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Wifi.
Because we all need connection to the internet.

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Social Media is another way we can stay connected. We can call text, post, comment, upload anything and everything.

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Phones. They're something that connects us all together because most of us now can say "my phone" instead of "the phone".

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Till it Happens to You

This song puts the listener in the position of a victim of sexual assault. It connects to the survivors as the song tells how they truly feel to others who have no clue.

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Lady Gaga - Til It Happens To You (Official Music Video)

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"Hope and Other Luxuries" is a sister memoir to "Elena Vanishing" which talks from the parent perspective. This book connects to the parents of kids who suffer from eating disorders and lets them know they are not alone.

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A Chapter from Clare B. Dunkle's Hope and Other Luxuries

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Clare Dunkle, author of folklore fantasy and science fiction novels for YA and middle grade readers, gives advice on writing novels and short stories

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"Elena Vanishing" is a book about a teenage girl who's suffering from an eating disorder. It connects to many other teenagers who've felt and had to deal with the same thing.

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About Elena Vanishing, a young adult memoir cowritten by Elena Dunkle and Clare B. Dunkle concerning adolescent anorexia nervosa

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You might meet someone and feel such a strong connection with them that you think, maybe they're the one.

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There are many misconceptions out there about what a soulmate really is. Of course, there is no right or wrong. But I have come to understand soulmates as being entirely different as to what you hear about in the movies.

Soulmates are just that, they are mates of your soul. They share a similar energy to you and perhaps come into this world with a similar purpose.

I believe soulmates come together to help remind each other of this purpose. I believe soulmates come together to help awaken each other and remind each other of who they really are.

Essentially, encountering a soulmate can help to awaken and stir things from within so you can reconnect with your soul essence.

Soulmates don't have to be romantic but very often they are. This is due to the strong attraction that is felt when connecting with a soulmate.

Soulmates also don't have to be forever. Often once the lesson is learned and the soul has been awakened, soulmates can move on.

This may be very different to what you have heard about the soulmate connection, but it may also describe those heated and intimate relationships that change everything yet don't last.

Sometimes soulmate relationships can blossom into forever, and other times they are too intense and need to be released.

Even though soulmates may not physically stay together forever, the love is always there. Soulmates touch us in such deep and profound ways that their memory will always remain.

If you are wondering if you have encountered a soulmate connection, here are 10 typical signs:

1.) You feel an instant and strong attraction to the person. Perhaps, you feel like you know or understand each other already.

2.) The relationship, whether romantic or not, has an intensity that can't really be explained. You may also feel a strong past life connection.

3.) The encounter can often bring many life changes. Perhaps, meeting this person turns your life around in a dramatic way.

4.) Old pains, fears or habits seem to be stirred through meeting this connection. Perhaps, things from your past come up again in order to be released.

5.) This connection may allow you to learn new skills or talents that you didn't know you had.

6.) If in a romantic relationship, the strong build of energy may cause you to enter into an "on again-off again" cycle.

7.) You meet or exit each other's lives in somewhat fated circumstances.

8.) You feel a longing or extremely strong attraction to each other, but often once the lesson has been learned, the attraction may fade or change.

9.) Your coming together feels bigger than just the two of you. Perhaps, you both feel as if you are working towards something greater.

10.) You feel very in tune or in-sync with each other, almost like you know what each other are feeling.

All of these could be signs that you have indeed met a soulmate, but the ultimate sign or way to tell is by trusting your own intuitive feelings.

On a deeper level, you will know when a soulmate has come into your life by listening to the wisdom of your heart.

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love  romance soul spiritual soulmates soul mates

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10 Signs You Have Connected With A Soulmate

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There are many misconceptions out there about what a soulmate really is. Of course, there is no right or wrong. But I have come to understand soulmates as being entirely different as to what you hear about in the movies. Soulmates are just that, they are mates of your soul.

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Detroit: Become Human
A game that lets you choose the outcome of the game. It connects with the player because it questions what you believe in

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Informal definition
INFORMAL•NORTH AMERICAN

a supplier of narcotics.

"she introduced Jean to a number of her male drug connections"

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Google definition
con·nec·tion

kəˈnekSH(ə)n/

noun

noun: connection; plural noun: connections; noun: connexion; plural noun: connexions

1. 1.

2. a relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked or associated with something else.

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Music tells a story in the lyrics

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Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody (Official Video Remastered)

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Everyday we tells stories to our friends

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Comedians tell a story in every joke they say

*explicit version*

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Creepypasta stories for when you want to get scared

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After writing a poem, you can read it aloud and tell your story in a spoken word poetry event

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You can find stories when you looked deeper in a poem.

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The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost | Poetry Foundation

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Public speaking can be your way to tell your story to tons of people.

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Brian Tracy's Self Improvement & Professional Development Blog

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The average person ranks the fear of public speaking higher than the fear of death. The truth is, this fear could be hurting your professional and personal life.

You may have been there before.

You feel nervous, your palms sweat, your stomach ties itself into knots. You don't want to do it. But you can overcome your fear of public speaking with these simple tips!

In business, it is essentially important for you to be able to get your point across. It is likely that all of us will one day have to speak in public. Whether we are giving a formal presentation to an audience, or simply asking our boss for a promotion, speaking skills are essential to getting ahead in a professional setting.

The fear of public speaking is very real. However, there are techniques to help you overcome your fears. There are even ways to help harness your energy in a positive way.

Keep reading if you want to learn how.....

1) Get Organized

When you organize all of your thoughts and materials it helps you to become much more relaxed and calm. When you have clear, organized thoughts it can greatly reduce your speaking anxiety because you can better focus on the one thing at hand, giving a great speech.

2) Practice and Prepare Extensively

Nothing takes the place of practicing and preparing for your speech. Write out a script of your key points, but don't read from the script word for word. Prepare for your speech so well that you could answer any possible question thrown at you.

3) Eliminate Fear of Rejection

"What if my audience hates my speech? What if they boo me off stage?" Try to eliminate all of your fears of rejection. The audience is there to listen to you for a reason.

4) Focus on Patterns

When you speak try to get into a rhythm or a flow. Keep your sentences short and to the point and repeat key points. A short pause in between points can add anticipation to what you are going to say next.

5) Watch Yourself in the Mirror

Practice your speech in front of the mirror as if you were speaking directly to someone. If you really want to learn how to improve public speaking skills then...

Pay attention to:

Your facial expressions

Your gestures

Your body movements

How welcoming you appear

When you have gentle expressions and a calm demeanor when you speak, you will be more welcoming to your audience.

6) Record Yourself and Learn Your Voice

Record your speech on your phone or video camera. Record yourself giving the talk from beginning to end. Then listen to it or watch it, and make notes on how you could make it better. Some people do not like listening to the sound of their voice on tape, so it is important that you get used to your own voice and speaking style.

7) Work On Your Breathing

When you focus on your breathing your voice will have more resonance and you will relax. Breathe calmly and focus on getting into a rhythm. Although this is a public speaking exercise, breath-work will help reduce stress and improve clarity in all areas of life.

8) Practice Some More . . .

When someone asks me how he can build effective communication skills and improve his public speaking, I quote to him the words of Elbert Hubbard, who said, "The only way to learn to speak is to speak and speak, and speak and speak, and speak and speak and speak."

9) Give your Speech to Another Person

There are plenty of people you can practice on. Be sure to tell the person to be completely honest with you in their critique.

Examples of people you can practice on:

Speaking directly to another person will help relax you and give you experience with getting feedback from someone. If they have questions about your speech, it is likely that members of an audience will have the same questions.

10) Public Speaking Classes

Find a great coach or mentor. There are many groups that you can join to learn the art of public speaking. A group such as Toastmasters is non-profit and helps people get over their fears by having them practice speaking on subjects over and over.

11) Lightly Exercise Before Speaking

Exercising lightly before a presentation can get your blood circulating and send oxygen to your brain. Take a walk before a speech or do a few knee bends.

This little trick is one of my favorite speaking tips. You'll be amazed by what a little blood flow can do.

12) PowerPoint Can Be Really Great, or Really Bad

Sometimes, having a powerpoint can be your best friend. It can help you if you lose your train of thought, keep your audience engaged, and give people a good place to grab notes and main points from.

However, do not put paragraphs and 1,670,987 other things on one slide. To learn how to create an impactful presentation here: 16 Tips to Create a Great PowerPoint Presentation.

13) Even Warren Buffett Had Public Speaking Anxiety at First
Photo: Stuart Isett/Fortune Most Powerful Women/Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
Buffett got over his fears by teaching investing principles to people twice his age. He forced himself to talk to people. He practiced these skills over and over again. Read more about how Buffett overcame his public speaking fears .

14) Sip Water That's Warm or Room Temperature

Sometimes squeezing some lemon into your water helps as well. It helps lubricate your throat. Try to avoid sugary beverages before speaking. These can dry out your mouth and make it harder to talk.

15) Read Eloquence in Public Speaking by Dr. Kenneth McFarland

McFarland, who passed away in 1985, is also known as the "Dean of American Public Speakers," and in his book, he didn't talk about methodology or technique at all.

His central message, which influenced me very strongly when I began speaking publicly, was that the key to eloquence is the emotional component that the speaker brings to the subject.

To put it another way, the starting point of being an excellent speaker is for you to really care about your subject. So, here are some inspirational quotes to help inject some passion into your speeches.

16) Pick a Subject That You Really Care About

How to pick a subject that you really care about:

The subject should have had an inordinate impact on you

You want to share it with others

You intensely feel others could benefit from your knowledge

You can speak about it from the heart

When you speak about something you passionately care about you will be more comfortable and feel more confident in your element.

17) Know 100 Words for Every Word That You Speak

Ernest Hemingway wrote that "In order to write well, you must know 10 words about the subject for every word that you write. Otherwise, the reader will know that this is not true writing."

I personally feel that, in speaking, you must know 100 words for every word that you speak. Otherwise, your audience will have the sense that you don't really know what you're talking about.

18) Focus On the Material, Not the Audience

Focus on delivering your material in the best way possible. Don't worry about audience reactions.

19) Relax and Forget About Your Fear of Public Speaking

When you let go of your stress and relax it eases your body and makes you less tense. Look at #24 for an interesting way that might help you to relax . . .

20) Don't Overthink Audience Reactions

There is always going to be someone in the audience on their phone or yawning. Remember that there will always be people who are bored or tired. None of these audience reactions have anything to do with you personally.

21) Avoid Talking Too Fast

Talking fast during a speech interferes with your breathing patterns. If you talk too fast you will breathe less. Feeling short of breath will make you panicked and more susceptible to fear. Practice slowing down when you speak, and you will be more calm and relaxed.

22) Make Your Nervous Energy Work for You

Learn to channel your nervous energy into positive energy. Being nervous is a form of adrenaline. You can use it in a positive way to help give an impassioned presentation during public speaking events.

23) Pay Any Price and Spend Any Amount of Time to Speak Well

Make a decision right now that you want to learn to speak and learn to speak well. Be willing to pay any price and go to any lengths to achieve your goal.

I have seen people leapfrog over others in their careers by overcoming their speaking anxiety. In the long run the better you are and the better you get at it the farther and farther you will go in your business career.

24) Meditate 5 Minutes a Day

Meditating can help clear your head of negative thoughts. In an article in , Dan Harris, co-anchor of Nightline and Good Morning America discussed his public speaking anxiety and how meditating for 5 minutes a day helped him to eradicate negative thoughts from his mind.

If you're interested in learning the practice of meditation, Jack Canfield published a very helpful article for beginners. Be sure to check out How to Meditate for Clarity, Intuition, and Guidance for step by step instructions and a free guide.

25) The Typical Compensation For a Public Speaking Event is $4,500 to $7,500

Public speaking can be a great source of income. Here's a video I made recently about speaking in 69 countries and how I began public speaking.

26) Have Pride in Your Work & Recognize Your Success

Your strongest critic is you. When you finish a speech or delivering a presentation, give yourself a pat on the back. You overcame your fears and you did it. Have pride in yourself.

27) Develop a Plan to Improve Your Next Speech

Practice makes perfect. If there is a video of your speech, watch it and make notes on how you can improve on it for next time.

How do you think you did?

Are there areas you think you could have improved?

Did you seem stiff or make any weird facial expressions?

Did you use a PowerPoint to your advantage? Did it help?

Did you use "um" often?

How was your rhythm?

Write everything down, keep practicing and improving. In time you will banish all of your fears of public speaking.

28) Bonus Public Speaking Tip: Utilize the Powerful Speech Pause

The powerful speech pause might be the most important speaking technique you will ever learn. Not only will it help you overcome your fear of public speaking, but it will help you master your control over the emotional impact of your speeches.

This secret is something that I've used for many years. In fact, dramatic pauses are so powerful that they should be illegal.

In music, all of the beauty is contained in the silences between the notes. In speaking, the drama and power of the speech is contained in the silences that you create as you move from point to point.

This is an art that you can learn with practice.

29) Training Video: The 4 Types of Speech Pauses

There are 4 kinds of speech pauses that you can use to put more power into your presentations.

In this three minute video below I explain them to you.

The Key Takeaways For You From This Video Are:

Use the sense pause to allow people to absorb the new information and catch up with you.

Use the dramatic pause to make a point stick in the listener's minds.

Use an emphatic pause to emphasize an important point.

Use the sentence-completion pause to make a statement or quote a line in which everyone is familiar, then let the audience answer it for you.

Many speakers are nervous when they stand up in front of an audience. As a result, they speak faster, with a higher pitch to their voices, and without pausing. When you are more relaxed, you speak more slowly, pause regularly, and have a much better tone of voice.

Practicing pauses and allowing silences when you speak will enable you to speak with power in any situation.

You may also find some of the blogs, courses, and videos on my public speaking resource page helpful as well!

Have You Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, Yet?

Hopefully, you found these tips beneficial and now you are no longer are you one of the people who fears public speaking!

How did you overcome your fears of public speaking? Leave a message in the comments and please share this post with your friends. If you want to learn 44 Powerful Public Speaking Tips here.
About Brian Tracy - Brian is recognized as the top sales training and personal success authority in the world today. He has authored more than 60 books and has produced more than 500 audio and video learning programs on sales, management, business success and personal development, including worldwide bestseller The Psychology of Achievement. Brian's goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined. You can follow him on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin and Youtube.

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how to overcome the fear of public speaking

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27 Useful Tips to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking | Brian Tracy

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The average person ranks the fear of public speaking higher than the fear of death. The truth is, this fear could be hurting your professional and personal life. You may have been there before. You feel nervous, your palms sweat, your stomach ties itself into knots. You don't want to do it.

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If you prefer to be more private Whisper is a site where you can tell stories or experiences anonymously

Get the app!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sh.whisper&hl=en_US

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Whisper is the best place to discover secrets around you. Recent stories: 19 Confessions From Women Who Got Their Tubes Tied, True Life: My "Best Friend" Stole My Boyfriend, These Women Refused To Let Their Husbands In The Delivery Room. Here's Why...

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If writing isn't your thing, Webtoon is another site where you can draw your own story

Get the app!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.naver.linewebtoon&hl=en_US

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I'm the Queen in This Life

The Etruscan Kingdom is stained with blood when the king's illegitimate son Cesare conspires with his fiancée Ariadne to usurp the throne from his half-brother Alfonso. Despite Ariadne's devotion to the new king, her faith is shattered when she is betrayed by him and eventually murdered by her own sister, who wishes to be queen. To her surprise, Ariadne finds herself sent back in time to her 17-year-old self. As she navigates the perils and opportunities of palace intrigue, Ariadne must make the most of her guile and grit to ensure that her tragic future does not repeat itself.

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WEBTOON is home to thousands of stories across 23 genres including romance, comedy, action, fantasy, and horror. Read comics, webcomics, manga, and manhwa online or download the WEBTOON app.

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People can write their own stories and share them on sites like FanFiction.net.

Get the app!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fictionpress.fanfiction&hl=en_US

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Autism and Empathy. Those with autism can feel empathy.

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There is a persistent stereotype that people with autism are individuals who lack empathy and cannot understand emotion. It's true that many people with autism don't show emotion in ways that people without the condition would recognize.

But the notion that people with autism generally lack empathy and cannot recognize feelings is wrong. Holding such a view can distort our perception of these individuals and possibly delay effective treatments.

We became skeptical of this notion several years ago. In the course of our studies of social and emotional skills, some of our research volunteers with autism and their families mentioned to us that people with autism do display empathy.

Many of these individuals said they experience typical, or even excessive, empathy at times. One of our volunteers, for example, described in detail his intense empathic reaction to his sister's distress at a family funeral.

Yet some of our volunteers with autism agreed that emotions and empathy are difficult for them. We were not willing to brush off this discrepancy with the ever-ready explanation that people with autism differ from one another. We wanted to explain the difference, rather than just recognize it.

So we looked into the overlap between autism and alexithymia, a condition defined by a difficulty understanding and identifying one's own emotions. People with high levels of alexithymia (which we assess with questionnaires) might suspect they are experiencing an emotion, but are unsure which emotion it is. They could be sad, angry, anxious or maybe just overheated. About 10 percent of the population at large - and about 50 percent of people with autism - has alexithymia.

Ignorance of anger

It's tempting to think that having autism somehow causes alexithymia, but it's worth remembering that you can have autism without alexithymia and vice versa. Also, even though there are higher rates of alexithymia in people with autism, there are equally high rates in people with eating disorders, depression, substance abuse, schizophrenia and many other psychiatric and neurological conditions.

So can alexithymia explain why some individuals with autism have difficulties with emotions and some don't? Perhaps it is alexithymia, not autism, that caused the emotional difficulties we heard about from some of our participants, the difficulties that people often assume happen in everybody with autism.

To find out, we measured empathy for another's pain in four groups of people: individuals with autism and alexithymia; individuals with autism but not alexithymia; individuals with alexithymia but not autism; and individuals with neither autism nor alexithymia.

We found that individuals with autism but not alexithymia show typical levels of empathy, whereas people with alexithymia (regardless of whether they have autism) are less empathic. So autism is not associated with a lack of empathy, but alexithymia is.

People with alexithymia may still care about others' feelings, however. The inability to recognize and understand anger might make it difficult to respond empathically to anger specifically. But alexithymic individuals know that anger is a negative state and are affected by others being in this state. In fact, in a separate test we conducted last year, people with alexithymia showed more distress in response to witnessing others' pain than did individuals without alexithymia.

Facing feelings

Autism is associated with other emotional difficulties, such as recognizing another person's emotions. Although this trait is almost universally accepted as being part of autism, there's little scientific evidence to back up this notion.

In 2013, we tested the ability of people with alexithymia, autism, both conditions or neither to recognize emotions from facial expressions. Again, we found that alexithymia is associated with problems in emotion recognition, but autism is not. In a 2012 study, researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London found exactly the same results when they tested emotion recognition using voices rather than faces.

Recognizing an emotion in a face depends in part on information from the eyes and mouth. People with autism often avoid looking into other people's eyes, which could contribute to their difficulty detecting emotions.

But again, we wanted to know: Which is driving gaze avoidance - autism or alexithymia? We showed movies to the same four groups described above and used eye-tracking technology to determine what each person was looking at in the movie.

We found that people with autism, whether with or without alexithymia, spend less time looking at faces than do people without autism. But when individuals who have autism but not alexithymia look at faces, they scan the eyes and mouth in a pattern similar to those without autism.

By contrast, people with alexithymia, regardless of their autism status, look at faces for a typical amount of time, but show altered patterns of scanning the eyes and mouth. This altered pattern might underlie their difficulties with emotion recognition. (People who have autism or alexithymia and would like to participate in our studies can click here for details.)

Emotional rescue

We think these results, and the others we have found since, disprove the theory that autism impairs emotion recognition. If people assume that someone with autism lacks empathy, they will be wrong about half the time (because only half of individuals with autism have alexithymia). Making this assumption is unfair and can be hurtful.

What's more, our work demonstrates that we urgently need tools to help individuals who have both autism and alexithymia understand their own and other people's emotions. Meanwhile, people with autism who don't have alexithymia might focus on building on their emotional strengths to mitigate the social difficulties associated with the condition.

At the same time, alexithymia doesn't preclude acting in a prosocial and moral fashion. Indeed, one of our studies shows exactly this in individuals with autism. Although people who have alexithymia but not autism find it acceptable to say hurtful things to others, people who have both autism and alexithymia do not. We think people with autism use other information (such as social rules) to decide whether what they say will be hurtful, rather than relying on their understanding of emotions.

We recommend that researchers test some of the basic assumptions about the capabilities of people with autism. Importantly, they should try to separate the impact of autism from that of conditions such as alexithymia that frequently accompany it.
This article is reproduced with permission from spectrumnews.org. The article was first published on July 12, 2016.

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Rebecca Brewer, Jennifer Murphy, Spectrum

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People with Autism Can Read Emotions, Feel Empathy

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There is a persistent stereotype that people with autism are individuals who lack empathy and cannot understand emotion. It's true that many people with autism don't show emotion in ways that people without the condition would recognize. But the notion that people with autism generally lack empathy and cannot recognize feelings is wrong.

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Can animals feel empathy like we do?
Preview of Carl Safina's book.

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I wanted to know what they were experiencing, and why to us they feel so compelling, and so-close. This time I allowed myself to ask them the question that for a scientist was forbidden fruit: Who are you?

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Do you feel empathy?

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How well do you feel and understand what others are feeling?

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What's the difference between empathy and sympathy?

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Sympathy, constructed from the Greek sym, meaning "together," and pathos, referring to feelings or emotion, is used when one person shares the feelings of another, as when one experiences sadness when someone close is experiencing grief or loss. Empathy is a newer word also related to "pathos." It differs from sympathy in carrying an implication of greater emotional distance. With empathy, you can imagine or understand how someone might feel, without necessarily having those feelings yourself.

What is the difference between and ?

For the most part, these two nouns are not used interchangeably, but often we encounter them in contexts where their nuance is diminished or perhaps not relevant, providing no obvious indication why one was chosen over the other:

Sympathy vs. Empathy Difference

The difference in meaning is usually explained with some variation of the following: sympathy is when you share the feelings of another; empathy is when you understand the feelings of another but do not necessarily share them.

The nouns share a common root: the Greek noun pathos, meaning "feelings, emotion, or passion." itself refers to the evocation of pity or compassion in a work of art or literature.

Sympathy is Sharing

Sympathy (from sympathēs, "having common feelings, sympathetic") has several senses in the dictionary, among them "the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another." When we hear of sympathy, we tend to think of situations involving emotional pain:

When a friend grieves over the loss of a loved one, you might send that friend a sympathy card. The card says that you are feeling sad along with your friend because your friend is grieving.

The sym- in sympathy means "together" or "at the same time" and is the same Greek prefix that one finds in synonym, symmetry, and symposium (the last one originally being an occasion for getting together and drinking).

Empathy is Understanding

Empathy suggests the notion of projection. You have empathy for a person when you can imagine how they might feel based on what you know about that person, despite not having those feelings explicitly communicated:

The sentiment behind empathy is often presented in the familiar idiom "to put (oneself) in another's shoes."

History of Usage

A major difference between sympathy and empathy is how long each has been around. Compared to sympathy, which first appeared in English in the 16th century, empathy is a relatively new coinage, one originating from a relatively young science: psychology.

Empathy can be contrasted with sympathy in terms of a kind of remove, or emotional distance:

The act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings of another is known as sympathy. Empathy, on the other hand, not only is an identification of sorts but also connotes an awareness of one's separateness from the observed. One of the most difficult tasks put upon man is reflective commitment to another's problem while maintaining his own identity.
- Journal of the American Medical Association, 24 May 1958

Many writers, likely aware of the thinness of the distinction, take pains to emphasize or explain what makes their choice of sympathy or empathy the proper one:

A fuller account would clearly require empathy as well as sympathy-a leap of imagination into Leadbelly's racial conflicts that would almost certainly have been facilitated by more candid interviews with surviving African-American witnesses as well as the personal experience of racial bias.
-Robert Christgau, The New York Times Book Review, 17 Jan. 1993

Empathy has become a fad word for sympathy, though it was adopted expressly to mean something different from sympathy: 'intellectual insight into another's emotional state without sharing in it.'
-John H. Dirckx, The Language of Medicine (2nd Ed.), 1993

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What's the difference between 'sympathy' and 'empathy'?

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Sympathy, constructed from the Greek sym, meaning "together," and pathos, referring to feelings or emotion, is used when one person shares the feelings of another, as when one experiences sadness when someone close is experiencing grief or loss. Empathy is a newer word also related to "pathos."

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"Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself"
Mohsin Hamid

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Why do some people lack empathy?

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Psychopathy is marked by impulsivity, an absence of guilt over hurting others, and often superficial charm.

Credit: Dan Scandal, Shutterstock

Psychopaths are usually described as lacking empathy, and a new study reveals the neurological basis for this dearth of feeling.

When people with psychopathy imagine others experiencing pain, brain regions associated with empathy and concern for others fail to activate or connect with brain areas involved in emotional processing and decision-making, researchers report.

In addition to a lack of remorse, psychopathy is characterized by shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness. The rate of psychopathy is about 23 percent in prisons, compared with about 1 percent in the general population, research shows. [ The 9 Most Bizarre Medical Conditions]

To investigate the neurological roots of the disorder, researchers studied 121 inmates at a medium-security prison in the United States. The inmates were divided into highly psychopathic, moderately psychopathic and weakly psychopathic groups on the basis of a widely used diagnostic tool called the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised.

Researchers scanned the brains of the participants while showing them images depicting physical pain, such as a finger getting caught in a door or a toe caught under a heavy object. The participants were told to imagine the accident happening to themselves or to someone else. They were also shown images of neutral ojects, such as a hand on a doorknob.

When the highly psychopathic individuals imagined the accidents happening to themselves, their brains lit up in the anterior insula, the anterior midcingulate cortex, the somatosensory cortex and the right amygdala - all areas involved in empathy. The response was quite pronounced, suggesting psychopathic individuals were sensitive to thoughts of pain.

But when the highly psychopathic inmates imagined the accident happening to others, their brains failed to light up in the regions associated with empathy. In fact, an area involved in pleasure, the ventral striatum, lit up instead. Furthermore, these individuals showed abnormal connectivity between the insula and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for empathetic decision-making.

By contrast, the less psychopathic individuals showed more normal brain activation and connectivity in these areas.

The strange patterns of brain activation and connectivity in highly psychopathic individuals suggest they did not experience empathy when imagining the pain of others, and possibly took pleasure in it.

The findings could help inform intervention programs for psychopathy, the researchers say. Having psychopathic people imagine themselves in pain first could be used in cognitive behavior therapies as a way of kick-starting empathy, they wrote in the study detailed today (Sept. 24) in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

In fact, past research has shown psychopaths can feel empathy, when explicitly asked to, suggesting this ability to understand another person's feelings may be repressed rather than missing entirely in psychopathic individuals.

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Blame the Brain: Why Psychopaths Lack Empathy

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Psychopaths are usually described as lacking empathy, and a new study reveals the neurological basis for this dearth of feeling. When people with psychopathy imagine others experiencing pain, brain regions associated with empathy and concern for others fail to activate or connect with brain areas involved in emotional processing and decision-making, researchers report.

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Science explains how we feel empathy

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Monitoring Editor: Dr. Richard M. Frankel, PhD

Abstract

Empathy plays a critical interpersonal and societal role, enabling sharing of experiences, needs, and desires between individuals and providing an emotional bridge that promotes pro-social behavior. This capacity requires an exquisite interplay of neural networks and enables us to perceive the emotions of others, resonate with them emotionally and cognitively, to take in the perspective of others, and to distinguish between our own and others' emotions. Studies show empathy declines during medical training. Without targeted interventions, uncompassionate care and treatment devoid of empathy, results in patients who are dissatisfied. They are then much less likely to follow through with treatment recommendations, resulting in poorer health outcomes and damaged trust in health providers. Cognitive empathy must play a role when a lack of emotional empathy exists because of racial, ethnic, religious, or physical differences. Healthcare settings are no exception to conscious and unconscious biases, and there is no place for discrimination or unequal care afforded to patients who differ from the majority culture or the majority culture of healthcare providers. Much work lies ahead to make healthcare equitable for givers and receivers of healthcare from all cultures. Self- and other-empathy leads to replenishment and renewal of a vital human capacity. If we are to move in the direction of a more empathic society and a more compassionate world, it is clear that working to enhance our native capacities to empathize is critical to strengthening individual, community, national, and international bonds.

Keywords: empathy, Neuroscience, cognitive empathy, perspective taking, empathic concern

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou

Introduction

Empathy plays a critical interpersonal and societal role, enabling sharing of experiences, needs, and desires between individuals and providing an emotional bridge that promotes prosocial behavior. This capacity requires an exquisite interplay of neural networks and enables us to perceive the emotions of others, resonate with them emotionally and cognitively, to take in the perspective of others, and to distinguish between our own and others' emotions.

Studies have shown that empathy declines during medical training ( 1, 2) and without targeted interventions, uncompassionate care and treatment devoid of empathy results in dissatisfied patients who are unlikely to follow through with treatment recommendations, resulting in poorer health outcomes and damaged trust in health provider relationships.

In the past, empathy was considered an inborn trait that could not be taught, but research has shown that this vital human competency is mutable and can be taught to health-care providers. The evidence for patient-rated empathy improvement in physicians has been demonstrated in pilot and retention studies ( 3, 4) and a randomized controlled trial ( 5). Further evidence that communication skills training for physicians improves patient satisfaction scores was reported in a large-scale observational study ( 6). Empathic medical care is associated with many benefits including improved patient experiences, adherence to treatment recommendations, better clinical outcomes, fewer medical errors and malpractice claims, and higher physician retention ( 5).

Why is the human brain designed for this complex, intricate task? If human existence was simply the result of "survival of the fittest," we would be wired solely to dominate others, not to respond to their suffering. Our capacity to perceive and resonate with others' suffering allows us to feel and understand their pain. The personal distress experienced by observing others' pain often motivates us to respond with compassion. The survival of our species depends on mutual aid, and providing it reduces our own distress. Mutual aid exists in the earliest reports of tribal behavior and remains a powerful force in today's world, where thousands of organizations and millions of people work to relieve global suffering ( 7).

The concept of empathy was first introduced by aestheticians in the mid-19th century. They used the German word "Einfühlung" to describe the emotional "knowing" of a work of art from within, by feeling an emotional resonance with the work of art. At the end of the 19th century, the psychologist Theodore Lipps expanded this concept to mean "feeling one's way into the experience of another" by theorizing that inner imitation of the actions of others played a critical role in eliciting empathy. The philosopher Martin Buber added deeper texture to the concept of empathy by describing the empathic relationship as "I and Thou," versus unempathic disrespect, as "I and It" ( 8). In this powerful description, humane respect and concern for the other is contrasted with objectification and dehumanization of another person, which is in evidence too often in today's societies.

Empathy is a Hardwired Capacity

Research in the neurobiolgy of empathy has changed the perception of empathy from a soft skill to a neurobiologically based competency ( 9). The theory of inner imitation of the actions of others in the observer has been supported by brain research. Functional magnetic resonance imaging now demonstrates the existence of a neural relay mechanism that allows empathic individuals to exhibit unconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, and facial expressions of others to a greater degree than individuals who are unempathic ( 10). Patients unconsciously mimic the actions and facial expressions of others through brain mechanisms that mirror the actions of others by stimulating the same motor and sensory areas in the observers' brains as the person they are observing. This mirroring capacity has been demonstrated at the level of single muscle fibers. If a person's hand muscle is pricked by a fine needle, for example, the same motor and sensory areas are activated in the brain of an observer ( 11).

Studies also demonstrate that while patients are either imitating or simply observing emotional facial expressions, activation of a similar network of brain areas occurs in the observer. Within this network, there is activity during simple observation of emotional faces, and greater activity during imitation of emotions ( 12). In addition to inner representations of others' facial displays, shared neural circuits have also been demonstrated for tone of voice, touch, disgust, and pain. Researchers conclude from these studies that observers feel what others feel to an attenuated degree. This is achieved through a mechanism of neural action representation that often modulates observers' own emotional content and motivates empathic responses. Differences in these neural processes may account for different individual capacities for empathy ( 13).

A novel study showed that the expression, "I feel your pain," is much more than just a figure of speech. Sixteen female volunteers had brain scans performed while they received painful electric shocks to their hands. While they received the shock, a well-defined "pain matrix" was activated in their brains. Afterward, they received a signal that their spouses were receiving similar shocks. This activated a similar (but not entire) pain matrix in the females' brains.

This is the first neuroimaging study to demonstrate that we actually do feel the pain of others, but only in an attenuated form ( 10). Attenuation makes it possible to empathize but not become overwhelmed with another's personal distress. Our own distress would likely render us less helpful. Indeed, there is a balance between empathy leading to helping or distancing behaviors due to personal distress. An important balance must be struck by ensuring that health-care providers receive enough care, support, and empathy from their institutions in order to provide high-quality empathic care and to benefit from the positive side effects of empathy ( 14).

Empathy, Medicine, and Society

A cardinal feature of empathy is that it usually helps connect people to others. Because of the evolutionary development of this brain-based capacity, affective empathy, or emotional sharing, most easily occurs among members of the same "tribe". Individuals tend to have the most empathy for others who look or act like them, for others who have suffered in a similar way, or for those who share a common goal. We see these biases play out repeatedly in communities, schools, sports teams, and religious communities. The truth of the matter is that empathy is not always an equal opportunity benefactor ( 15). People are evolutionarily wired to recognize and respond to differences and socially or culturally based perceptions can trigger subconscious fears that threaten emotional homeostasis.

All perceptions in our environment are routed through the thalamus. From there, the amygdala, the threat sensor in the brain, reacts to threats, unfamiliar stimuli, conditioned fears, and perceived threats in as few as 50 milliseconds long before conscious thoughts come into play. When these threat signals reach the midbrain, (specifically in the area of the pons) automatic reactions such as the fight, flight or freeze response take place unless there is cognitive input from executive functions in the prefrontal cortex.

Because of this evolutionary bias, cognitive empathy must play a role when a lack of emotional empathy exists because of racial, ethnic, religious, or physical differences. Health-care settings are no exception to conscious and unconscious biases, and there is no place for discrimination or unequal care afforded to patients who differ from the majority culture or the majority culture of health-care providers. Much work lies ahead to make health care equitable for givers and receivers of health care from all cultures. A health-care system that does not value its workforce and offer equal rights and protections for all, risks attrition, systemic distress, burnout, loss of trust in the health-care system and tarnished institutional reputations. Such attitudes and consequences affect employees, professional staff and ultimately patients, and the extended community.

Important research on empathy and altruism has demonstrated that enhancing perspective taking, the capacity to see a person's situation from his or her point of view, coupled with enhanced value being placed on the welfare of those who are unfamiliar can override bias. For example, Batson and colleagues found that empathic concern is not necessarily elicited by perceived similarity to others or by affective sharing but can also be elicited by valuing the welfare of people who appear dissimilar ( 16).

In an interesting study, Batson explored the relationship of perspective-taking to valuing a person who is in need. Perspective taking is a well-known precursor to empathic concern. In the first experiment, both perspective taking and valuing were variables and each increased empathic concern independently. In second experiment, valuing the person in need was the only independent variable. Interestingly, increases in valuing the other person increased perspective taking and also increased empathic concern which, in turn, increased helping. We can conclude from these experiments that valuing a person in need is an important, and largely overlooked, variable and precursor of feeling empathy for that person ( 16).

Empathy is a factor that draws individuals to helping professions and plays a critical role in understanding the nuances of others' experiences. Empathy is a complex capability enabling individuals to understand and feel the emotional states of others, resulting in compassionate behavior. Empathy requires cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and moral capacities to understand and respond to the suffering of others. Compassion is a tender response to the perception of another's suffering. Compassion cannot exist without empathy, as they are part of the same perception and response continuum that moves human beings from observation to action.

Self-empathy is a much neglected area and is necessary to ensure that health-care workers have the necessary resources to remain empathic toward others. Human beings have intricate, shared neural circuits in motor, sensory, and emotional (limbic) areas of the brain to help them understand the experience of others, leading to helping behaviors. However, when emotionally overloaded, overwhelmed, exploited, or burned out, the capacity for empathy declines as a result of the degree of emotional labor expended. It is critical that as medical professionals and caregivers that we exercise self-care to maintain healthy levels of empathy.

Plato's ancient question, "Can virtue be taught?" is one to consider at our present day juncture in health care. When newly minted doctors take the Hippocratic Oath on graduation day, they swear to provide ethical and compassionate care for their patients. What can be done to ensure they will keep their promise? Understanding that self-empathy is necessary in order to provide empathic care to others is at the core of wellness programs that are growing in popularity in medical education. Enterprise wide faculty development programs that include empathy training need to become an institutional priority to preserve and refresh the vitality of our health-care system.

Self-empathy and other empathy lead to replenishment and renewal of a vital human capacity. If we are to move in the direction of a more empathic society and a more compassionate world, it is clear that working to enhance our native capacities to empathize is critical to strengthening individual, community, national, and international bonds. As the Dali Lama so succinctly stated, "Love and compassion are necessities not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive" ( 17). Let us be the examples in health care that the world may follow.

Author Biography

Helen Riess is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She is a co-founder and chief scientist of Empathetics.com.

Footnotes

Author's Note: Portions of this article first appeared in Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility."

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

References

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Articles from Journal of Patient Experience are provided here courtesy of SAGE Publications

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Empathy plays a critical interpersonal and societal role, enabling sharing of experiences, needs, and desires between individuals and providing an emotional bridge that promotes pro-social behavior. This capacity requires an exquisite interplay of neural ...

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Mark Ruffalo and Murray talking about empathy

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Google Definition
em·pa·thy

ˈempəTHē/

noun

1. the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

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"You preferred to spare a machine rather than accomplish your mission. You saw a living being in this android. You showed empathy."

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Detroit: Become Human | Connor shows empathy