Empathy vs. Sympathy — A Conversation with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller - Truth, Lies & Alzheimer's

Episode Transcript
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Lisa Skinner (00:00):
Lisa, welcome back everybody to a brand new episode

(00:04):
of the truth lies andAlzheimer's show. I'm Lisa
Skinner, your host, and I havewith me today a very special
guest. As a matter of fact, sheand I belong to a speaker's
bureau, and we both ended upgoing to Oxford, England a year

(00:27):
ago to speak at an event, and Iwant to tell you I was so
excited to invite her onto myshow, because she is an expert
in empathy and empathy is a veryfoundational part of the human

(00:50):
connection in general, but alsoin dementia care. So I thought
that she and I could have areally dynamic conversation
about empathy, and we bothagreed when we talked the other
day that it seems to be a lostart form of human communication.

(01:11):
So I'm sure we're going to talkabout that. But anyway, let me
introduce you to my friend andcolleague, Dr. Melissa
Robinson-Winemiller, and Melissais not just talking about
leadership. She's challenging usto do it differently. With over

(01:35):
20 years of cross industryexperience, she helps leaders
build emotionally intelligentcultures that don't just feel
better, they actually performbetter. Can't wait to hear about
that. She is an internationallyknown TEDx speaker, an emotional

(01:59):
intelligence coach and theauthor of the book The Empathic
leader, Melissa blends researchreal world insight and lived
experience to make empathyactionable At every level of

(02:20):
leadership, and she is on amission to prove that the so
called soft skills are the onesdriving the hard results, and
the future of leadership dependson them. Welcome, welcome.
Welcome to the show. Melissa,I'm so happy to have you here

(02:43):
today. Oh,

Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller (02:45):
Lisa, it is my pleasure. Thank you so
much. And just you know, like wewere saying before we started
recording, the timing isperfect, since we were live and
in person together just a yearago,

that's right, we had a good time, didn't we? That
was fun? Yeah. So my experiencebeing in the 30 years that I've
been working with families

Unknown (03:11):
the core

of successful communication and a harmonious
relationship with people livingwith Alzheimer's disease and
related dementia is empathy.It's foundational to
compassionate dementia care. Itinforms how caregivers

(03:35):
understand and respond to thelived experience of people who
are living with dementia,guiding interactions, decision
making and the overall qualityof life. And I have found that
to be so true in working withthese folks who are living with

(04:01):
constant, progressive cognitivedecline. How does empathy fit
into our world in just a generalsense? Because you and I talked
about this in our firstconversation about having you
come on the show. And I think weboth agreed that in the last, I

(04:22):
don't know, at least 10 years,maybe more empathy seems to be
coming a lost art ofcommunication. You want to
elaborate on that for us?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So first
you're feeling that there is alessening of empathy is actually
being backed up by research.There's a longitudinal study
that's been going on since the70s, and what they looked at was
empathy, specifically in collegestudents. I mean, just that's
the population they chose. Andbetween the 1970s and 2008 they

(04:55):
found a decrease in the amountof empathy in this population by
40. Percent. Oh, that's huge.Yes, it is. I mean, so could you

define empathy for us and maybe even tell us what
the difference is betweenempathy and sympathy? Because I
think that people may be aren'tquite sure what the difference
is between actual empathy andactual sympathy?

Yeah, no, that's a great question,
because I that's actually one ofthem. I get a lot because it
does. We kind of think of it allin one big ball, you know,
empathy, sympathy, compassion,and they're really different
things. So empathy, as far as todefine it, it's understanding
and connection by taking theperspective of the other. And a
lot of times we think empathy isjust about feeling, about I

(05:46):
feel, what you feel. And, yeah,that's part of it. But over the
years, there's actually been 43different definitions of
empathy. So the feeling is partof it, but it's it's a small
part of it. It's more aboutperspective, taking
understanding what it is to bethat other person and seeing the
world through their eyes. That'sthe difference between empathy

(06:06):
and sympathy. Empathy, you'retrying to see the world through
that other person's eyes.Sympathy, you're seeing it
through your own which meansthat you always end up with a
comparison. You know, what mustthis look like compared to what
I do? And that can bring in anelement of judgment. That's why,
when we're talking medicalpeople and people in the medical
establishments, they're actuallytrained not to use sympathy,

(06:29):
because of that reason. Ifyou're dealing with patients and
you know, they're having a hardtime, if you come at them with
anything that even kind of seemslike judgment, you're going to
get a negative response. Soyeah, that's the big difference.
Empathy. You're always trying tosee it through their
perspective. It's taking the meout and putting the we in is
really what it comes down to.

And that is exactly what I teach to family
members and caregivers, is toYeah, and it's actually a matter
of having to retrain our brainsto think that way. Do you find
that to be true?

You know, it kind of depends on the
person, because empathy isanother one of those things, you
know, with human behavior, whereit's on a spectrum, and you're
going to have some people thatjust take to it really
naturally. I mean, on the farend, you have dark triad, which
are people that have no empathyat all, and those are
Psychopaths, sociopaths,machiavellians and narcissists.
So there's a small part ofhumanity that doesn't have any

(07:28):
but then on the other side ofthat is the light triad, which
are people that have a lot ofempathy and that ability to
relate to other people. So butmost of us are going to fall in
the middle, right the bell curveand stuff averages in the
middle. So most of us are goingto have to work at it a little
bit, but we're also going tohave a little bit of innate
talent to be able to build on.It's just a matter of actually

(07:48):
building it as a skill which youcan empathy. Isn't all inherent.
There's part of it that'senvironmental and that you can
work on and get better at.

So do you have you seen in these studies that
you're talking about that havesupported it, have you seen the
instinctive, inherent part ofour DNA, our human being, that

(08:18):
just inherently is empathetictowards others just waning.

Not the biological part so much. And
there is a biology biologicalpart. It's more the
environmental and socializedpart where we learn as kids, you
know, well, how would you feelif you were that person? Well,
how would you feel if someonehit you with that stick or, you
know, that kind of thing.

Why is that disappearing?

There's a lot of scholars that think it
goes back to the iPhone andsocial media and too much
technology. It's called maincharacter syndrome. You get that
limelight on you dealing withsocial media and that sort of
thing, and you kind of forgetthere are other people out
there. Well,

that would make sense, since it seems to be an
emotion that's waning sincewe've been adopting and adapting
all this high tech stuff. Yeah,yeah, absolutely. So how does
compassion, then fit in to thespectrum between empathy and

(09:25):
sympathy.

So sympathy is kind of its own
thing out on an island. Youknow, it's it's just the
difference in the viewpoint,like we were talking about,
whether you see it through yourown eyes or through the eyes of
the other person. But empathy,there's no action. You're just
feeling it. So you're not takingresponsibility, you're not
passing judgment, you're notdoing anything. Compassion is

(09:50):
the action you take. So empathyis what you feel and compassion
is what you do. So the two arelinked.

Oh, that makes complete sense. Can you give us
an example?

Sure, so let's say that you are
dealing with a family memberthat has, you know, a medical
condition that that is, youknow, like my father, he's, he's
recently gone through somestuff. He had prostate cancer,
he had all this other stuffgoing on, and because of that,
he kind of went into adepression. Well, you know what

(10:26):
empathy said is that I needed tobe in that feeling with him, and
that doesn't mean I needed totake that on, necessarily, but I
needed to try and understand,from his point of view, why he
was facing some of the mentalhealth challenges he was why he
was having problems, you know,just even doing day to day
stuff, because he was just kindof, it's what Brene Brown calls
being in the suck. And that's,that's very much what he was

(10:48):
dealing with. But I wasn't doinganything. I was just in it with
him. But then the compassionpart of that was, okay, he's
having trouble getting throughI'm trying to see this through
his point of view. So forcinghim to try and get up and be
happy and Woo is not going to becompassionate. What's going to
be compassionate is going to beto meet him where he's at and

(11:09):
take the small steps with himthat he needs to be able to
maybe just get out of bed todayand get dressed. Maybe today is
just, you know, well, let'sclean up the house just a little
bit. Well, maybe we'll just, youknow, sit and watch TV together
and not say anything, but I'mgoing to be here with you, you
know. So that's the differencebetween the empathy, just being
in that feeling with him, andthe compassion, where I'm trying

(11:31):
to actually give the help thathe needs, not the help that I
think he needs, the help heneeds.

And it's so ironic, that's exact same
approach we take with peopleliving with Alzheimer's disease
and related dementia, I thinkit's just part of our our human
being, yeah, and it really, youknow, based on Maslow's
hierarchy of needs, it fallsright there at being one of Our

(11:58):
very, very basic human needsthat we all have, regardless of
whether you're functioning, youknow, 100% cognitively or you're
not. You agree with that? Yeah,

absolutely. That's the foundation that's
like the bottom

really, is it really? Is it really? So was
there anything in particularthat inspired you to write your
book? The Empathic leader?

Well, part of it is just that there's
so many myths out there aboutempathy like that. It's all
about feeling or that. Empathy,you know, is the doing part of
things that you're takingresponsibility and you're doing
all this other stuff. And I kindof wanted to set the record
straight, because in many of theconversations that I've had so
my doctorates ininterdisciplinary leadership,
and I'm finishing up thedissertation, which is actually

(12:50):
on empathy and leadership, and alot of the conversations that
I've had with people inleadership positions had to
start with actually figuring outdefinitions and making sure we
Were talking about the samething. So part of wanting to
write this was, this is whatempathy is. This is what empathy
isn't, and this is how it fitsinto leadership. The other part
of that is that, you know,through working on this

(13:12):
dissertation, I've kind ofdeveloped my own methodology as
far as being able to apply it inleadership for better, profit,
productivity and innovation. AndI wanted to write it down so
it's kind of a handbook and amethodology too, so that if I'm
working with clients, they havethat they can look at and people
that I'm not as well. I mean,you know, it's there, it's all
in there. It's just a matter ofapplying it. And the third part

(13:34):
of it, too, is just thisreminder that we're all leaders.
You know, even if we're only aleader of one and we're trying
to get ourselves through there'sstuff in there that's applicable
for everybody in any situation.So that's kind of what happened.

So let's talk about integrating and applying
empathy, just in daily life ingeneral. How can someone
cultivate more empathy in theireveryday interactions? Because,
as we've both mentioned andagreed, it seems to be

(14:14):
disappearing from our culture.

Yeah, I think the number one place to
start is to start with selfempathy. Because,

Oh, that's interesting. How do you do that?

Well, there's, there's four basic
steps. Because if the idea isunderstanding and connection
through perspective taking, youneed to create a better
understanding and connectionwith yourself by understanding
different perspectives, right?Because if you can't do
something for yourself. How areyou going to do it for somebody
else? And that's true, yeah,yeah. So the way I teach that

(14:46):
actually is in four steps, andthe first one is self
observation, being able to stepoutside yourself and objectively
watch what you're doing withoutjudgment, without you know.
Adding any emotion. You're likea computer. You're just taking
in information, you're trying tounderstand what you're doing,
but you're not putting anemotional value on it. You're

(15:09):
just watching, and that's hardfor us to do, because we
immediately leap to judgment.You know, that was stupid, or,
Why did I do that? Or, well, soand so does it better, you know,
imposter syndrome, that kind ofthing. So just understanding
different perspectives, right?The second thing is self
reflection, which is where weturn the lens in and we try to

(15:29):
connect. Why are these thingshappening? What's happened that
makes me respond this way? Whatis it about this person that's
triggering me? What is it aboutthis situation that's triggering
me? You know, you're actuallyasking some of the hard
questions at that point. Onceyou begin to understand
yourself, you turn the lensoutward into self awareness,
which is hard, and I thinkthat's one of the things that

(15:51):
we're missing most when we talkabout how the world is kind of
losing this skill, because we'renot aware of what our actions,
our inactions do to the peoplearound us. We're not taking
their perspective, because wehaven't figured out what our
perspective is. So, you know, wecan actually start to say, Oh
yeah, when I was triggered bythat person, I completely shut

(16:11):
down the entire room. We gotnothing done. And I'm still not
exactly sure why that happenedat all, because, you know, we
were supposed to be workingtogether. And now all of a
sudden, everybody's scared ofme, and then at that point you
can move to self empathy,meaning that you can actually
start to understand and connectwith yourself. And like that may
be where you need to actuallyuse self compassion, that may be

(16:33):
where you need to use some selfforgiveness, that may be where
you need to actually make somechanges, but always within the
understanding of I'm a human andI'm doing the best I can with
the tools I have at the time,and I can get better. So when
I'm talking to two people, thoseare the four steps we go
through, which I mean thatsounds easier than it is,
because it's a iterativeprocess, right? We're doing it

(16:54):
over and over and over again.But you know, practice doesn't
make perfect. Practice makespermanent. So if you're
practicing it over and over andover again,

okay, well, what have you found are some of the
common barriers to empathy, andhow can we start to overcome
them?

You know, one of the biggest things
I see is just that people getvery caught up in themselves,
their own stressors, their ownlife problems, their own this is
what I feel. This is what Ithink. This is, you know, again,
putting the me in front of thewe instead of the other way
around. When you're busy lookingthrough your own eyes and
putting this judgment out intothe world, it becomes hard to

(17:36):
see through somebody else's eyesbecause you get blinders on,
yeah, you know. And sometimesit's just a matter of slowing
down and saying, Okay, I think Iknow what this is from my point
of view. What is it from theirpoint of view? What is it that I
may be adding gasoline to thisfire? You know? How am I adding
more to this by being sucked upinto my own head? And it's easy

(18:00):
to do Life is stressful. I mean,you know, it's not to say that
every

single day in my world of Alzheimer's disease and
dementia with family members andcaregivers and I, you know,
there are just so many parallelsto what you've been sharing with
us and what I see. And they're,they just, they're just so

(18:24):
connected. So it doesn't matterif you're living with
Alzheimer's disease anddementia. I mean, this is a,
really a fundamental core partof our being. Yes, from what I'm
hearing you say, so and I canrelate this to my world, because
this is really difficult forfamily members and caregivers.

(18:46):
So let's speak to this. How doesone stay empathetic when they
are in challenging or reallyhigh stress environments? And
this kind of falls back to whatI was saying that we have to
practice and work on retrainingthe brain, especially in

(19:07):
situations like this, becauseyour gut reaction, your
instinctive reaction tostressful situations, is based
on emotion and not On logic, andit sounds like we have to really
fall back and understand empathythrough a logistical lens, not

(19:32):
an emotional lens, wheresympathy is more through an
emotional lens. Would you agreewith what I'm saying there,

you know, it's, it's actually
interesting, because what, whatyou've put your finger on, and I
appreciate this is, at first,that there is such a thing as
empathy fatigue. Medical peopledeal with it all the time, where
they reach the point that it'sjust like, I can't take anymore,
which is why we talk aboutwhat's called. The dual root
model of empathy in that there'stwo ways to experience empathy,

(20:05):
and one is emotional, but theother is cognitive. You know, I
logically understand what you'refeeling. I just don't feel
anything. So a lot of times, youknow, when it emotionally, it
gets to be too much. We can moveaway from that emotional or
affective version of empathy andmove into this cognitive
empathy, which is a differentthing. It takes it's a different

(20:28):
part of the brain. That's whyit's called dual root, because
neurologically, it hits thebrain in different places. But
when empathy is really at itsbest, those two kind of work
together in tandem. And ifyou're in a situation where
you're dealing with someone witha long term disease, you know,
like Alzheimer's or dementia,sometimes you have to rely on
cognitive empathy so you don'tend up with empathy fatigue,

true, and I equate empathy fatigue in my world, I
see it being synonymous withcaregiver burnout, which is
very, very common it, and Ithink it has a lot to do with
what you're just explaining,

yeah, and I can imagine, because, I
mean, talk about a long term,high stress, really difficult
situation. I mean, you knowthat's, it's, it's, you would
almost have to rely on cognitiveempathy if you didn't want to
burn out.

So how do you go about doing that? It's not easy,
because your emotions will kickin before your logic, right?

Yeah, they will, and that's part of
it, because, like, the theaffective or emotional empathy
is fast. It's instinctive, andit's just like, boom, there it
is. Cognitive empathy is slower,but it's iterative. So you can
go back and think about it againand think about it again. So a
lot of times, if you feel thatemotional snap, you know that,
Oh, there's the empathy, ohthere's the feeling. And you can

(21:59):
kind of step back out and go,Okay, now let's think about
this. Let's actually tease thisapart cognitively. You know,
we're back again to the selfreflection and the self
awareness. Over time, you canstart to integrate this, and you
can actually make it a skill.The interesting thing about
empathy too. There was anotherstudy that was done on this, and

(22:19):
what it showed is that peoplewill tend to shy away from
things that require empathy,because neurologically, it's
harder, it's a lot harder togive empathy. And they actually
broke it down that if peoplewere given two tasks and one had
empathy and one didn't, theywould only choose the one that
needed empathy about 35% of thetime, especially if there was a

(22:44):
chance that it would be rejectedor that they wouldn't get any
kind of feedback out of it,which I think may speak, you
know, directly to some of theAlzheimer's and dementia
patients you talk about, becausethey're not always in a position
to have a lot of gratitude or bethankful for what's going on,
you know. So I think in thiscase, cognitive empathy, even

(23:04):
though it might take a littlemore skill to learn, would
definitely be the way to go,especially in the long run.

So could you maybe tell us so this would be
relatable to people listening tothis episode in a caregiver's
world or a family member's worldthat they've been thrust into
with a loved one or caring forsomebody with dementia. What

(23:36):
would it look like for them todo what you just said, to take a
step back and tap into thelogical aspect of the situation,
versus reacting completely onthe emotional side of it,
because that definitely wouldlead to The caregiver burnout

(23:59):
and the resentment and, youknow, the the even the way they
respond to the people, to theirloved ones. So what would what
are some exercises or practicesthat people could use to help
them be able to accomplish whatyou just described?

So the when I'm working with
medical people, and I'll admitthat I haven't done a lot of
work with Alzheimer's andDementia Caregivers, so you're
probably the expert on this morethan I am, but in dealing with
the medical professionals, thefirst thing is just that ability
to take a step back withoutguilt or judgment, because a lot
of times they're, they're reallywrapped up in the caregiving,

(24:44):
right? I mean, and it can be a24/7, thing, even when you're
dealing with nursing orphysicians or that kind of
thing, they get very wrapped upin their career, and because
it's such a big thing for thempersonally, for them to take a
step back almost. Leaves themfeeling like they're not doing
the job well enough, thatthey're guilty, that they're not
giving enough, or they're notstepping in like they should,

(25:06):
and that's going to lead toburnout. So the first thing is
to be able to take a step backwithout emotion, like we were
talking about no guilt, nojudgment, no. Oh, I should have,
or I could have, but actually,okay, this is going to be better
for them in the long run. If Itake this step back, if I take
these 10 or 15 minutes formyself, if there's a day that I

(25:26):
have to step aside so that I cantake care of myself, you know,
if I don't let myself getforgotten in the middle of all
of this, you know, that's one ofthe first things, is just you
have to take care of yourselffirst, which may mean taking a
step back, which may mean notthrowing yourself in emotionally
all the time, which may meandoing some journaling and
actually writing out why. Youknow, how could I have related

(25:50):
to this in a cognitive way sothat my emotions didn't get
involved? What can I do to kindof separate this out? Because
after a while, those neuralpathways will shut down. I mean,
the effect of empathy, if youget just fatigued for too long,
it's like burnout. Eventually itjust, it's like we're done. So
if you can take a step back, ifyou can start writing it out,

(26:11):
this is how cognitively I couldhave dealt with this, now that I
have time to think about it,that I'm outside of the
situation, you know, I'm not,that's a great idea. I'm not in
an emergency, stressful kind ofthing, I can actually stop and
think because as we think aboutthings that way, then they're
ready for us to put in placenext time. Because we're not
creating new neurological waysof dealing with it, we're

(26:35):
recreating something we'vealready thought about.

Now I see with a lot of medical professionals
that they actually becomedesensitized to being empathetic
towards family members, whatthey're going through, and the
pay their patients, because it'salmost overwhelming and too much

(26:59):
to bear to to to put themselvesin the emotional funnel, piece
of having to tell that them thediagnosis and all of that so but
I don't think quite as muchdesensitization occurs with The

(27:20):
caregivers of the familymembers, I think it might
actually intensify their thembeing sensitive to, well, what
they're going through, not somuch. We have to kind of switch
turn things around and kind ofretrain them to have more of a
perspective of what the personthey're caring for is going

(27:42):
through, or their loved one,that's not an easy thing,
because that's not the way we'rewired.

No, no and it's but there you are
again. It's about perspective,taking right? I mean, not only
the other person, but also intouch with your own that you
know, we're back to selfempathy, that you know, maybe I
snapped in that place where Ishouldn't have, maybe I've been
pushing too hard, and it'spushing me over the edge, and
these emotions are getting toomuch, and that's okay. I'm a

(28:10):
human being. It's okay for me totake a step back. It's okay for
me to try and figure this out.You know, you're you're looking
at the perspectives through yourown eyes as well is through the
eyes of the other person.Empathy is fascinating in that
way. I mean, it encompasses somuch. It really

does. So can we take that a step farther? And
let's say they were journalingwhat happened, and they
acknowledge how, how, what theydid to maybe exacerbate the
situation. What if we took thata step farther, and they

(28:47):
actually included okay, if thissituation comes up again, how
would I handle it better nexttime?

Absolutely, that's precisely, yeah, you
know, but, and it allows you tothink about it cognitively
outside of the actual event.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. So, how can someone
distinguish? This is aninteresting going to be an
interesting question. I'mcurious how you're going to
answer this. Can someonedistinguish between genuine

(29:32):
empathy and performative, orpretending to be empathetic?

So you know how we said that
actually using empathy takesmore effort, because you're
actually trying to see itthrough the other person's eyes.
If you're dealing with someonewith performative empathy,
they're probably not going toput that effort in. So you know
you're going to understand thatthey're not really seeing it
from the other person'sperspective. Might layer their

(30:00):
own perspective in it. That'swhen you get things like, oh,
when this happened to me, Oh, Iknow how you feel, because when
it happened to me, you know, asopposed to, well, I don't really
know how you feel, but I want toknow more. Can you explain your
side to me? They're not going towant to put in that extra work.
So I would think that would be adead giveaway, if you're really

(30:21):
listening, you know, are theytalking about the other person,
or are they talking aboutthemselves in terms of the other
person?

The other thing, I think, that probably would not
carry forward, would be thecompassionate component that you
spoke about, like what you endedup doing with your dad. That
piece would completely bemissing. Is that pretty
accurate?

Yes. Funny thing, well, just the
funny thing about compassion is,if you don't plug in empathy
first, sometimes you can dothings that look compassionate
but aren't compassionate. Youtake, like completely the wrong
route, because you haven'tactually plugged the empathy
piece into understanding connectfirst.

You're not understanding things from from
from their side of the fence.Yeah, that makes total sense to
me. Yeah, wow. This has reallybeen powerful and dynamic, and
you have given us such, youknow, a different look at how to

(31:27):
communicate with people, how torelate to people. How does this
fit into the workplace? BecauseI know that you know you
actually work a lot with in aleadership environment to
probably bring into theworkplace to enhance
communication or relationshipswithin that type of environment.

(31:48):
So how does what does that looklike in more of a corporate
structured environment?

So when I'm looking at corporate
specifically, a lot of times Italk about how to take empathy
and plug it into emotionalintelligence skills. Because for
a long time, we thought ofemotional intelligence kind of
as this big bucket, right? Andit's got motivation, and it's
got communication, and it's gottechnical, you know, it's got
all this stuff in it. And for along time we put empathy in that

(32:16):
tool bag. But what I actuallytalk about is how we have to
take empathy out of that toolbag so that we can understand
and connect first, before wereach into that tool bag,
because otherwise we don'treally know which emotional
intelligence skill is going tobe the best to use. We don't
know if we're going for a chiselor a left handed screwdriver
without first understanding andconnecting. So when I'm in

(32:37):
corporate and I'm dealingspecifically with leaders, we
talk a lot about the connectionand human to human aspect of
empathy in terms of being ableto grab those emotional
intelligence skills tocommunicate better, to be able
to motivate better, to selfmotivate better. You know, we're
back to the self empathy side ofthings again. You know, that way
they're able to actually leadbetter. And there are studies

(33:00):
that show that if you can leadwith empathy, that you are going
to create better profit,productivity and innovation,
profit to the tune of like 84%you know, so that that's a lot
of what my work in corporatelooks like. In a nutshell,

that's that's almost a double edged sword,
because leaders tend to be verynumbers driven. They're under a
lot of pressure. They have toanswer to shareholders the
bottom line. And you know, sothey're driven. They want to
drive the people who areunderneath them. So how do you

(33:41):
accomplish being empathetic whenthose are completely almost a
contradiction within itself.

Well, first of all, I mean empathy
does not mean you don't haveboundaries. Having empathy
doesn't mean you don't getbusiness done. You know, it's
like we were talking aboutearlier, that empathy, you don't
actually do anything. You seekto connect and understand. So
the better you're able toconnect and understand with all
people like you were talkingabout, right? Any stakeholder,

(34:15):
whether it's the board ofdirectors, to, you know, middle
management, to the people belowyou, the better you're going to
be able to understand how todirect them, to be able to move
them into the best possible, youknow, version of themselves
within this organization thatyou that you can

so they want to remain driven, versus feeling
like they are being bullied intobeing driven Nice. Okay, that
makes total sense.

Yep, it's a difference between
management and leadership. Yeah,management

self motivation, Yes, precisely because they feel
somebody understands them. Yeah,that's the root of of my
methodology and what I've beentrained to. Teach is, you know,
validate, acknowledge, let themknow that you hear them. And I

(35:09):
think that probably applies topeople in general, part of our
just being, yeah, absolutely theworkplace. It works with, you
know, people living withcognitive decline. Yeah,
anything else we've talked abouta lot, and we've covered a lot
of really important points. Um,what's the one piece of advice

(35:34):
you would give to peoplelistening to this show today
that might help them break theunempathetic barrier that a lot
of us, you know, may havedeveloped over time to get

(35:54):
started on a new path to tryingto be more empathetic with other
people in any given situation,

you know, I think it helps just to
remember that it isn't an all ornothing kind of thing. You know,
if you can take five minutestoday and just think, well, what
would the perspective be throughthe eyes of that person? What is
that person actually seeing andfeeling and thinking? You know,
and you can raise your empathyby 5% then that's 5% it isn't

(36:25):
like everything has to suddenlybe puppies and rainbows, but you
can work on it just a little bitevery day. And if you do it
every day and every day andevery day, that's how you build
a skill. That's how you becomeMichael Jordan and the greatest
basketball player of all time,is you work on those skills
every day, and empathy is thesame, so just a little bit every

(36:45):
day,

we see a lot of anger in the world now. So how
do you stop yourself fromfeeling that way and pivot to
trying to understand a situationfrom somebody else's point of
view.

That's, that's precisely where I would
switch from emotional empathy,because you can feel it, I mean,
and it is, it is hard not togive into it when you feel it
strongly, you know, intocognitive empathy and understand
that. Cognitive empathy doesn'tmean I have to agree with that
person. No, no, and it, youknow, I definitely have
boundaries. You know, I don'tlike what someone's doing, but

(37:25):
at least I'm like, Okay, well,they're probably doing this for
this reason or this reason orthis reason, and I don't have to
give in to that. I have controlover my empathy and how I want
to react to those emotions, andif I want the world to react
with empathy, then I need to bethe first one to do it, even if

(37:45):
it's 2%

I like that. I like I love that. So Melissa,
how do people find your book andfind out more about your area of
expertise and what you do.

So the easiest place is my website,
and that's EQ via, that's viasand Victor IA, empathy.com, you
can order my book there, or youcan get it at Barnes and Noble
or Amazon, or, you know, theusual places. And my TEDx talk
was just released a week ago,and we are up to 31,000 views.
Congratulations, thank you. I'msorry. Where

Unknown (38:27):
did you do your TED Talk? Tulsa? Oh, in Tulsa. Uh
huh, yeah, exciting, yeah, goahead. Oh, just say I did mine.
Gosh, it was about a year and ahalf ago in Canada. Oh, cool,
yeah, in Grand Prairie, Alberta.

Oh, how cool is that? So we got that
at coming too. How cool is

that? That off the bucket list, right? Such an
amazing experience. It reallywas, of course, I did mine on
Alzheimer's disease anddementia. I was drawing
parallels with a story that wecan all relate to, to how that
is similar to living withAlzheimer's disease. Because I

(39:19):
wanted people to be moreempathetic to what it's really
like to live with Alzheimer'sdisease and dementia. I imagine
you did yours on empathy, huh?

I did, I did mine on self empathy
and self judgment. Because, Oh,

beautiful, congratulations.
Congratulations. That's that's ahuge accomplishment. Anything
else you'd like to share withour with our viewers, with my
viewers, before we come to aclose today.

I just think that you know what I
the way I break it down for mypeople is because you're using
cognitive and effective empathyto just remember to keep a cool
head and a. Warm heart.

I like that. Yeah, it's not always as easy done as
it is said, but it's yeah, it'sdoable. It's quite possible,

yes, but anything worth having is
worth doing the work for. Iagree.

All right, my friend, thank you again for
coming on the show today, thisinformation you've shared to me
is absolutely invaluable, and Iappreciate you taking the time
to come on and share this. Sofor now, you take good care, you

(40:36):
stay happy and healthy, and youkeep up all your just invaluable
work.

Thank you, and thank you so much for
having me. And I hope youraudience gets a lot of use out
of this.

Oh, me too. I'm sure they will. I have no doubt,
actually. All right, we'll talk.Be talking to you soon. Melissa,
take care. All right. Thank you.Well, that'll do it for this
week's episode of the truth liesand Alzheimer's Show. I'm your
host. Lisa Skinner, thank youagain, Melissa, for being such

(41:10):
an amazing guest. And we will beback next week with another
brand new episode of the truthlies and Alzheimer's show. So
don't go too far, because wewill be back next week. Bye for
now.

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Empathy vs. Sympathy — A Conversation with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Empathy vs. Sympathy — A Conversation with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller