less than,
or equal to
The Buddhist definition of conceit is thinking yourself better than, less than, or equal to another person.
!
Maybe its hard to see what another option could be.

don’t play the
comparison game
The other option is to just not play the comparison game.

COMPASSION
concern for
the suffering of others
The wish to see others free from suffering

EMOTIONS
are triggered by
thoughts

OUR FRIEND
the
Limbic System
Most of what we consider emotions are generated in our brain in what is called the Limbic system.

STARRING
the
Amygdala
The star of that system, as it relates to emotion, is the Amygdala

The Limbic System is a set of closely interconnected regions at the center of the brain
Takes in raw sensory input
Performs processing related to emotion, memory, basic body functions
Sends information to the Cerebral Cortex
Amygdala (green) processes emotion and quickly floods the body with chemicals
FEEDBACK LOOP

FIGHT
FLIGHT
FREEZE
The most familiar feedback loop from the Amygdala is the Fight or Flight response

90 seconds
That’s the amount of time it takes your body to absorb the chemicals your amygdala injects into your
bloodstream.
Lets say external stimulus enters the amygdala and causes a strong emotional reaction.
If you’re still feeling it more than 90 seconds later, your amygdala is now reacting to THOUGHTS not
stimulus.

THOUGHTS?
pretty much
everything else
So what are thoughts?
Thoughts are what we normally see if we look inward.
The brain is a thinking machine… And therein lies the problem.
Its an overused muscle for most of us. Its a hammer and everything is a nail.
Given any problem: I KNOW I CAN HANDLE IT…

BECAUSE
I’M
CLEVER
BECAUSE I’M CLEVER!
!
Turns out… there are a lot of problems with relying on intellectualizing everything.

EMOTIONS
are fast
Emotions happen at least an order of magnitude faster than higher order thoughts.
So fast they may not be noticed consciously.

REASONING
is slow
Reasoning is pulling the full computational power of the mind to solving some problem.
But its SLOW

REASONING
is inﬂuenced
by emotions
And it is completely entwined with emotion.
!
Often what feels like reasoning is actually rationalization, called “motivated reasoning”

i live in my mind
I’m sure this isn’t true for any of you, but I live mostly in my mind.
!
Constantly lost in thought

we tell ourselves stories
This is because we tell ourselves stories. Humans have an strong ability to learn from stories and to
represent events as stories.

What do you mean
‘just stories’!?!?
Don’t mean to diminish how real they feel to you,
I DO mean to diminish your assurance on their accuracy.
THE FEELINGS ARE REAL. THE STORY IS SUSPECT.
Memory are not video tape.

MEMORIES
your brain
sees more
than your eyes
In case you need a little prodding on the fact that our memories are neither accurate nor immutable

1
2
3
4
1
2
3
Not only does the brain combine inputs from TWO eyes into ONE image, but the eyes have a giant
BLIND SPOT (#4)
At the spot where the optic nerve (#3) enters the eye, there are no rods & cones. There is a HOLE in the
image.

what am i telling myself?
Most of the time I catch myself thinking, I’m telling myself a story.
!
Most of the time I catch myself in an emotional feedback look, I’m telling myself a story

i’m feeling ________
i’m telling myself ________
because
I’m feeling nervous because I’m telling myself I’m not good enough
!
I’m feeling sad because I’m telling myself that she doesn’t care about me.

RESPECT
It all starts with basic respect for people as humans.

RE - SPECT
to look again
If we can have that basic respect, we can keep looking. Over and over.
!
And one the easiest ways to do this, is to use CURIOSITY

EVERYONE
has the same
universal needs
I believe every behavior is an attempt to meet a universal human need

only strategies differ
It’s only the strategies for meeting those needs that differ

EVERYONE
has the same
emotions
Everyone has the same emotions
!
!
AND STRANGELY ENOUGH….

EVERYONE
has the same
emotional
expression
Not talking about REACTIONS
Instead expressions of GENUINE emotion

Anger, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness.
!
First proposed by Darwin that all primates, not just humans, share common facial expressions.
!
Continued by Dr. Paul Ekman and others.
!
True not only for white folks from Berkley, but tribes in New Guinea as well.

Results of a study of heat output of various emotions
Not only did they find that different emotions had different heat signatures
But those heat signatures had high correlation among all subjects.
!
Yellow - Warmest Light Blue - Coolest

and
SHOULD
BECAUSE
Here’s a life-line that helps me notice I’m in a story.
BECAUSE is a clue that you think you know WHY another person did something.
!
SHOULD is setting everyone up for failure. SHOULD is the start of Judgement
!
Why SHOULD anything happen? Nothing NEEDS to happen.

BLAME
SHAME
JUDGEMENT
CRITICISM
The amygdala triggers Fight of Flight when it feels threatened.
Usually when there is disconnect, one of these four is at play. Either in yourself or in the other person.
NOTICE when we’re in this mode. SHIFT to something else.

INSTEAD OF BLAME
look for
understanding
Blame is saying someone should or should not have done something

INSTEAD OF SHAME
look for
reassurance
Shame is saying someone shouldn’t be HOW they are.

INSTEAD OF CRITICISM
look for
appreciation
Reframe a criticism as appreciation.
Instead of “I hate your commit messages”, try “I really like when you write commit messages that let me
know why you did certain things”
!
Focus on the positive instead of the negative

INSTEAD OF JUDGEMENT
look for
compassion

get out of your head
Stop thinking so much. Stop using that hammer for everything.
Drop down into feeling.
!
What does it feel like to be sad? Upset?

–Marshall Rosenberg
“Intellectual understanding
blocks empathy”
This is the part where I tell you to ignore all the fun science we just learned, because it actually gets in
the way.
The further you go into conceptualizing . The farther you go away from direct experience.
!
You don’t have to know what it’s like to be a single mother. Instead you can understand how it feels to
be scared. To be overwhelmed.

empathy towards self
How do we know how it feels?

how do you feel?
We often ignore or push away our feelings.
Its hard to know how another feels if you’ve never let yourself feel it. Though you CAN empathize with
their likely desire to push them away just as you did.

EMOTIONS
are a form of
long-term memory
Memories are enfaced with emotion to remind us what it felt like. But maybe we don’t want to feel that
way anymore. Its important to try to tease these things apart.
What we want is to understand our feelings, without being pushed around by them.
Without feeling the need to push them away.
Without feeling like we can’t CONTROL our reactions.

–Victor Frankl
“Between stimulus and response,
there is a space.
!
In that space lies our freedom and
power to choose our response.
!
In our response lies our growth
and freedom.”

vs
RESPONSIBILITY
CHOICE
So we want to be able to choose. We want to widen the space between the stimulus and our response.
!
Are you responsible for your thoughts?

vs
RESPONSE ABILITY
CHOICE
If you have no ability respond, you have no choice and it’s futile to blame yourself.

PRACTICE
Consciously choose
how to BREATHE
Turn an unconscious behavior into a conscious one
Average lung capacity is 6L
Average tidal volume is only half a liter, not even 10%
What is it like to breathe without controlling? What about deep breaths? What about fast breaths?

CHOOSE
how you relate to
your experience
Do you push it away? Try to change it? Accept it?
!
Once you accept it, you can move on.
ACCEPTANCE seems to be one of the most powerful actions we can take.

PRACTICE
Mentally note emotions
as they arise
Amygdala’s purpose is to keep us from danger. The system will continue to alter you to what is going on
until you acknowledge it.
Once acknowledged, the system has no need to continue.
We see this in brain scans. Someone in the middle of a strong emotional reaction and the brain activity
is very high. At the moment they metaling note (technically called “affect labeling”) the emotion, the
brain activity quiets down substantially.

stop the amygdala’s
feedback loop
This is one way to stop the feedback loop and give yourself the space to choose.

empathy towards
self and others
Systems thinking
Being reintroduced by “lean” and others.
The system is the most important determinant of the outcome. Not the actors within that system.

change the system
not the actors
You can’t change people, but you can sometimes change the systems at play.

“Compassion has enemies,
and those enemies are
things like pity, moral
outrage, fear.”
–Joan Halifax
If we’re to solve these really big, complicated problems
We must vigilantly look for the ways in which we’re being disconnected.
We have to become conscious of the things that were previously unconscious.

Einstein:
http://forward.com/workspace/assets/images/articles/TAS-InstituteAdvancedStudy-120430.jpg!
Limbic System:
http://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/252/ﬂashcards/1048252/png/funtions1328988965116.png
Eye:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Evolution_eye.svg
Emotional heat map:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/12/26/1321664111.abstract
Ekman Facial Expressions:
http://writersforensicsblog.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2013/08/ekman_facial_expressions.jpg
ATTRIBUTION
!

Empathy as a Superpower

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