Subtle Manifestations of Empathy Deficits in Everyday Interactions

Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, identifies four subtle yet common ways individuals inadvertently display a lack of empathy, hindering genuine connection. While overt self-focus is easily recognizable, these more nuanced behaviors often stem from a misunderstanding of how to truly engage with another person's experience. The episode defines empathy as the ability to understand another's perspective and highlights its importance in fostering connection, contrasting it with the profound empathy deficits seen in certain personality disorders like borderline and narcissistic personality.\n\nThe four subtle behaviors discussed are \"one-upping,\" where one shares a worse experience to overshadow another's; \"shutting things down,\" which involves giving a response that closes off further sharing, especially when someone is testing the waters with "bread crumbs" of information; \"storytelling\" or hijacking the conversation with one's own lengthy narrative; and \"educating, advising, or fixing,\" which entails offering unsolicited advice or solutions when the other person may simply be seeking to vent. Each of these behaviors, though sometimes well-intentioned, can leave the speaker feeling unheard, invalidated, or even foolish, preventing a deeper emotional connection.\n\nThe overarching recommendation for cultivating empathy is to adopt a stance of curiosity and inquiry. Instead of immediately sharing one's own experiences, offering unsolicited advice, or closing off conversation, listeners should ask open-ended questions to elicit more details about the speaker's feelings and experiences. Simple phrases like \"Aw man, I'm sorry,\" \"Why, what happened?\

Empathy is the ability to see something from someone else's perspective.

Some of the personality disorders, like borderline personality and narcissistic personality, have one of their core features as lack of empathy.

You may think that you're empathizing with me because you're telling me an experience that you had that was similar, and I may feel some kinship because of this, but if you're experience is much worse than mine, your response can leave me feeling like I'm making something out of nothing and I just need to go sit down.

If you're talking to a person who's somewhat reserved and doesn't normally reveal everything about themselves, sometimes they will test the waters by giving you a little information to see how you respond.

But if I didn't want to talk about it, I wouldn't have brought it up at all.

By the time you're finished, we're talking about public policy and it feels silly for me to go back and try and bring up my grocery store experience.

If you're always coming from a position of authority and knowledge, you may demonstrate how wise you are, but you can make yourself unrelatable.

The theme is to be curious and ask questions to get more details about what the person experienced. Resist statements that criticize or show judgment.

You just need to get as close as you can to seeing the experience from their perspective by listening intently and asking questions.

Questions like this give you a chance to say something and shows the person that you were listening when they hear parts of their story repeated back to them.