Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When Others Think You're Not Empathic

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When Others Think You're Not Empathic · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

0:05
Hi everybody. And welcome to the doctors.
0:07
Psych mom show. Today.
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I'm going to talk about what empathy really looks like and
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how to be more empathic especially if a partner has
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asked you to do this, or you have gotten feedback from your
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kids or from, you know, when they're old enough to say
0:23
something like this or from co-workers or friends, or
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honestly people that are told that they're not empathic, it
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comes from all quarters. So, how can you recognize this?
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Why might it be the case? And how You work on.
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It is going to be the focus of today's episode.
0:38
And before we get there, please do subscribe because I just did
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some more of my bonus episodes. And so you're going to like
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There are a lot of interesting threads and it's away from the
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prying eyes of people that, you know, so that you can actually
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talk about things that are of interest to you.
1:25
Anyhow, so what is empathy? Empathy is perspective-taking,
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it's when you can take somebody else's perspective and really
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put yourself in their shoes. So it is not Empathy.
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I mean some of these better than nothing so sympathy is when you
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feel bad for someone you feel like oh that really sucks, you
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know for that poor person, but you can't really empathize what
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it's like to be that person. So what's an example of the
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difference between the two? So let's take a common scenario,
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wherein a couple one partner experiences depression.
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So this is common. There's a lot of women that
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experience depression. A lot of men too, but more women
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So I'm more frequently get women in my office that feel that
2:08
their husbands is not understand what their depression is like
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and all of the ways it manifests.
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So sympathy would be my poor wife.
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She's depressed. I can't understand what the hell
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that's like, I guess, you know, it sucks though.
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And that's that's better than somebody who for example, says
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man, I don't even think depression is real.
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Like I think those people just oughta get off their ass and do
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something, which I mean, I see some of that too, but it's
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couched in more flowery phrases, but And of course, that's not
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real. That's not true.
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But anyway, so empathy would be. My wife is depressed.
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That feels like she is really hopeless and fatigued and stuck.
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If I were my wife and I was feeling that way, I could see
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how like all of these other behaviors of my wife makes
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sense. Like, I can deeply.
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Imagine what it's like to be my wife and that's terrible.
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And from kind of Putting myself in those In Her Shoes.
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I can almost figure out what she would want me to do.
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So like there is a world like men, especially you're like, I'm
3:13
not a mind-reader. How am I supposed to know?
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She wants me to do? If you're empathic, you kind of
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become a mind reader and there's actually a word empath.
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That means basically a highly sensitive person.
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That's really good at putting themselves.
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In other people's position. You can't really just decide to
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become this. But you can practice this muscle
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of empathizing and people who I'll go with empathy really did
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not grow up in very empathic homes.
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So they grew up in homes, where people were very judgmental,
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where people were cold critical. Like, for example, a man who
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says that, man. My wife is depressed.
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I have no goddamn idea what that's like, and sometimes I
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just think she just got to get off her as a little bit more.
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That guy, there's no way. He was raised in an empathic
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home where a mother. For example, read books with him
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and said, oh, what is Johnny feeling in this book?
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Or even told the kid what she herself was feeling about
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anything, unless it was better than someone else.
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Who is weak, you know, so, when you grow up in a house and
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everything is competitive cold, there's no emotions, really
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discussed. Then you do not practice empathy
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because it's not adaptive in your family of origin.
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You would be considered a pussy. Quite honestly, you know, if
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your mother was reading you a book, not that such things go on
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frequently in homes with not a lot of closeness, but You were
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still young enough, your mother's reading you, a book and
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you and it's a Little House on the Prairie and the horse died.
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Right? And you burst into tears in
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homes that are not comfortable with emotion.
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Your mother would get very uncomfortable right then and she
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be like, it's just a book. Like it's not real.
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Probably didn't happen. Let's move on.
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And so then you learn like you were feeling deep empathy with
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Laura and Mary or whatever and then the horse that died and
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worth maybe for the horse itself, you know, and but that
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wasn't liked, it wasn't responded to well.
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It was dismissed. It was kind of condescended to
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in your mother seemed a little discussed it so, you know, and
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that's the mother and the mothers are usually the more
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empathic, you know, women are more often caretakers have
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estrogen said of testosterone. So the dads in those families
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where men are raised to be on empathic.
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They're frequently even worse. They wouldn't know a feeling of
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it, smack them in the face. And this is, of course, due to
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their family of origin experiences.
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Nobody's blaming, anybody. Everybody can be understood
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within their own context. You get a man that was raised to
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be scared of emotions because if he experiences any their
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condescended to, it's kind of gross honestly and its really
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doesn't have a place in his childhood and nobody ever helps
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him learn how to empathize with anybody else through sharing
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their own emotions. I've written a post about how
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mothers can help their sons understand women later on, by
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sharing their own emotions in real time.
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And either way, like, they don't have any practice with this.
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So then one day they get married and they're why?
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Wife is like, I'm feeling so bad because you know, my friend came
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over and I think that she judged the house and I think that she
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thought that I'm such a fuckup because we had all these dishes
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in the sink. And this guy is going to say
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something like are you talking about?
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She doesn't give a shit about our dishes.
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You make yourself upset for no reason, and he's genuinely going
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to think he's being helpful. He's going to think he's adding
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value a different perspective and that if she was just
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confronted with this Intel, that he's providing.
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Which quite honestly, it's most likely.
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True is a bitter irony of it. For him is probably true that
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the woman didn't give a shit about the conditions in the
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sing. But the way that he says, it is
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basically like shaming her for having an emotion, and there's
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zero empathy. Now guys, who do a little bit
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better have sympathy there. Like my wife said about some
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crazy shit. Again, I guess I got to go over
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and say I love you. It's okay.
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I'm sure it's okay. All right, find this is better,
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but this is not where you want to end.
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This is not the end result of your self development as a Human
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being, you want to be empathic. Maybe you could be like my wife.
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Why is she so upset about? What I think is this crazy
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thing? Oh, let's think about it.
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She devotes herself completely to the house.
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You know, this house is like her career.
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Women seem to think that the home decoration is very
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important. If I was a woman.
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I would probably think then that the home decorations, very
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important. Maybe this is like, if my boss
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came over and my computer was up and I had like, 15 browser
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windows on CNN and the New York Times and One thing for work and
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I was like, oh my God, he must think that I'm such a, you know,
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waste and maybe I'm going to get fired.
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Maybe that's how she thinks about that.
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This woman is not going to be her friend anymore because her
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friend looked into the sink and saw that she's not supposedly
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now, a good housekeeper. So maybe I can empathize that
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she's very anxious and feels ashamed and embarrassed.
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Now, if you were raised in an empathic home, this stuff is
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second nature. You don't articulate it.
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You don't have to go through all of this in your head, but just
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like any other skill that you learn, you know, when you don't
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know how to do it. You got to start out very low
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level and it takes a long time, and it feels very mechanical and
8:16
fake, and then eventually doesn't feel fake anymore.
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So, remember learning to change a diaper that felt very strange
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and weird and like that would probably have to take everybody
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10 minutes at a time. And then over time it takes you
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to S to do, right. So it's the same sort of thing
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and I say that because like So many people, especially men
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never changed a diaper before they had a baby.
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So it certainly did seem weird the first time.
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I'm sure. So if you want to get better at
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empathy, you got to practice. And thankfully, if you're in a
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relationship or even if you're not, there are human beings
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around you family members kids, what wife of co-workers,
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whatever, they're all around you all the time.
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If Nobody's around you, then you don't have it easy in use for
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apathy probably. So if there are any
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relationships in your life, pick something that you've
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previously, Found it difficult to empathize with and try to get
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better at it. What could be an example?
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So I'm there's plenty of women who are on a thick who are
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raised in an empathic homes as well.
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So what's my favorite one to talk about?
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One of my favorite, the sex issue, right?
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So if a woman cannot empathize with a man with her high sex
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drive, husbands need for physical touch.
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Then what is she doing? You know, I mean, that's not
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being a good partner, not being able to empathize.
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It's interesting because now if we look at the sympathy, won the
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sympathy. Gets a man kind of this like,
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vaguely condescending, patronizing sexual encounter.
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So she's like, man, I don't get why he wants to have sex so
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much. Hmm, must be some guy thing.
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I don't fucking know. But all right.
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Honey. Come here.
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Let's let's do it. I have until 10:15, you know,
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let's go and this is going to be better slightly than him jerking
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off himself, but really not much and that is a sympathetic
10:02
person. She feels like he has this
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completely not Understandable need and I mean I guess you'll
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do it. I mean crazy shit, you know
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guess you'll do it, but that is not trying to be empathic.
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That's not saying like what is something that I need very much.
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It must be like that for him with the physical touch.
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What do I need? Oh, I need him to be sweet to
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me, or to be polite or to remember my birthday or to get
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the cars oil changed or to rub my feet or Cook dinner or
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whatever, the hell he does that you like in or maybe he doesn't
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do any of it. Then you could really
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understand. Because you can be like, man,
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the amount that I yearn for him to be nicer must be the amount
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that he yearns for me to be sexual.
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So that's when you get into empathy.
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So what is empathy? It's perspective-taking from
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putting yourself into that person's shoes and frequently,
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at least if you're exercising a muscle at first, it's going to
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require saying. What do I feel like that about
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Oh, it must be something like that.
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And I have a post on this. What do you struggle with?
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That can help you understand your partner struggles.
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And if you were answers, you don't struggle with anything.
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Then you gotta go, get evaluated for some narcissistic traits.
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Because everybody struggles with something and whatever you
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struggle with see it, a struggle, is something you're
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trying to do, but you can't get there.
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You're trying to be this thing, but you can't get there.
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You're trying to access this from another person, but you
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can't get it. Whatever the hell it is.
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You. Therefore even if you just have
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one thing that you struggle with which of course you don't, you
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have Myriad things being a human then.
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Even if you just had one though, you could use that one as
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mental, extrapolation point for all other empathy in the world,
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right? You only need to want to do one
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thing that you have a hard time doing and you can therefore
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understand everybody struggles. So if you use enough empathy if
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you really Deeply dig deep because you were not trained
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this way again, remember. So it's not really your fault.
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You're learning a new skill. It would be like, trying to
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learn to eat healthy. If you were raised just eating,
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like junk food all the time. You're not going to know.
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Other people are going to be like, oh I made a salad because
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like the fuck is in a salad man. I don't even know that.
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And honestly this sort of thing is actually very helped by
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therapy because when people grow up in dysfunctional families,
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they have no idea what normal is.
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So a therapist can really help you.
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With that. Because now the age of Google,
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it sounds stupid but in the age of Google, it's actually easier
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for people. So they could literally Google
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something like wikiHow salad. Like what the hell is in a
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salad, you know, if you were somebody who was raised making
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their own hot pockets all the time, because your parents were
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kind of am IA and you never saw a vegetable.
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You could be like how to cook a vegetable.
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Whereas previously in the age prior to the internet when
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people didn't know, basic life skills, they had.
13:05
To like, go to find books, or find like a mentor of some sort
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or like watch other people carefully, like an
13:11
anthropologist and, you know, it's a lot harder.
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So that's something that the age of the internet has done, that
13:18
is good. In addition to dating apps,
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which is how I met my husband. So, anyway, but the thing is, is
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in therapy. You could say something, like,
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my wife tells me to be empathic. I literally have no idea what
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she means. I think I'm being empathic, man.
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I do everything she doesn't. To do I make money, I come home.
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I take care of the kids. She still has a problem.
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She's upset with something or other.
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I don't fucking know what I'm supposed to say at all and if
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you had the balls to say this, then you can really right away.
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Start learning. The problem is that many people
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feel so deeply ashamed of their inability to make a spouse happy
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and to connect with their spouse, that they become very
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defensive. And instead of hearing, when the
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wife is like, you don't know how I feel.
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Or you don't understand me. They say stuff like Well, what
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the hell should I understand? God, damn it.
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That's not a problem at all. And let me tell you, the reasons
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that your feelings are invalid and, you know, obviously that
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works about as well as you can imagine, which is not at all.
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So if you have received feedback from anybody, and this includes
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children as they get older children, maybe like you don't
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listen to me, Daddy, or mommy, or as they're even older than
14:25
that. They may say things.
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Like, as I discussed in the podcast on when your child
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believes things that are different than your own belief
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system. They may start to say stuff like
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You're always in validating me. You don't respect me.
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You don't respect my opinion. Why can't you live my own life?
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Why can't you respect me as an adult?
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Why can't you ever, you know, say that you learn something for
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me for a change or Y. If I'm, you know, like I have
14:50
clients are like, literally a doctor and the parent will go
14:53
on. WebMD, you know, instead of ask
14:55
the child about their physical ailment.
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This is textbook lack of empathy, even if the parent was
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never going to do what the child said it is.
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Empathic to not realize how insulting that would be, you
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know. So if you're dealing with
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either, an adult child, a spouse, co-worker, friend,
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whatever if anybody is said, you don't understand me, you're not
15:18
a good listener, good list that's like code for your on
15:21
empathic and or anything like that or if your interpersonal
15:26
interactions just go to shit and or if you are frequently
15:30
confused by people like you think y'all are just shooting
15:33
the shit and then somebody burst into Here's or somebody stops
15:36
being your friend, or you get a bad work evaluation or somebody
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says you your, you know, one of your kids says something that
15:44
just totally blows you out of the water.
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Like you've never really listened to me, you know, when I
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was a kid, you know, something that you don't think reflects
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reality instead of buckling down and becoming even more defensive
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which always hurts the interaction and the relationship
15:57
and the person more. What you need to do is think
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maybe I'm just bad at empathy and maybe I need to work on it.
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Maybe I need to work on. On genuinely saying, okay, the
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thing that's hard for this person, must be somewhat like
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how I feel with this other thing that's hard for me.
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Now, don't go down this crazy rabbit hole that some people
16:17
with the narcissistic traits do, which is saying all the stuff in
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the past, like all of the things that they could remember
16:24
struggling with her in the past is like a job interview answer
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when the job interviewer says, you know, like classically would
16:31
say, what do you struggle with? And the person says, well, I
16:34
used to To perfectionistic, but now I really have much more
16:38
balanced. It's like first of all, fuck.
16:40
You like, definitely you have more stuff than that.
16:42
And that's not even a real one. That's like a good one.
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Even if it didn't go away and also your situating it in the
16:48
past. So while this may have been a
16:50
good way to answer job interview and like, you know, the 90s
16:53
before people were like cognizant of emotion more, you
16:58
know, it's not anymore a because people want you to be more
17:02
authentic at work and be it. Especially interpersonally,
17:07
you're not going to get anywhere by saying.
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Well, you know, I was, I'm thinking about stuff I'm bad at
17:12
and like, for example, I used to be bad at golf.
17:14
So I did what any smart person would do.
17:17
I got better at it and I got myself a golf pro and I start
17:21
taking lessons and I will really, you know, watched all
17:23
these videos on it. And now man, I'm in whatever the
17:27
hell it is. The Masters.
17:28
Is that what it is? I don't think it's Wimbledon.
17:30
I think it's the Masters, but either way it's like, oh, give
17:34
me a break like you do. Currently have something you
17:36
struggle with. If you can currently think of
17:38
something right now that you struggle with, then you need to
17:41
do some deeper digging. The number one thing that
17:45
anybody in this situation struggles with is guess what?
17:48
Connecting to others. So you might say, you know, how
17:52
I guess it must be like when I'm trying so hard to connect to my
17:56
wife. I think I'm saying the right
17:58
thing and then she's so mad at me.
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It must be that frustration and sadness must be.
18:05
How she feels when she says blah blah blah to me.
18:08
And I know you know, this like this exact situation.
18:12
The as frustrated, as I feel with her.
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She must feel that way with me for not understanding her and
18:21
you know, Etc. So really if you struggle with
18:24
empathy, the main points to get out of this are situated in your
18:28
family of origin and understand that this is a difficult thing
18:31
to learn. If you never learned it in the
18:33
hole, if it In an ambient part of your home atmosphere.
18:37
It would not be something that you struggle with.
18:39
Now, this is not to blame anybody, but just to give you a
18:42
larger view. So that you can say, oh wow,
18:45
like this is something that I'm going to need to learn because I
18:47
didn't get it, you know, and then to say, what do I struggle
18:52
with? So that I can then, deeply
18:53
understand how other people struggle without coming off as
18:56
defensive minimizing self-aggrandizing, you know,
19:01
condescending or whatever. Other wonderful monikers.
19:04
I've been given over the Years and even if you think it's only
19:07
your crazy spouse to thinks you're running Pathak man it
19:10
never is it really never is and if you procreated with this
19:14
crazy spouse that you think is so crazy.
19:17
There's a good chance that at least some of your children are
19:20
going to think the same thing as they think about you.
19:22
When they're older. They're going to be the ones who
19:24
say you never listen to me. So this can be another motivator
19:27
because most people value very much the relationship on going
19:30
with their children. All right, so hopefully you got
19:33
something out of this and please do subscribe.
19:35
Subscribe. If my podcast adds value to your
19:37
life and immediately forth with go and figure out what you
19:42
struggle with that, you are going to use as your
19:43
extrapolation point when other people struggle and it's called
19:47
upon you to empathize.