‘Empathy and our Brain’

by Renee Lindstrom, GCFP @ Inside Awareness, Living in Natures Love Blog & Renee Lindstrom Live

A great example of the powers of empathy given by a brain scientist

Dr. Bolte Taylor’s describes her experiences of receiving empathy during her own recovery from a stroke in her book. A Stoke of Insight. It is a New York Times bestseller that chronicles how a brain scientist’s own stroke led to enlightenment.

Empathy can thaw frozen expectations and change responses to create new experiences. As conceptions that create responses shift the brain’s patterns for feelings such as shame, anxiety, or irritation change.

Responses to outside stimulus are based upon left brain or right brain dominance

When there is stimulus that goes beyond windows of tolerance activities of our brain in the areas of social engagement go into the responses of fight, flight and freeze.

Some experiences when going beyond our windows of tolerance are:

discomfort, distraction, confusion

Some actions when we’ve gone beyond out limits of tolerance:

denying responsibility, advising, diagnosing, educating, making demands and moral judgments, blaming and comparing

Some short term emotions:

anger, fear, yelling, violence, slamming doors, hanging up, leaving

Some long term reactions:

overwhelmed, mortification, terror, dissociation, numbing, going into a trance, leaving your body, going deeply into confusion, being unable to feel your body, shame, not caring what happens to you

Read more on: Physical reactions and the reactions of the left and right hemispheres, to the stimulus of gossiping, sniping, criticizing, moral superiority and logic.

Cultivating effective emphatic responses can be learned and experienced mentally, emotionally and physically

Ways of learning and integrating empathetic responses are:

Awareness through Communication
- Values & Empathy integration in communication transforms disconnection into connection
Awareness through Movement
- Learned posture responses mimic tolerance or lack of tolderance and translates into unconscious behaviours
Awareness through Environment
- Cultural patterns create habitual tolerance or lack of tolerance behaviour