Karla
McLaren says, " I’m an author, social science researcher, a cappella
arranger, and an empath, which means I know that I read emotions. I worked
as an empathic healer for twenty-five years, and I once thought that my
empathic skills were mystical.
Karla also leads workshops, she says,
"Empathy is possibly the most important social
skill you possess, yet it can be very fragile. It is common to get
triggered and lose the capacity to empathize in the presence of
conflict, anger, fear, or anxiety. You may attack or withdraw, or become
unable to think or feel your way to a more useful response. The
solution: learn to fully embody your empathy so that it becomes a safe
and reliable stance that you can return to in times of trouble."
Embodying Empathy - An October Workshop In Berkeley!
"Empathy is possibly the most important social skill you
possess, yet it can be very fragile. It is common to get triggered and lose
the capacity to empathize in the presence of conflict, anger, fear, or
anxiety. You may attack or withdraw, or become unable to think or feel your
way to a more useful response.
The solution: learn to fully embody your empathy so that it becomes a safe and
reliable stance that you can return to in times of trouble.
In Embodying Empathy, somatic psychologist and aikido sensei
Nick Walker
and empath Karla McLaren will help you access your empathy tangibly so that
you can work through your triggers and use all of your emotions as the
essential resources they are.
This one-day experiential workshop will help you befriend
and strengthen your natural empathic abilities and access your emotional
awareness with support and ease."
Author: The Language of Emotions: What Your
Feelings Are Trying to Tell You
emotions are trying to tell us what's going
on
book is an entry into emotional intelligence
The book starts off with you saying you
are an empath, what does that mean?
I thought was a psychic
I could pick up subtitle emotion
worked as a psychic
was reading nuance and emotion
I am an empath, we are all
was central organizing factor in my life
empathy to read other people
empathy with things, concepts
place take - even with math
I am a number
I am dyslectic
pick things up emotionally
mom called it plus disabilities
04:20 How do you define empath?
someone that is aware that they are reading
emotions, undercurrent and nuance
understands the language of emotions and
uses it as a tool
that's my own definition
someone said you are the proto empath
distinction between empathetic and empathic
if a person is crying
empathetic - you may soften your approach
with the person
being with the emotions
empathic - see underneath the
presetting emotions
what's going on at greater levels of
abstraction
we have professionalized emotions
pay money to go to therapist, etc
difficulty in emotion is taken out of
daily context
we are not taught about emotions
08:00 talking about Building a Culture
of Empathy
empathy is a skill of understanding
emotions
welcoming them
tolerating them
Building a Culture of Empathy will
be hard if understanding emotions is primarily professionalized
08:20 Definition of empath as being very
sensitive?
highly sensitive to sound, color, sound,
movement, behavior. voice, etc
everything comes in at me.
difficult in the classroom when you need
to focus
I noticed everything
sensitive to the entire environment,
over abundance of empathy
I needed to learn
boundaries and not empathize with people
people need to learn what is mine
you can go flying off in someone else's
journey
learn skills, learning to set
boundaries, calm myself, so I don't go off into someone else's
emotional behaviors.
understand my own emotions
11:00 Could lose yourself and not
know who you are?
I was abused by a neighbor
was available to people who were off the
hook I would keep them company in order to be empathic
now able to sociologically visit them
not throw myself away
my impulse was to fix it, to fix this
persons problem that they were not willing to fix themselves
the aura - understand it now as personal
space
can read the boundaries
imagine I had a boundary or was an open
book or wound
would imagine the boundaries
that was life saving
16:00 Does abuse lead to loss of
boundaries?
I dealt with sexual abuse
we have a sense of the world around us,
when someone comes in physically and takes control of your body it's
hard for everyone
especially for children who haven't set
up a sense of self
in book talk about anger
anger is about boundaries
anger impaired
sadness as boundary
for letting go of what is not working
fear - as boundary
healthy anger
hold yourself steady is anger
this is where my anger stays
a force and power of anger
people who have felt abuse - anger is
dropped
sense of self is gone
emotions - use them as skills
23:27 My mother deals with it by just
talking and talking and talk? I can never get a word in.
on and on and on-ymous
take possession of a room
my mother is like that
talking talking
do be empathic with that she is in a
cycle she can't get out of
difficult - took years
26:00 Now I try to
reflect, listen - empathy?
Ask what would a normal person do
most people turn away, then the person feels
even of alone
normal behavior is to get away
I go in and touch the arm
go in close - they will take a breath
do the opposite of what the behavior
requires
I do it with homeless people
I will stop and talk with them
some peoples humanity comes back
others the contact is too painful
People ask, How can I be more empathic?
ask me every 15 seconds - it changes
being aware enough
do repair
non of us are taught this
people thought that emotions are the
opposite of logic and rationality and this is untrue
is being studied in the sciences now
when people say "don't get
emotional now" they are using emotions, anger, fear, etc
we don't have a language for emotions
30: 50 What do you mean
we don't have a language for emotions?
can name emotions but
not understand them at a deeper level
in book each emotion has
it's own chapter
explore each emotion
what you do with them
we go to school we are
to have figured out our emotions
we don't tell them what
the emotion is for
we have roles for anger
no information for what
to do with the anger and what it is
understanding
shame
anger looks on the
outside
shame looks on my
behaviors
most have shame
applied from the outside
shameless is not a
good thing
37:20 Ways of deepening
empathy? understanding gives some grounding?
understanding makes it
not so fearful
One of the best ways to
create empathy is to let people know that whatever feeling they are
having is ok
classifying emotions,
negative and positive,
all emotions have a
role, we need them all
it has a purpose, help
us survive
Sometimes with empathy I
want to feel calm when someone is angry
whatever emotion you
have is ok, then what are you going to do with them?
know about the emotions
40:15 Empathy and
boundaries. Getting lost in it. Is there a way to address that?
if you can say the
emotion to yourself
get the language in
yourself
very helpful for
making boundaries
anger makes us work for
social justice
how to oppose injustice
without being unjust
empathy is an emotional
skill
a vocabulary
45:00 Naming the
emotion in the relationship?
yes, because you could
be wrong
so good to verbalize it
to check if your correct
I would get under people
socially to give them space
it's improvisation
empathy has a
improvisational quality
50:30 How to be
aware and articulate ongoing awareness?
I had to focus and shut
off the noisy world
create a sense of
privacy
I developed an active
internal monologue
it's difficult to be so
aware in social situations and know what to do about it
I ignore it unless asked about it
be aware that things are
changing and most people don't know it
difficult to be in a
room with people who are not so aware
close to people and
separate
become the person
feeling separate
feel other worldly when
I see the media, horror, violence
being highly empathic in
this world
59:00 About the
interview
How do
we create a culture of empathy?
learning about what
emotions are
people see negative
emotions as what stir things up
we need to appose
injustice
be able to say it's
not right
Watching liberals and
conservatives
personally not join in
a group that apposes other groups
do your politics
demonize others, that does not work
watch out for
demonization
remove energy from any
group that demonized
Get rid of the
idealization as well
Empathy is my go to
thing
also need the skills
behind it
we're a social empathic
species
everyone has a right
to exist
maintain a steady
state
I learned my empathy can
fix everything
my hope is we can have
empathy for humans
1:09:00 Do you
have a
metaphor of empathy?
a singing ocapela in
harmony with a bunch of people
opposite is no singing
empathy is all the
voices coming together
it's rich
without empathy I don't
hear anything
a dialog between singing
and no singing.
12:00 Final thoughts?
in the no bully movement
I see bring the bully into the
conversation and the community
Building a culture of
empathy
it's a system
have a conversation
about emotions in the schools
the more we can learn
about emotions - the more empathic we become
Emotions are not going
away
my book is my gift and a
tool for building a culture of empathy
Video
Interview:
Talking about empathy with Tami
Simon
Tami Simon and I got a chance to talk about empathy last year when I was
in Colorado recording the audio workshop for
The Language of Emotions.
She’s a wonderful interviewer, and I want to expand on a few things we
covered in this short interview (here’s the the original empath:
Gem from Star Trek).
What does it mean to be an Empath?
someone
that is aware that they read emotions
we all
read emotions, we can't not
focusing on words versus
behavior/feelings
I'm an
empath - a highly sensitive person
I would
see what is going on in relationships
how do you see the information?
nuance,
body language
the
hierarchy in the relationships
surface
behavior versus the deeper qualities
who
thinks they are in charge and who is
Why hard to feel your own self?
not
taught
New Empathic Skills! It was really fun to build
a curriculum for fellow empaths, and to create a place where emotional
awareness was accepted and expected.
Are you a skilled emotionologist?
As psychology, neuroscience, and
primatology
leap forward in understanding, we’re finally remembering that empathy
and emotions are essential to our intelligence.
The Roots of Empathy I’ve written a great deal
about what it means
to be an empath, and luckily for all of us, empathy is a big topic
right now. I just discovered
a
study that seems to measure empathy. The study is in the news right
now because the researchers have concluded that students today are 40%
less empathetic than they were in the 1970s. Hmmmmmm.
What is an Empath? When people ask me what I
do, I say that I’m a writer, researcher, and empath. This last title
often makes people ask “What?” For my fellow trekkies, the word “empath”
has a special meaning. Gem, in the 1968 episode “The Empath,” was able
to take other peoples’ emotions and pain into her own body and heal it
for them.
