Brainstorming

Brainstorming Ideas to Sort
make any comments and notes here . feel free to edit and organize.

LESSONS  OUTINE -  develop the basic Outline.

1. 1. 1. Lesson 1 - Your Definitions and Empathy as a Way of Being Model

         1. 1. 1.  Your Definitions

               2. Introduce Empathy as a Way of Being Model

                  1. 1. you have read the Carl Rogers articles. this is the foundation of the definition of Empathy as a Way of Being with many facets that we will be explaining.. In this course we will look at some of the main facets of this way of being..  you will have a framework, model, map, 

                     2. it is also our intention to have this model be practical and useful. that is helps to understand what is going on in the empathy circle.

                     3. Limitations of Rogers - he worked mainly in a client therapist framework, even though towards the end of his life was try to broaden the applications into education, families, work, and international conflict resolution.

                     4. Limitations of Thearapudic Model. it is a facet of the way of mode.

               3. Notes: 

                  1. Trainer identifies

                  2. Participants can talk about their definitions. we get started with an empathy circle for participants to get grounded in the empathy circle.  

                  3. In Lesson one we give an overview of the Empathy as Way of Being.  more of an easier start where everyone can get to know each other, 

                  4. Give your definition and identify it in empathy circle. point to the action and give it a name

                  5. create the informational model and put it into a slide show and then into a stand alone video.

               4. Presentation 

               5. Exercises, Role Plays and Empathy Circles.

                  2. 1. do an empathy circle to discuss.

                     2. Circle Topic: How do you define empathy and where do you see it manifesting in the Empathy Circle?

      2. Lesson 2 - Empathy Model: Self-Empathy

         1. 1. 1. Presentation 

               2. Exercises, Role Plays and Empathy Circles.

               3. Lead: Priyanka? 

      3. Lesson 3 - Empathy Model: Imaginative Empathy 

         1. 1. 1. Presentation 

               2. Exercises, Role Plays and Empathy Circles.

               3. Lead: Violeta? 

      4. Lesson 4 - Empathy Model: Relational Empathy, etc.

         1. 1. 1. Presentation 

               2. Exercises, Role Plays and Empathy Circles.

               3. Lead:  

      5. Lesson 5 -- Blocks to Empathy

         1. 1. 1. Presentation 

               2. Exercises, Role Plays and Empathy Circles.

               3. Lead:  

      6. Lesson 6 - Compare and Contrast Other Empathy Models 

         1. 1. 1. Presentation 

               2. Exercises, Role Plays and Empathy Circles.

               3. Lead: 

      7. Lesson 7

      8. Lesson 8

Organizing Our Work
Creating a Definition of Empathy Course/Workshop could be a way to organize the definitions work we have been doing. I find that if I have to create a workshop, I have to focus on getting the work done and in a way that people can understand.  

Feedback Refines the Definition
Presenting the work in a workshop and getting feedback from students can help with refining the definitions. The ongoing feedback helps with refining the definition and training.

A Foundation for Other Documents
--  Creating the course can be the foundation of an 

1. 1. 1. Article -- for general public

      2.  Paper -- for an Academic Journal

      3. Book 

      4. Video

A Reproducible And Scalable Training
The workshop can be reproducible. It can be recorded and presented as a as stand along didactic training.

Empathy Circle as Defining Context
We use the Empathy Circle as a experiential context for the training. The definition is developed using the Empathy Circle. The definitions are mapped onto the experience of the Empathy Circle.  Participants will take part in didactic and experiential activities. They will experience the facets of empathy in the context of the Empathy Circle.  They will be able to point to their experiences in the empathy circle and name the aspect of empathy.

Part of a Larger Course Series
The course is part of a larger empathy course.  It could be a pre or post module course for the Empathy Circle Facilitator Training (ECFT). It includes;

1. Defining Empathy Module - 5 week 

2. Empathy Circle Facilitator Training  --  the 5 week Empathy Circle Facilitator Training on how to facilitate Empathy Circles 

3. Restorative Empathy Circle Training -- a future training on using the Empathy Circle to mediate conflict  i.e. Restorative Empathy Circle Training. 

4. Deeper Empathy --  Create a course that trains in listening more deeply AND speaking more deeply. 

5. Etc.

Standardized Format
Use a similar format as the Empathy Circle Facilitator Training so that there can be a consistent format and style. ?

Generating Income
Holding a paid training can be a way of generating an income. 

1. 1. (get Grants) what kind of grants

Course Audience is the General Public
make the course accessible to the general public.

1. 2. 1. Who will benefit most from this?.. how to have a pilot group?  perhaps for getting a grant.

         1. activists

         2. marginalized groups.

         3. homeless.

         4. youth who are struggling - alienation - depression, what youth and where. in rural areas

         5. Drug addiction 

Iterative Development
Can keep building  (improving, deepening, expanding) on this foundation.

Supporting the Empathy Movement
We need an Empathy Movement to grow empathy in the culture. For a movement, we need a clear and easy to understand definition of what we are talking about.  It should also be practical and useful for the average person. 

Couse Length
A 6 or so weeks online zoom class that reviews the definition of Empathy.

1. 1. (Shannan mentioned creating a weekend workshop? )

   2. Weekly 2.5 hours per session with home work assignments

Have a Reading List.

1. 2. 1. Carl Rogers -- on Empathy

      2. Batson, D. Eight things called empathy...

      3. Book: History of Empathy?  this is too long.

      4. Coplan, A. (2011). Will the real empathy please stand up?

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2011.00056.x 

1. 2. 5. van Dijke et al.(2019). Towards a relational model of empathy.
         https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nup.12297 

Opening Presentation
At the start of each Lesson, Have a X(30) minute slideshow presentation about an aspect of the Empathy definition.

I think it would be helpful to have a presentation for each facet of the diamond, along with a reading. The reading might not be mandatory, but available there in case someone wants to go in depth.

• This can help develop and refine a stand alone training. 

Define Empathy in the context of the Empathy Circle.

What is different about this definition and Course is that  we use the Empathy Circle as the context to define and practice empathy in its different aspects of empathy.

Experiential
take part in the empathy circle and try out the different aspects of empathy. Participants get a 'feel' for what empathy is and is not.

Evaluation Matrix
Create a table/matrix of the different definitions and how they relate to the empathy circle. Can be used to evaluate articles about empathy to quickly understand what they are talking about. This would help with Lesson 5 and 6 where we evaluate how different empathy definition models are defining empathy. 

1. slide with overlapping shapes , they way the overlap shows how encompassing they are.  be able to remove the layers. 

2. This is very sexy, I would love to do it, but I wonder if it wouldn't take us on a bunch of rabbit trails.
   It might be simpler to share a simple grouping of the definitions and leave it there.

3. this is more a of a long term project and I do not think there is time to develop it for the course at this point.  We could create a prototype model of this.

 Define empathy in the context of the empathy circle.

• This definition is unique in that we define empathy in the context of the Empathy Circle.  People can take part in the Empathy Circle and ‘experience’ the different facets of an Empathic Way of Being. So instead of just hearing the definition described, they can take part in the Empathy Circle and  experience empathy. This helps to be able to differentiate different facets from each other.

• We are defining empathy in terms of a constructive way of being in the world that fosters greater wellbeing.

• In our definition we do not differentiate between emotional and cognitive. All aspects of empathy have a felt or feeling quality.  

The Course Supports the Development of  Empathy Circle:
The Empathy Circle has many benefits.  By defining empathy or an empathic way of being in the context of the Empathy Circle we can develop the effectiveness of the Empathy Circle. We can build practices, awareness, and skills within the circle that improve the practice. This practice is very effective for the average person to quickly learn, practice and get tangible benefits.

The average person can get practical  positive results from it. They can learn how to listen better to others, they can feel more deeply heard and understood, they can learn to speak  and share in a more effective way, they learn a tool they can use for conflict mediation, etc.

Empathy Circle has the benefit over client therapist relationships in that it matches more of everyday life with multiple people. Therapy places all the attention on the client for 50 or 60 minutes. This can be helpful to have all this attention. However, the empathy circle has the benefit of holding a more complete quality of empathy. This means you are a speaker that is sharing and being heard to your satisfaction, and you are an Active Listener, as well as a Silent Listener. So you are practicing and developing more facets of an empathic way of being. As someone who is trained as a group therapist, I can say that this particular benefit is there as well. 

As I see it, the difference between an empathy circle and group therapy is the purpose that brings people together. Improving your own empathic ability (in all its facets) as opposed to finding healing and growth, usually in a specific direction. 

Topics and Headings

• Why Define Empathy? 

  1. individual mental health benefits of increased empathy knowledge and skills

  2. improved relationships as a result

  3. more beneficial community cooperation and creativity

  4. significantly improved political conversation and reduced polarization

  5. cooperative approach to common issues that humanuuty faces (climate catastrophe, war, etc.): Game theory? 

• Different Definitions of Empathy

  1. Words are symbols to which we attach meaning. Epistemology is the field in philosophy that deals with knowledge. How do we know, how do we formulate what we know, how do we improve what we know? While a linguistic approach is definitely possible here, in psychology we also have access to a lot of data (experimental or self-reported).
     The basics of the cognitive theory (that Aristotle offered) are: data - information - knowledge - insights - wisdom.
     We can say that we are still in the stage of accumulating insights on what empathy is, but we are making steps towards wisdom, so it would be the potent phenomenon it truly is.

  2. Meaning changes over time- history of empathy

  3. Different meaning in different disciplines.

     • Super-important point. We are casting ourselves, as far as I can see, in community psychology. It is like social psychology, but it starts the social changes in small batches of human groups. Which means we are informed by general psychology, psychotherapy, neuroscience, philosophy, and social psychology, but are staying in our lane: changing the culture towards an empathic way of being.

• What are the Definition Problems?

• Different Definitions - We are Building on Carl Rogers

• Defining Empathy in the Context of an Empathy Circle

  1. We will use the Empathy Circle to define the facets of empathy

  2. this gives us a tangible and practical context for the definition.

• Different Facets of an 'Empathic Way of Being'
  We can name the different facets and qualities of this way of being. 

• We need to be careful to give credit where credit is due, especially since the items on the list come from different paradigms.
  My suggestion, again, would be to keep it simple. 

• 1. Define our starting position (Rogers) and its key assumptions. 

• 2. Mention the other paradigms that work on empathy

•  3. Stay in the Rogerian "culture of empathy" or "way of being" approach for the biggest chunk of the training. In my view, at least, we can try to subsume some of the other paradigms under the Rogers' umbrella. (Empathy is: embodied; intersubjective; deeply humanistic; non-judgmental, etc.)

What we're doing here is philosophy of science and we need to be wise not to misrepresent the paradigms: many of the authors (or at least their close collaborators) are still alive and would have every right to argue our position.

• 2. • Empathy (Rogers, Batson, Coplan?)

     • Empathic Accuracy (Ickes, Rogers, Carkhuff)

     • Self-empathy (?)

     • Relational Empathy (Batson?  Rogers?)  Coplan, A. (2011)

     • Imaginative Empathy (Gallese and the phenomenological peeps in neuroscience)

     • Empathic Collaboration (?)

     • Empathic Creativity (?)

     • Culture of Empathy (Edwin?)

• Blocks to Empathy (see Gordon blocks to empathy and listening)

  2. • Apathy

     • Judgment

     • Emotional Contagion

     • Loss of Self Other Distinction

     • Identification

     • Projection

     • Sympathy

     • Analysis

     • Enmeshment

     • Empathic Distress (Personal Distress)

     • Empathic Concern ( Personal Concern, Worry, Anxiety)

     • Empathic Concern (Sympathy, Compassion)

     • Domination - person talks and talks without ending or giving space to the others.

  3. Dyad Blocks

     • Dyad Judgements

     • Dyad Analysis

  4. Group Blocks - sensing relational empathy in a group, 

     • Group Judgements 

       • Block Exercise --  A group (circle) all judging each other

       • Debrief -- What was the experience like?

       • Empathic Exercise -- group empathize with each other

       • Debrief -- What was the experience like? How did the approaches compare to each other?

     • Group Analysis

       • Block Exercise --  A group (circle) all analyzing each other

       • Debrief -- What was the experience like?

       • Empathic Exercise -- group empathize with each other

       • Debrief -- What was the experience like? How did the approaches compare to each other?

     • Group Domination

       • Block Exercise --  A group (circle) all talking over each other. No one listens.

       • Debrief  -- What was the experience like?

       • Empathic Exercise -- group empathize with each other

       • Debrief -- What was the experience like? How did the approaches compare to each other?

  5. etc.

• Qualities of Empathy

  1. Integrative 

  2.