Stephanie Briggs is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the Community College of Baltimore County in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the recent recipient of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Building Communities grant for “Practical Empowerment: Building Contemplative Communities With Students of Color.”

She has fully incorporated arts- and movement-based contemplative practices into her English classes and started a Contemplative Communities Circle group, now in its second year, for faculty and staff that focuses on social justice, compassion, and self-care.

Role of empathy in cyber-bullying

Empathy is the ability to understand and collate human emotions that are possessed by other individuals. Recent researches have found a deep connection between empathy and incidents of cyber-bullying. Researchers are of the view that adolescent children, who develop empathy are less likely to bully other children. 

According to Cyber-bullying and Empathy in the Age of Hyperconnection: An Interdisciplinary Approach, published in Frontiers in Sociology in October, 2020, “In fact, the term Empathy has been used to describe sympathy or compassion. The interdisciplinary approach allows a broader and more innovative analysis to better understand the phenomenon of cyber-bullying and to conceptualize new intervention strategies in the social and educational fields to open new frontiers in research”.

Role of parents

Parents have the most crucial role in a child’s personality development, because they have the greatest influence over them. May all parents take a vow to inculcate empathy among their children. This can not only save other children from becoming victims to bullying and cyber-bullying, it can save precious lives from getting ruined and would make the world a better plac

Empathy can be learned, and it is the medicine the world needs right now, as having this trait can bring about greater success, both personally and professionally. Being empathetic can also lead to happiness, because when others feel what you’re feeling, that inspires a sense of inner contentment.

Those who are empathetic, otherwise known as “empaths,” are like sponges when it comes to human emotions. They feel everything that other beings do—whether humans or animals. They tend to get fatigued in crowds because they feel everyone’s energy, thoughts, and motivations. They are people who process all that is told to them, and in this way, they almost always practice “effective and compassionate listening.”

Empathy Circles In Schools | My thoughts about attending a session (with video of a past session)
by linkage - July 25, 2022

"In last weeks Monday Coffee Hour I introduced the concept of an Empathy Circle and took a poll on how many readers were able to zoom. I discussed the benefits of the process and provided a link to a introduction video. A few days ago I attended a Empathy Circles in Schools session. Jump the fold and I will share a bit of my experience with everyone along with an short explanation of the proce

"For today's suggested topic lets consider Empathy Circles.... In last weeks Monday Coffee Hour I introduced the concept of an Empathy Circle and took a poll on how many readers were able to zoom. I discussed the benefits of the process and provided a link to a introduction video. A few days ago I attended a Empathy Circles in Schools session. Jump the fold and I will share a bit of my experience with everyone along with an short explanation of the process...

I remarked in the last session I attended that even the silence was powerful. For many it is hard to speak in front of an audience. Just having the group respectfully wait for the speaker to choose the right words for me was something special. Just imagine stopping time for moment so those with speaking challenges could catch up. It was magic seeing and hearing a group of strangers being kind and considerate of everyone present. "

The Stoneygate Trust and University of Leicester have combined to create a pioneering new Stoneygate Centre for Excellence in Empathic Healthcare.

This unique £10m Centre, co-funded by the University and The Stoneygate Trust, will ensure that medical students and healthcare professionals across the UK are taught about the vital importance of empathy as an integral part of all aspects of their medical training. 

As part of its work, the new Centre will develop and deliver empathy-focused training for undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare students and professionals in Leicester, with the aim of making this available nationally.

Self empathy: A way for self-care an NVC workshop with Irmraud Kauschat, CNVC-Certified Trainer

About the workshop
https://www.facebook.com/events/420268176745291/

Empathy in NVC for me means that I empty my mind and open my heart and listen to someone’s pain. 

At times I need it myself and nobody is available. For this situation NVC provides the “tool” of self-empathy. I listen to myself, to the judgements and blames I have (about myself or others), try to identify my observations, feelings and needs related to the situation and end with a specific and doable request of myself or someone else. 

I invite you to look especially into a painful situation related to social change, your role in society, a project you want to initiate or that doesn’t go as you wish. 

In this workshop you will have a chance to experience self-empathy in a written exercise and then have an exchange with others in small groups. This will hopefully provide you with a skill you can use any time when you might need it.

Can empathy be taught and learned?
Empathy is both a skill and a quality of the heart. The skill can be learned and the quality can be nurtured. Some people are natural “empaths” and need little training, just as some people are natural athletes. Clinicians in medical settings have studied the important elements of communication training and identified empathy as key to promoting patient involvement in care.

Excellent written and internet/video resources are now available. At Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, a training program to enhance relationship-centered communication is available to all employees. Finally, teaching empathy was the topic of a study on a medical student lecture and practice session at the 2021 American Psychosocial Oncology Society Virtual Conference (see “Facilitating Empathy in medical students with art: An exercise in focused attention, T46”). Variations on these programs are available at other institutions and websites for professional caregivers. They have one important element in common: recognition of empathy as a key component in helpful communication with patients. 

How to Teach Empathy
Start young. The foundation for empathy is real human connection, even if you think your toddler is too young to begin learning this skill. They are not. You can begin the groundwork by simply talking to them. Narrate your day. Narrate your thoughts when playing or spending time with your child. This can be as simple as “Mom is really excited about this food!” or “Dad didn’t really like stubbing his toe.”

Even if your child is not verbal yet, you are teaching them cues to what is going on around them. When children get older they can begin using these cues to curate their own responses to others, and their own responses to their own emotions as well.

Would you participate in a Street Prophets Empathy Circle?
by linkage - July 18, 2022
"I’m thinking about starting a Empathy Circle for Street Prophets. I the idea is to meet on Zoom for about 2 hours and discuss a topic related to electing more and better Democrats and promoting more empathy in the Democratic Party. Jump the fold for a video on Empathy Circles and a little more explanation. The poll question is: Would you participate in a Street Prophets Empathy Circle?"

Empathy Circles | My thoughts about grassroots organizing - #1

by linkage - August 01, 2022

"My first diary on my activism, 12/13/2010, Empathy, Politics, and Activism #1 was inspired by a meeting with Edwin Rutsch, founding director of the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. The meeting was in person and Edwin and spoke to me about the empathy and his some of his plans. The meeting with Edwin Rutsch had an influence on me because I walked away resolved to conduct my club meetings in the round. This was in stark contrast to the usual speaker and audience arrangement. "

. Her doctoral thesis tackled one of phenomenology’s most pressing questions: it was called On the Problem of Empathy.

For Stein, “the problem of empathy” was more than a theoretical subject: it guided her brief life in unexpected ways—killed for being Jewish, she was at the time of her death a Catholic nun. Too often overlooked as a thinker, she is now one of the six patron saints of Europe known as St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

What is empathy? While the word only came into the English language in the early 20th century as a translation of the German term Einfühlung or “feeling into,” the problem of empathy has long been a key question in philosophy.

A first-of-its-kind study led by Florida Atlantic University in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, explored the relationship between empathy and cyberbullying among early U.S. adolescents. Researchers were particularly interested in two types of empathy – affective and cognitive – and how they differed in children who cyberbullied. Affective empathy is generally automatic and an unconscious reaction where the feelings of another are felt and shared, while cognitive empathy involves an intentional placing of oneself in the position of another to identify their mental state and understand their emotions.