A day-long intensive with Nick Walker and Karla McLaren Saturday, April 6th, 2013 in Berkeley Empathy is everywhere in the news, in books, and in our conversations about each other and our world — and empathy is possibly the most important social skill you possess. However, empathy can be very fragile. It is common to…
Archive for the ‘ Empathic Skills ’ Category
How accurate is your empathy?
How good are your Emotion-Recognition skills? Last week, we looked at a vital part of the first aspect of empathy (Emotion Contagion), which is your capacity to feel your way into the emotions of others. And with the support of the concept of Einfühlung, we also opened up our idea of empathy to include your…
Embodying Empathy — An April Workshop In Berkeley!
A new workshop with Nick Walker and Karla McLaren Saturday, April 6th, 2013 in Berkeley Empathy is everywhere in the news, in books, and in our conversations about each other and our world — and empathy is possibly the most important social skill you possess. However, empathy can be very fragile. It is common to…
Our online course is here: Emotional Flow!
It’s here! Our online course is here! I’m excited to announce a brand new way to increase your emotional skills: The 8-session online course Emotional Flow: Becoming Fluent in the Language of Emotions. Your emotions are absolutely essential to every aspect of your intelligence and perception—yet few of us were ever taught how to work…
Working through depression
Depression is in the news quite a lot these days. Medical and psychological researchers (and news outlets) are focusing a great deal of attention on depression, and it seems that every week brings a new story about what does and doesn’t work for depression.
This is great; it’s a positive movement that is helping to make depression more of an everyday topic (instead of a hidden shame). However, many media figures report on research they don’t understand very well, and many lump all depression into one category, as if mild depression and bipolar depression are similar things. Or as if major depression can be treated in the same way atypical depression or postpartum depression should be. A great deal of the current news about the ineffectiveness of antidepressants isn’t taking into account the different forms of depression and the different treatments required.
In The Language of Emotions, I focus on situational depression, which is the situation-related low mood most of us have experienced. It’s not a disease state, as the more serious forms of depression are, and it’s usually amenable to all manner of intervention (including placebo) if you catch it early; however, if left untreated, situational depression can lead to more serious depressive disorders.
What I don’t see in this media flurry is people asking questions about why so many of us are situationally depressed. Last month, I retweeted this important public health message from Twitter user Where We At (@picklefight):
Before you diagnose yourself with depression and low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
Hah!
Where We At is silly and arch, but she’s got a serous point: When we’re depressed, we often turn inward and blame ourselves, but depression is not simply a low mood that arises from within. Sometimes, depression is a perfectly reasonable response to trouble in your life; depression is often an important signal about real issues that impede or disturb you. In my book, I call depression Ingenious Stagnation: