DOES BEING EMPATHIC MEAN NOT TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR OTHERS

I have come to believe that listening to others without our own personal reaction to what we are hearing is kind to those people as we are actually being with them when we don't react. If we react we are not listening and that is like not being with them. They may react if these people need to blame others for what they have done then reacting allows them to blame us. So, if empathy is being connected to another person then listening without reacting to what we are hearing is a way to be empathic. 

If listening without reacting is a good way to relate to others how often does this happen?

IS EMPATHY JUST LISTENING TO OTHERS WITHOUT OUR OWN REACTIONS?

I've become more and more convinced that listening to others is the best way to be connected to other people...no matter how much your belief's differ from theirs. However, for listening to actually connect us to others requires that we listen without having any reactions ourselves. If you react, you are not listening and this disconnects you from the other person. Maybe this is   one answer to the problems that are dividing people. Possibly. However, we would need to get people together so that we could listen to each other. But what does together mean? Could we liseten without reacting to what we hear on the phone, or on the internet, or on TV? Would this help us to not judge others or have to buy into the us against them way of thinking?

It is sad that lies from leaders make it harder to listen to each other as we have been brainwashed to react with anger and even hatred to others who have different views. It is clear that one way for tyrants [bullies] to have power over others is to promote an "us against them" belief system so that the tyrants can have blind loyalty from their followers. Why do I say blind loyalty. Well, when anyone has been taught to be afraid of something then all the tyrant needs to do is to trigger these fears by lying and promoting the lie that people with different views will cause terrible things to happen. Then when any of us recalls a fear from the past and still feel afraid, our brains will react instantly [in a nanosecond and that is one billionth of a second] in order to protect us by causing us to see people with different views as the enemy and as dangerous. This is not true but your brain thinks that it is true. We can let our brain's know that it does not need to protect us as there is nothing to fear. However, this requires that we choose to recall these past stresses and not feel stressed, thus demonstrating to our brain that there is really no need to be stressed.

Maybe if we can learn to listen without reacting we will discover that we do not need to be afraid of other people and we will stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated into being afraid. If we can do this, our lives would be a lot better.

SUICIDE AND THE IMPACT ON THOSE LEFT BEHIND

Suicide continues to increase in the United States. I have no doubt that this is directly related to increased stress in the lives of those who have died by suicide. I also believe that a major factor in their decision to harm themselves was feeling alone and isolated. So, they felt disconnected from others and yet afterwards a lot of people are left distraught as they grieve for the who is tragically gone. So, how come they didn't feel this? 

Well, sadly, people often withhold their caring and affection for a variety of reasons: it is too painful to care for someone who is talking about hurting themselves; not wanting to enable or unwittingly encourage negative behaviors [make the person more suicidal]; cope with their sadness about the person's hopelessness by giving advice over and over which only serves to make the person feel more isolated and lonely.

What can we do to help those who we love and who are suicidal or at risk to become suicidal so they are more likely to feel our caring about them? 

• We can listen! Listening is an effective way to demonstrate caring for someone...especially if we are able to listen without having our own reactions. When we listen without reacting we are being present with that person and they can feel that. Their own feelings and thoughts will be clearer and if we need to say anything to them our brains will provide this for us [really!].
• We can tell them that we are worried about their safety and remove any lethal means of suicide that are available to the person.
• We can encourage them to talk with someone about how they are feeling and even suggest specific people that the person can call, as this is one way to help a person who is feeling depressed and it is estimated that 90% of people who attempt suicide are depressed.
• We can call 911 if we feel that the person is still at risk to attempt suicide and tell the 911 dispatcher that we have a mental health emergency and give details of what is happening. 
• We could also offer to take them to the emergency department of a hospital so that they can be evaluated and have a chance to talk about how they are feeling. 

Taking the steps outlined above can help us to maintain a feeling of connection to the person who we are worried about. This can help us to feel that we are with them, as we are encouraging and supporting them. This way of supporting others can help the person we are worried about to feel connected to us and cared for even if we have to call 911.  

If the person that we are worried about [and likely love] dies by suicide, we are less likely to feel as overwhelmed and less likely to have a prolonged recovery period. I did not call this a prolonged period of grief because I believe that grief gets blamed for stressful emotional states that are not part of grief. These emotional states can actually delay the opportunity to grieve for the lost loved one and for us to realize that we they are part of us and we can then give ourselves permission to participate in our own lives again. 

IS KNOWING THAT WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING CONNECTED TO BEING EMPATHIC?

I have recently been thinking about the idea that wisdom is connected to knowing that we don't know anything. I was aware of this idea from reading that after Socrates was called the wisest person in ancient Greece he at first doubted this until he realized that his wisdom was because he knew that he didn't know anything. The socalled Socratic method involves asking quesions and listening to the answers until an understanding happens. The person asking is not reacting to what is being said or correcting, giving advice, but merely asking questions to clarify the responses that are being given. There are no conclusions drawn based on previous experience nor any judgement made about what is being said. So, it is like knowing that you don't know anything as you are listening to learn about someone and refusing to think you know them. Thinking you know them allows you to judge or criticize them. 

So, if you listen to someone without your own reactions, judgments or criticisms, isn't this being empathic? Isn't this like being with someone and sharing their experience without substituting your own experience. Isn't it hard or even impossible to do this and also judge them or compete with them or reject them. So if we all listen to each other without judging or criticizing then we will all feel and be connected to each other and will all get along.

What do you think?

CAN WE COMMUNICATE BY EMITTING ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES?

I have wondered for awhile if it is possible to communicate with other living things through electromagnetic waves that are emitted by our brains.  This could explain how caring about someone can be felt by that person or how prayer works or how empathy works or how intuition works, etc.  Of course it is not clear that our brains emit electromagnetic waves that can influence anything, although our brains are influenced by external electromagnetic waves being applied during transcranial magnetic stimulation [TMS]  

There are theories and research findings suggesting that electromagnetic waves in our brains are generated by the firing of neurons being synchronized to give us the experience of seeing things as unified so that we see faces instead of millions of parts of faces, etc. This gets into theories of how we are conscious and see things in unified patterns not as masses of separate pieces of information from millions of neurons firing.

Susan Pockett [The Nature of Consciousness] and Johnjoe McFadden [(2002). "The Conscious Electromagnetic Information [CEMI] Field Theory, The Hard Problem Made Easy?"Journal of Consciousness Studies.9(8)45-60.] have proposed that electromagnetic fields [EM Field Theory] are activated when neurons are activated and that this causes there to be a representation of the information in the neuron.  McFadden also believes that the firing of neurons is synchronized to allow digital information to form a conscious electromagnetic information [CEMI] field in the brain that represents our experiencing consciousness.

So, we are still trying to understand through research into specific brain functions what consciousness is and the role of electromagnetic waves and how any of this is related to the ability to be empathic or intuitive or communicate by feeling love for another or by sending them a prayer.  What is clear to me is that living things have an ability to communicate with other living things other than through vocalizations or gestures. It seems that these other forms of communication are powerful and are important to our feeling connected to one another.  And, this connectedness is fundamental to who we are as living creatures and to what is important in our lives.

Therefore, keep sending those positive [electromagnetic] waves to the others in our wonderful universe and be open to receiving them from others.  This is another reason to avoid being stressed as stress seems to interfere with the sending of these positive somethings and receiving them as well. I have to stop now as I am sounding less scientifically grounded.