Stoplight ABCs: Connection

In this episode, Stoplight trainer Sarah Ganger continues with the building blocks for emotional intelligence, discussing Connection.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to The Stoplight Approach Podcast, where brain science is made simple. I am your host, Sarah Ganger. Here on the podcast, we have been covering the foundation of The Stoplight Approach. The episodes do build on one another. So, if you have not listened to previous episodes, I would encourage you to stop here and go back to the beginning. 

The Stoplight Approach is a way of seeing ourselves, our relationships and our world with the brain in mind. The Stoplight ABC’s are the building blocks of emotional intelligence as drawn from the work of Dr. Daniel Goleman. We have discussed A for Awareness and B for Behaviour in previous episodes. Today, we will be talking about the C of The Stoplight Approach. The “C” stands for “Connection.”

Dr. Goleman’s research revealed that in order to become emotionally intelligent, humans must practice empathy. Empathy is the ability to see things from another person’s perspective. It is the ability to sit with, to be with, to listen and to CONNECT with another person without trying to fix, change or direct them. This is why The Stoplight Approach uses the word “Connection” to remember empathy. Now, empathy is a big topic. And there are many things to include when discussing empathy. Therefore, we will spend this episode as well as the next episode on this topic. So please plan to join us for both episodes to get a fuller picture of empathy, or as we say in Stoplight language, “Connection”.

Brain scientists have been studying empathy for a long time. One fascinating thing that they have discovered is that the human brain is hard-wired for empathy. As humans, our brains have all the wiring necessary, along with all the drive and motivation necessary, to connect with other humans and consider their perspective. Let me say that again: The human brain is HARD-WIRED to connect with other humans.

Another fascinating discovery that brain scientists have made about empathy is that empathy is similar to a muscle in the sense that “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” Many people have had the experience of getting an injury to a foot or leg and having to immobilise it for a little while in a cast or a brace. What do you see when the cast or brace is removed? Usually, the muscle surrounding that part of the body has atrophied. Because the muscle was not in use, it got weaker.

We now know that the same is true for empathy. If humans do not practice empathy, that area of the brain grows weaker and atrophies. If a human does not receive empathy – That is, if a person does not have someone who will listen, be with and try to see their perspective, their ability to practice empathy will grow weaker. Similarly, the less that they practice empathy, the less that they will be able to practice empathy.

Dr. Michelle Borba is a social scientist who has done a lot of research with teens and young adults, and she has discovered that in the last thirty years, empathy has decreased by 40% and narcissism has increased in our culture by 53%. While a sad statistic, these numbers actually make a lot of sense considering what brain science tells us about empathy.

As empathy decreases, fewer and fewer people experience empathy from the people around them. This weakens the part of their brain that enables empathy. Which means that fewer and fewer people have an opportunity to practice empathy. Which means that fewer and fewer people experience empathy. And on and on the cycle goes. Lack of empathy means a diminished ability to see another person’s perspective. Which sets a fertile ground for narcissism, the most extreme state of only being able to see things from your own perspective.

So, if empathy must be practiced to be strengthened, what does that look like in real life? The truth is that connection is challenging. Working to see things from another person’s perspective is just that – WORK. 

Now, at this point you might be thinking, “hold on just a minute. I thought you said that human brains are hard-wired for empathy. So why does connection take so much work then?”

Very good question. It is true that our brains are hard-wired for empathy. It is also true that the majority of humans live lives that do not have a lot of room for practicing connection regularly. You see, connection requires us to slow down. It requires us to observe, to notice, to be curious. It requires us to ask questions and really take time to listen and understand the answers. It requires enough room to sit, to be still, to be with.

At this point, please allow me to make something very clear: I am NOT saying that people who live rushed, hurried lives have no empathy. On the contrary, I believe that most people who live rushed, hurried lives are living that way because they care for the people in their lives and want to ensure that they have what they need.

What I am saying is that the ability to take another person’s perspective requires us to be operating at a pace where we can observe and notice what is going on with another person. A pace where we can draw near and be curious and try to understand what is happening from that person’s perspective. 

Just for a moment, let’s turn connection inward. Empathy is trying to see something from another person’s perspective. With that definition, it requires more than one person to practice. And yet, I do think it is important for us to offer empathy to ourselves. This practice is called self-empathy.

Let me ask you a question. Hopefully this will help illustrate what I mean by self-empathy. Let’s say that you wake up in the morning, and you have a stiff and sore back. What is your immediate reaction? What do you say to yourself? Here is what often runs through my head: “Not this again. I am getting so old. Ugh. I am so tired of this back pain.” Does that inner monologue sound familiar at all? What about this. After returning from lunch, you sit down at your desk and your stomach starts to feel queasy. What is your immediate reaction? What do you say to yourself? Once again, I will share one of my common reactions as an example: “Uh uh. No way. What did I do? I don’t have time to be sick. I have got so much to do. This is the worst time for this to happen.” Here is my point: if my first reaction to experiencing discomfort in my own body is exasperation or frustration, I am not practicing empathy towards myself. And if I can’t offer empathy to my own body when it is experiencing discomfort, pain or illness, how much harder will it be for me to offer empathy to someone else?

I use the body example because it is one of the easiest to imagine. Most people have felt soreness, discomfort and sickness in their bodies and are familiar with those sensations. I imagine that there are also many people who can relate to the feeling of exasperation that comes when we feel these sensations in our bodies.

It is also possible to experience a similar reaction when certain emotions, thoughts and feelings arise. Perhaps you can remember a time when you were feeling anxious, overwhelmed or sad and had a similar reaction: “Ugh. I need to just get on with it. What is wrong with me? It’s time to shake it off. Move on already.”

Practicing self-empathy means that I try to offer my own body sensations, my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own emotions a chance to be noticed and met with curiosity rather than judgement. Rather than immediately judging these experiences as wrong or bad, as an inconvenience, a sign of weakness or an annoyance, the goal is simply to notice them, be curious about them and be open to letting them just “be.” Giving space to observe, notice and be curious about our own experiences helps us to practice offering that to others.

We end every episode with a practice that we can take with us into our week. Today, the practice will be focused on the body, so if you have had a difficult experience in your body this week, please be aware that this practice could be triggering. Please only do this practice if you feel that you are able to.

To help encourage the practice of self-empathy, I would like for you get a pen or pencil and a sheet of paper or the page of a journal. I would like for you to write down something that you felt in your body this week that was unpleasant. It could have been soreness in a muscle or joint, pain from a chronic health challenge, uncomfortable symptoms from a viral or bacterial infection. Anything unpleasant. Write down that experience and what the sensation was like in your body.

Now, write down your initial response that that sensation. If you noticed your nose was congested from allergies, did you say, “Ugh, not this again”? If you turned an ankle or twisted a knee, did you criticise yourself for being careless about where you were stepping? Whatever your initial response was the physical sensation, write it down.

Now, imagine what it would have been like to respond to that sensation with self-empathy. What could you have said, done or thought that would have offered observing, noticing and being curious about the sensation. Self-empathy can be as simple as taking the time to notice an unpleasant sensation and let it be. 

For example, I wake up in the morning with a sore and stiff neck pretty regularly. So, for my practice, I wrote down, “stiff neck”. My first reaction to this sensation in my neck is often frustration, so I wrote down, “Ugh. Not again. I am so tired of this stiff neck.” When I imagine practicing self-empathy instead, I notice the sensation and put my hand on my neck and say to myself “I feel you, sore neck. I am not sure what you need right now, but I am here to help.” It might sound strange to picture me talking to my own body. But I have found that this practice encourages me to notice the sensation and make room for it to be present without judging it, ignoring it or criticising it.

To be clear: Self-empathy does NOT solve the problems of pain and discomfort in our bodies. It is not a substitute for a healthy diet, movement, medical treatment, medication, therapy or anything else that helps our bodies be healthy. For my sore neck, I still have to do gentle stretches and movement to help it loosen. I sometimes have to take an over-the-counter pain reliever. And of course, I have to be aware of how to care for it as I go throughout my day so that I don’t aggravate it. Self-empathy doesn’t erase the need for any of that care. It simply encourages me to notice the sensation without judging it.

The purpose of using a body example in this practice today is NOT to imply that self-empathy is a “cure all” for body ailments. It is simply meant to help you connect to the idea of offering to yourself, starting with your own body, the same empathy that you would extend to others. For this practice, you could easily substitute a feeling or emotion that you felt, write down your initial reaction to it, and write down what it might look like to offer empathy to that emotion instead. I encourage you to try this practice out. And please be sure to look out for our next episode, which will continue this discussion on empathy.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Stoplight Approach Podcast. Please share, subscribe, rate and review this episode, as it will help other people find us. The Stoplight Approach offers many resources to help families, schools, churches and other groups to grow in their understanding of the brain and relationships. Please visit www.thestoplightapproach.org to learn more.