Latest / feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell / Are You Really Empathetic?: How Empathy Empowers Mental Health Growth

Transcript

Are You Really Empathetic?: How Empathy Empowers Mental Health Growth · feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell

• 0:00
  Someone cuts you off in traffic. They must be a bad person and
• 0:04
  their action has now upset you. Maybe a friend is acting a
• 0:07
  little bit differently towards you.
• 0:09
  Well, you think you must have done something wrong or they
• 0:12
  must have changed. Maybe you are feeling upset or
• 0:16
  depressed. You tell yourself you don't
• 0:19
  deserve to feel this way. You experience guilt for feeling
• 0:21
  emotions. All of these things could be
• 0:25
  relatively normal thoughts that you have, but they are not a
• 0:30
  healthy way to live. This is not a good way to have a
• 0:34
  relationship with other people's emotions and with your own.
• 0:39
  People are more complicated than that.
• 0:41
  You're more complicated than that.
• 0:43
  There's more layers to every decision and action that people
• 0:48
  make. Being empathetic to both others
• 0:52
  and yourself allows you to have a different, more healthy
• 0:56
  perspective towards the complicated, messy part of life
• 0:59
  that is emotions. So let's discuss how being more
• 1:03
  emotionally empathetic not only improves our relationship with
• 1:07
  others, but also our relationship with our self.
• 1:11
  After all, empathy empowers you to see a different perspective,
• 1:16
  one with less judgment, less malice, free from grudges.
• 1:22
  My name is Ethan Jewell and welcome back to Feel your
• 1:27
  feelings. It's a lot easier to always
• 1:33
  assume the worst. I know I have a pretty bad habit
• 1:38
  of this. Sometimes when a random stranger
• 1:40
  wrongs me, or maybe a friend is acting differently, I'll tend to
• 1:44
  assume that they're doing it with an intention to do so, and
• 1:49
  I used to not pay much attention to what could be going on on the
• 1:52
  inside, whether it's in a stranger, a friend, or in
• 1:56
  yourself. You know when someone cuts you
• 1:58
  in line, it's easy to assume they're a bad person and that
• 2:02
  sours your entire mood. They must be doing this out of
• 2:05
  spite or malice. They must be doing it to affect
• 2:09
  you. This plants a seed for you to be
• 2:12
  upset by their action, causing your inner emotions to be
• 2:16
  controlled by an outward force. But this is an unhealthy way to
• 2:22
  live, yet far too common. We can feel this way towards
• 2:26
  strangers, loved ones, or ourselves.
• 2:30
  A lack of empathy towards everyone around us, including
• 2:33
  ourselves, will lead to a lack of emotional maturity.
• 2:37
  It will lead to a void of judgement and assumed malice.
• 2:40
  It will lead us down a miserable path.
• 2:44
  So join me as we discuss what emotional empathy is, how we can
• 2:49
  practice it to have a healthier perspective in life, and how
• 2:53
  that perspective will positively impact us.
• 2:57
  So what exactly is emotional empathy?
• 3:00
  Well, it's the ability to understand and process what
• 3:04
  other people may be feeling or experiencing.
• 3:08
  Sometimes you may even feel some of what they're feeling.
• 3:12
  This helps deepen that understanding and allow you to
• 3:15
  truly get what they're feeling. Maybe a friend is dealing with a
• 3:20
  breakup. Instead of assuming that they're
• 3:22
  shut off or depressed. Behavior is a direct reflection
• 3:26
  of how they feel towards you. If you practice emotional
• 3:29
  empathy, you can understand that their actions are a reflection
• 3:33
  of how they're feeling. They are acting on an emotion or
• 3:37
  experience that they're having, and with some practice you can
• 3:40
  pick up on that without them having to communicate directly.
• 3:45
  You can then be there for them. You can understand that it is
• 3:49
  not your fault that they are acting differently.
• 3:52
  You won't internalize their actions and this can lead to
• 3:56
  more peace. Let's look at another example.
• 4:01
  Maybe you're out at the grocery store and a random person cuts
• 4:04
  you off in the parking lot, seemingly in a rush.
• 4:07
  Your two options are to assume malice or to assume ignorance
• 4:14
  because of what's going on in their life.
• 4:16
  If you choose malice, you will be assuming this random person
• 4:19
  wronged you specifically on purpose.
• 4:21
  This will likely 'cause you some emotional distress.
• 4:24
  You may find yourself angry that they cut you off in the parking
• 4:27
  lot, as it caused a little bit of stress slamming on the
• 4:30
  brakes. You might find yourself thinking
• 4:32
  about it for the rest of the day, wondering what you did to
• 4:34
  deserve their action, their small little action.
• 4:38
  If you do not write it off as simply ignorance or something
• 4:43
  else, it can literally affect you.
• 4:45
  I, I, I know this might sound ridiculous, but you have likely
• 4:48
  experienced this. If you practice emotional
• 4:51
  empathy, you understand that they likely didn't do that with
• 4:54
  any negative intention towards you.
• 4:56
  Maybe there's something going on at their workplace or in their
• 4:59
  family life, and they're so distracted thinking about it
• 5:02
  that they accidentally cut you off.
• 5:04
  And maybe they recently experienced a loss and they're
• 5:07
  sour towards the world, tossing out any care for others.
• 5:09
  Whatever it is, you can understand that it isn't your
• 5:12
  fault. Being able to detach yourself
• 5:15
  from that by understanding the unique and complicated human
• 5:18
  experience is healthy and important.
• 5:23
  Now this is a pretty surface level example of this idea of
• 5:28
  practicing emotional empathy, but it runs much deeper.
• 5:32
  In the same way that you can practice emotional empathy
• 5:35
  towards a stranger and understand that they might just
• 5:38
  be feeling a certain way and acting out, and that's fine.
• 5:40
  Or allowing a friend to struggle with emotions and not
• 5:43
  internalize their actions or their feelings.
• 5:45
  Allow them space to feel. You can practice that same
• 5:49
  empathy and patience towards yourself.
• 5:54
  You can have a greater relationship with yourself in a
• 5:57
  deeper understanding for how you and those around you function
• 6:00
  emotionally. If you're anything like me, you
• 6:04
  have at some point felt guilt or shame for feeling a certain way.
• 6:09
  You felt an intense emotion, depression, anxiety, paranoia.
• 6:12
  And instead of accepting that emotion in practicing self
• 6:16
  empathy, you push it to the side and tell yourself that others
• 6:19
  have it worse, so you shouldn't feel that way.
• 6:23
  You feel guilt. You feel shame.
• 6:24
  You try to push away those feelings because you think you
• 6:27
  shouldn't feel them at all. This is emotional gaslighting.
• 6:34
  This is a complete lack of self empathy.
• 6:36
  This is dangerous. This way of thinking teaches you
• 6:39
  that your emotions should conform to some outward set of
• 6:42
  rules that you have to check off boxes in order to have valid
• 6:46
  feelings. But the truth is, every feeling
• 6:50
  is valid. Every feeling you have deserves
• 6:54
  a high level of emotional empathy.
• 6:56
  Each emotion that passes through your body should be acknowledged
• 7:00
  and treated with the respect it deserves.
• 7:02
  It doesn't matter how big or small.
• 7:03
  Each feeling is an experience unique to you and deserves to be
• 7:07
  treated that way. So next time you feel any
• 7:10
  feeling, regardless of what others may be experiencing,
• 7:14
  regardless of the emotions you've experienced before, treat
• 7:17
  it with respect. Allow it the space to be felt.
• 7:20
  Allow yourself empathy to feel that emotion in a safe space.
• 7:23
  Don't force it away. This is how you form a more
• 7:27
  healthy relationship with yourself by creating layers of
• 7:31
  trust and comfort through self empathy and validation.
• 7:38
  In these same footsteps, you can practice that level of emotional
• 7:41
  empathy towards others. When they are upset, their mood
• 7:47
  seems off, you can just be present with them and respect
• 7:50
  whatever feelings they need to feel.
• 7:53
  If someone is acting differently for no reason and won't tell you
• 7:56
  about why, perhaps they just need room to feel.
• 8:01
  And I don't mean you have to literally walk away from them.
• 8:05
  Maybe they just need to feel those feelings.
• 8:08
  They just need to be a little bit different.
• 8:10
  It is not your responsibility to pry what they're feeling out of
• 8:14
  them, to force them to feel. Maybe they just need room.
• 8:19
  We can allow them to have these complicated feelings and not
• 8:23
  feel a personal pressure to do anything about it.
• 8:27
  Of course we should always try to be there for others when we
• 8:30
  have the emotional capacity to do so.
• 8:33
  But don't let someone's actions or feelings dictate how you feel
• 8:39
  or act around them. Allow them to feel.
• 8:43
  Allow them to go through whatever they're going through,
• 8:47
  and don't take it to heart. People can be difficult and
• 8:53
  complicated to understand. Feelings are already hard
• 8:56
  enough, but a feeling that someone else is feeling can be
• 8:59
  impossible to understand. The best thing we can do is
• 9:03
  practice empathy. You can be receptive to your own
• 9:08
  emotions with some work, making empathy an easier path to walk,
• 9:13
  but other people can be more complicated.
• 9:16
  I encourage you to do the work anyway.
• 9:20
  If we can all practice a little more empathy towards each other,
• 9:23
  allow a little bit more space and a little bit more lenience,
• 9:28
  we can all be a little kinder and a little less suffocating
• 9:32
  towards each other. You deserve that, I deserve
• 9:36
  that, We all deserve that. That's gonna wrap it up for
• 9:42
  today's episode. Thank you so much for being
• 9:45
  here. If you need help feeling your
• 9:47
  feelings, I make music under the name of Ethan Jewell on all
• 9:50
  platforms. I just had a new song come out
• 9:52
  called Do You Want to Fall in Love?
• 9:54
  And I think you really might like it.
• 9:57
  Also, please shoot me a message on my Instagram at Jewel Boy
• 10:00
  with an I under score and let me know what you thought about
• 10:02
  today's episode. So thank you so much for being
• 10:06
  here. Thank you for understanding that
• 10:08
  empathy is an active practice that can help us all improve our
• 10:11
  relationships with ourselves and with others.
• 10:15
  And as always, thank you for feeling your feelings.
• 10:21
  I'll see you next time.