#the irony of being in a workshop talking about empathy

[curiosity-killed]

My teeth hurt and I am full of petty wrath

[fogmongers]

                                          L  A  N  E    K  A  T  Z .                          history major.                                           dorming  with  Robin.                              skater (amateur).    photographer (amateur).    musician (amateur).

a restless hipster born to an aggressively patriotic cop and his stepford wife in nowheresland, montana, the only thing that ever stood between lane and his parents throwing down to hell was his older brother and unaccredited role model jack: the perfect boy, and the only mediator empathetic and patient enough to not only suffer the arguments of ethics between his parents and their unfavorite child, but also to defuse them.

jack had the philosophical savvy to understand and relate to lane, but at the end of the day, didn’t have the passion or endurance to live the peace-loving ideology they discussed. loyal to a fault and desperate to make his insecurely lower-class parents proud in wake of lane growing up to be a smelly hippie who brought shame to the family in their rural town, jack enlisted in the army at 18, very much against Lane’s pleas advice, leaving his little brother feeling tremendously betrayed.

already showing early signs of manic depression in his teens, the feelings of angst and anxiety caused by and for jack led to lane losing his self-preservation instinct. his high school years would see him acting on his impulses of hyper-sexuality and letting his mood swings and irritability turn him into a toxic friend. he had days where he was endearingly quiet and earnest, but switched to moods of reckless thrill-seeking decadence, or venomous, moody irritability with no warning or signal of how he would feel at any particular moment. became a serial dater who got away with breaking hearts because he had the veneer of a sweet artist--- wrote a few songs and poems for girls, always taking candid photographs of happy times and posting them with lovely captions, knows how to give a good, personal compliment when he wants to--- but he wound up being kind of isolated by the end of his senior year after girls started talking to each other about his behavioral patterns and nowadays he doesn’t have many friends to visit back in montana.

his home life was an even larger abyss, especially around the times his brother would come home. with each subsequent visit, jack became more visibly hollow. everyone could tell that he lost the shine in his smile, and it was clear that his mind was somewhere else during conversations, even before you told him that your girlfriend left you for your best friend and he smiled and said “I’m so happy for you.” 

when efforts to talk to jack again became increasingly futile and frustrating, no one in the family was able to cope constructively. while his parents promptly Bottled That Shit Right Up and, to this day, actively deny any of jack’s visible trauma, lane has reacted with a lot of emotions and crying and lashing out and, to this day, is not finished “grieving.” and it leads to a lot of tension between him and his parents. their relationship for most of hi high school life consisted only of radio silence and arguments– especially between lane and his dad, who wanted him to Man Up, stop “reaching for shit to get upset about” and “making up problems” and thought it was time for him to get his act together and stop partying so much, get more controlled like his brother, talk back less like his brother, put down the camera and guitar and join a sports team--- start thinking about his future.

it all built up to the peak of one typical argument about how shallow they are vs. how bratty he is, and his father declared that the family has been expecting lane to enlist at the end of high school to learn respect and discipline if he wants to keep his room in their house, and after lane lashed out, his dad raised his hand to hit him.

lane flinched away and the heat of the moment was cut soon enough for him to lower his arm, but the general threat of physical abuse is still there every time lane sees his dad, and the one time he tried to bring it up his dad denied that it ever happened--- basically tries to gaslight him into thinking he’s just overreacting and blowing things out of proportion and all in all the relationship has lost all hope. within a month after the incident, he stopped talking to his dad entirely.

his mom was, fortunately, there to witness the situation, and is still outwardly in denial about the whole ordeal, but she was sympathetic enough to keep them separated for the rest of lane’s childhood and support her son when preferred to go to college than boot camp. she helped him fill out his applications and apply for financial aid knowing, deep down, that she probably wouldn’t see him again after he pulled out of the driveway and headed to rainier the next year.

persona:

your standard artsy, pretentious white boy. fake-deep entry-level philosopher, hiding any vulnerability behind a fort of irony and alleged self-awareness. the guy “sarcastically” playing early 2000′s indie-pop hits on acoustic guitar in the quad because he won’t admit that he earnestly likes the sincerity of songs. teasing/negging girls who instagram pictures of their food and judging people for scrolling through their phones in public when they should be paying attention to him. would have dread locks if he went to college just ten years ago. wears his ziggy stardust or velvet underground tee shirts on the anniversaries of bowie & lou reed's deaths and mourns artists like them belligerently publically. reads sartre & marx in crowded spaces with the book cover as visible as possible. 

a walking contradiction. uncontrollable mood swings. he flips between extreme arrogance and worrysome levels of self-deprecation at the strum of a chord. an alluring and unpredictable mine field of a person, flipping the switch between boughts of wrath and guilt, ecstatic passion and dreadful apathy, tyranny and self-harm. a rebellious party boy, very popular for a loner, with boyish charm and intrigue. but he’s much more self-aware than he used to be--- after realizing that he had no friends’ houses to stay at in his senior year of high school because he pushed everyone away, he tries much harder to be a better friend to people, both out of the need for self-preservation since he can’t spend summer breaks or holidays in montana anymore, and also out of a genuine empathy and understanding of other people’s behavior and feelings that he had to learn the hard way. 

grew up extremely passionate about studying history; refuses to admit that it’s not really his thing anymore. constantly triggered by his own textbooks. he would really do better in some philosophy or literature or psychology (or being confident enough in his own potential to major in photography and grow up to be the war photographer he was born to be), but he’s developed a masochistic streak in recent years.

attached at the guts to robin dundee. they have a complicated friendship with, but robin’s overpowering energy kind of forces lane to default to being calmer to balance him out. the boys are always saying they’re going to start a band together but can never decide what kind since they’re never interested in the same extremely specific and obscure sub-genre at the same time (one week robin will say they should be a dark vaudevillian cabaret goth band while lane insists that they should play ethereal folk and by the time one of them gets into the other’s taste, the latter has already moved on to psychobilly) and they always push away each other’s recruits to the band since all of lane’s friends find robin too psychotic and anyone robin attracts finds lane too pissy and sappy. 

wanted connections:

short-lived relationships or flings that ended ambiguously or badly because he’s kind of hard to handle for long periods of time. demure or ditzy/non-threatening friends who let him feel like the mischievous one for once (he tends to flirt with these kinds of people). unrequited crushes (on either side, but he should also have a huge crush on annona). dealers, or friends/clients of his dealer who he smokes with. a party squad. a white boy skater/weed/videogame squad (COUGH nate/sid/robin/lane what COUGH). someone who’s intrigued by his undiagnosed psyche and just wants to get close to him to figure him out - or - who finds him boring because they already have him figured out. people who are begrudgingly friends with him because he workshops and photographs their art for their portfolios (maybe someone whose name sounds like mattah sarhews). a friend of that friend whom he doesn’t realize is gay and keeps flirting with because he thinks she’s playing hard to get and just has a deadpan sarcastic sense of humor. someone whose family he spends breaks with (i’m assuming he usually winds up spending them with his fling at the time but a friend who he can consistently stay with would be good too), or someone who also on campus when school’s out; bonus points if they only talk when they’re having heart-to-hearts on the empty grounds. activists who recognize his energy and want to mobilize him (it’s tk i’m talking about tk @ nina bring tk to rainier please). good influence friends who are understanding of his behavior. someone who’s a little too forgiving of him and winds up getting stepped on because they assure him he’s safe to be emotional around them. bad influence friends who push him to act more like robin. enemies who do not have any patience for him or his antics, or anyone who actively tells people about what a bastard he is. maybe someone from his old school who he’s burned?

[realizempathy]

the gordian knot of disrespect

I've heard executives ask me...

“How can I learn to be a better listener?”

Some of them have also told me about a workshop they partook to learn a technique called “active listening.”

In my experience, techniques only take you so far. This is especially true under stress or tension. What is required to become a better listener under stress or tension is our ability to realize empathy. When realizing empathy, it is paramount to practice respect.

Let me share the story of one of the most memorable events that happened during my 2012 book tour.

After my talk, a woman came up to me and said how much she loved the talk. I thanked her. She then said “I wish my husband were here with me.” to which I replied “Awww~ That’s so sweet...” Only to hear her say “No, what I mean is that he’s the one who needed to hear the talk, not me.”

I was surprised.

I thought my talk was about us realizing empathy, not demanding that other people realize empathy with us. I felt annoyed. The message I wanted to communicate was not being communicated. I felt misunderstood.

I then became contemptuous.

I thought to myself “Doesn’t she recognize the irony of her not realizing empathy with her husband for not realizing empathy with her?” I could almost hear the sound of my inner eye roll.

But then I remembered that I just gave a talk about empathy.

...

So I paused for a second, breathed deeply through my nose, and said “You sound frustrated.” “Oh, yes I am!” she replied.

I stood there, nodding silently.

...

After what felt like an eternity, she continued.

“He passed away 2 years ago...”

I found myself silently agasp.

“We fought so much toward the end of his life. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. He kept explaining why I shouldn’t feel so scared. He even said my life was going to be better without him... I couldn’t believe he would say such a thing. I couldn’t stop yelling at him...” I could see her welling up. “I wish he had just shut up and listened to me!” she continued.

Boy, did she humble me...

The Gordian Knot

In hindsight, it’s easy to notice the other irony in the above exchange: me not realizing empathy with her for not realizing empathy with my message and her husband. So easy to see this when other people do it. So hard to see it when we do it.

What a vicious cycle this creates...

I’ve come to think of situations like these as the Gordian Knot of inter-dependent relationships.

One manifestation of the Gordian Knot is as follows.

Person A observes something she interprets as person B’s lack of respect for her needs.

The observation is significant enough for person A that it leads to a tension in her body.

Person A holds on to her tension as she starts to focus in on her feeling disrespected.

Since person A is only focused on her own feeling disrespected by person B, this naturally makes it difficult for her to realize empathy with person B.

Person A then protests person B’s lack of respect for her needs.

Person B interprets this as a sign that person A does not respect his needs.

The sign is significant enough that it leads to a tension in person B’s body.

Person B then holds on to his tension as he starts to focus in on his feeling disrespected.

Since person B is only focused on his own feeling disrespected by person A, this naturally makes it difficult for him to realize empathy with person A.

Person B then protests person A’s lack of respect for his needs.

Person A interprets this as a sign that person B still does not respect her needs.

Thus, a Gordian Knot is formed.

In this woman’s case, the husband could have said nothing and simply held her in his arms.

He didn’t.

He had good intentions, though. He probably wanted to alleviate her fear. So he tried to cheer her up and put a silver-lining around their situation by saying what he said.

At the same time, this was not what she needed. What she probably needed was to fully experience what she was feeling in all its complex glory and, perhaps, even to fall apart in the safety of her husband’s tender, compassionate, and confident embrace.

When this need was not respected. She yelled in protest. Now he probably felt his need to feel understood or even appreciated was disrespected. After all, he had good intentions. So to fix this, he tried to explain his intentions. Well, that still does not respect her need. So she yells again. Thus, a Gordian Knot is formed.

It takes skills of noticing, of awareness, of empathy both with one’s own sense of “self” and that of “other” to recognize when a Gordian Knot is formed. It then takes a deliberate practice of respect to untangle it.

This is not easy.

At the same time, if you’re willing, you can learn it through practice.

Here’s a question you can ask yourself to get started.

“What emotional need of the other person am I not respecting, because I’m only focused on my own feeling disrespected?”