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And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Dory with you, Doctor Judith Orloff with us. The book is called The Genius of Empathy. Tell me about the title, Judas ah.
Well, I wanted to incorporate empathy with genius because it is a genius form of healing and way to be with each other. And I wanted to communicate like what kind of genius that everyone could tap into with regard to it being a healing energy, and how I could just transform relationships with yourself included no self empathy. The genius of self empathy is just incredible, I know, being
a psychiatrist. No, many people beat themselves up all the time, you know, rather than showing this beautiful, positive, loving energy of self empathy, you know, of saying and this is a difficult situation, you got through it all right, instead of saying negative things and putting yourself down, and that increases your healing energy. And there's a certain genius to that to be able to shift your thought patterns to treat yourself with that kind of empathy. With self empathy,
it changes everything. It opens up the heart. It changes how people relate to you. It increases your energy. When you beat yourself up all the time or there's a lot of negative thinking, it depletes your energy, and empathy can help raise your energy, just through the sheer kindness of it.
Years ago, when I was first hearing about empathy, I didn't know if it was a good thinking or a bad thing. Do people get it confused?
Yeah? Sometimes people think empathy is a weakness because they feel like if they have empathy, they're going to experience empathy overload and compassion burnout, which is true until you can learn learn techniques such as taking care of yourself and self empathy and a lot of empaths get addicted
to the news and it drains them. For an EmPATH or sensitive people to keep watching the news, it's too stressful, and so part of learning how to express empathy is sending limits and boundaries and only watching a little bit of the news. And when you want to help the world, you want to do something with you getting miserable, that's
not going to help. That's just another miserable person. But if you spend just a short time sending people or region in the world beautiful empathic heart energy in the quietness of your own home. It can travel very far. Energy can travel, and it can help people that you don't even know. So I'm a big believer in sending this sympathic energy to create a distant kind of.
Healing as well, know, doctor Orloff. Can you be an EmPATH and be successful in business?
Oh, definitely, you could be an EmPATH, You could be an intuitive. You can use those skills in business as long as you take care of your energy. Unfortunately, a lot of narcissists and sociopaths have been drawn to power positions, and they're just all over the news in the last few years and all over the place. So it's a collective lesson on the detrimental effects that narcissists can have on the world. But being an EmPATH in a powerful position is a wonderful thing. And having people who model
empathy rather than narcissism. People are getting so sick of these narcissistic bosses who do not stand them and don't have any empathy that there's a change that I've seen. There's a chapter in the book on Empathic Leadership on how leaders can be empaths. But also strong powerful people. Empaths aren't weak people. They just need to strengthen themselves by taking care of themselves a little bit better and setting the limits and boundaries and grounding and saying no
to certain behaviors rather than just listening to someone. If they berate you or you're around energy vampires, you don't want to keep being around this. You want to set a limit with that and be attracted to more empathic people.
And empaths don't hide who they are, unlike narcissists, who kind of trick you.
It's true. Narcissists create a false front. They can seem so intelligent and charming and they love bombing you and you know they gaz There are all kinds of things they do, but in the beginning they can seem very very charming, whereas an EmPATH and you can't see their real selves, but an EmPATH can really show themselves because
they're vulnerable to begin with. They're open, and they're loving, and they're good people to begin with, maybe too much so sometimes, so that's why they have to learn how to bring it in, bring their energy in a little bit more, and also to spot narcissists. There's a chapter in the book on Narcissists, sociopaths, and Psychopaths and how that is called an empathy deficient disorder, meaning those people
don't have empathy as we know it. They're not neurologically wired to have empathy, and empaths think everyone have empathy and they don't. These empathy deficient people don't have empathy.
They're just wired differently. So it's important for sensetive empathic people to know that so they can avoid these relationships as possible, or lower their expectations if they must be in those relationships, and learn many methods of how to deal with them, including the gray rock method, where you actually visualize yourself as a gray rock, meaning not emotional.
You don't feed the supply of the narcissists. You're very rock like and non emotional and non reactive, and then the narcissist doesn't get their supply then, and so you want that because then they'll go to somebody else.
What are the four types of empathy?
Ah, they're different kinds of empathy that you might identify with, and I go through each type in the book, and one is cognitive empathy, where people show empathy simply through their minds. The really intellectual people you know a lot of them prefer that. Then there's the emotion empathy, where you actually feel what's going on in other people. You can feel their sadness, you can feel their joy, you can resonate with them, attuned to them in a very
deep way. And then there's an intuitive impath. People who are extremely intuitive and can read others. You can be around them and you can read their energy. You can get flashes, you can get knowings, you can feel various energy changes in your body if you're an intuitive EmPATH,
and so you can be one or many types. Then the last type is the spiritual impath, where spiritual empaths see you through the most positive lens and they can see your spiritual connection, the growth of your heart, how giving you are as a person, and they see that. The downside of being a spiritual impath is that they may not see the dark side of others as well. They just see the best in people. So they're four types.
What great message would you like your readers to bring away with themselves when they read the book The Genius of Empathy.
I would like them to come away with the knowledge that they could be empathic with themselves, they could be more empathic with their loved ones rather than fighting or polarizing or needing to be right all the time, that they can have empathy for people even if you have different beliefs than they do, that you don't all have to have the same beliefs, and that you can show empathy in the world and model a new way to be so that we as human beings can change this
horrific state that we're in now and begin to model and embody empathy in a different way. And this will only give you more energy and let you enjoy life more.
If you're not an EmPATH, if you're not a narcissist, then what are you.
You're probably midway in the empathic spectrum where you have regular empathy, which is beautiful and wonderful. You don't have to be an EmPATH to be an empathic person. You could just be a very caring person who cares about the world, who's kind, who wants to do good, and wants to develop their empathy. But they aren't necessarily empaths.
As empaths tend to absorb the energy of others. The people who have just had a natural empathy, they don't necessarily absorb, so you can be anywhere on this empathy spectrum and develop it. And that's the message of the book, that you can use practical tools to develop empathy so that you don't get drained by having it, and you
can develop compassion for yourself and for us. It's just a better way to live than torturing yourself or getting too much in your mind where you're overthinking all the time, because the mind could come up with all kinds of
reasons not to show empathy. And so you want to come down to your heart to ask yourself if you want to show empathy, because the heart will understand the language of empathy more and so just so people know that and can treat themselves better, just from this moment, Dawn, from this conversation on to think about yourself in a more loving way.
What are empaths like in a relationship?
Well, that's often one of their greatest challenges. It certainly was for me because as an EmPATH, I like to be alone a lot, and I've written a lot of books and so I'd love to be alone and write. And in a relationship, your partner need is understand that you know, if you need to be alone if you
need quiet time, that needs to be understood. And so empaths are sometimes afraid of expressing their needs in relationships because they want to people please, They want people to be happy all the time, and the EmPATH needs to learn to assert his or her needs and then it's relationships are easier because I know for years I would be in short term relationships or a couple of years or long distance relationships because as an EmPATH that felt a little bit more familiar or comfortable, so I can
have my own time. But I learned that in a relationship, when I can assert my own needs and have conversations about this and be with somebody who is sympathetic and understanding rather than oh you're too sensitive, don't express your sensitivities to me, then a really deep connection is possible. But empaths need to learn to identify your needs first of all and begin to open your mouth to express them. And even if your partner doesn't understand and being an
EmPATH exactly, they can at least respect it. And that's what you can look for in a relationship.
Judea, do you talk about a technique to soothe the nervous system? Why is that and what is that?
Well, that is empathy. Empathy can soothe the nervous system by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system and the vagus nerve, which is the main nerve in the parasympathetic or calming system, and it could calm you down versus sphear which gets the nora adrenaline going and the cortisol, which is terrible for you in terms of your immunity and your happiness and your blood pressure.
It all goes.
Blood pressure goes up, the heart rate goes up, and empathy can sue that. And what's so interesting is something called the Mother Teresa effect, where if you watch somebody do an empathic act and you're just a witness to it, if I were to draw your blood right, then your immunity would go up, your blood indices would improve, and your biochemistry would generally get more positive and you could see those changes in the blood itself if you analyze it.
And that's just by virtue of watching somebody be very kind to somebody else. But imagine if you could be kind to yourself or others and have empathy and create all of that positive biological change in yourself it's just an amazing feeling, and it's very good for your health. It's good for your happiness, good for your mood. If
you're in a bad state. One of the greatest things you can do is go out and try and help somebody else, even when you don't feel like it, because it will make you feel better, right, And that's It's just something really important to learn about your own life. But I think the biochemistry backs it all up, where there's so many positive changes from empathy that you deserve to kind of harness your neurobiology with empathy and create a more positive environment for your own health.
Judah's what happens when an EmPATH meets up with a narcissist. What happens? Who wins?
Who wins? Usually the narcissist wins, unfortunately. And I always try and warn my EmPATH patients away from getting involved with narcissists, but you know a lot of them still do, and you know I help them through that process. But the narcissist knows how to reel you in. They know how to say things that make you happy and make you feel wanted and appreciated. And this is just in
the beginning. And they love bomb use, so they know how to give off all this love and the EmPATH is so open to this, and the EmPATH just wants to give and receive love. I mean, that's something that makes them very happy. And so it isn't until you don't do something according to the narcissists plans that they begin to show their true colors. That's why I suggest that everyone who is suspecting their partner might be in a relation might be a narcissist, to do something that
conflicts with them. To do something such as I'm not available tonight, to go out with you and see how they respond, because narcissists do not like it when you don't do things according to their plans.
Well, they get.
Mean and their narcissistic nature comes out. So I recommend doing that just to bring it out. If you have any doubts, just try this. It will work. Just do something not according to their plan and test out the relationship.
We had I guess a couple of weeks ago, we talked about narcissism and she was married to one and it was obviously ended at a brutal ending.
Yes, yes, it is brutal, and trying to get out of those relationships, particularly if you're empathic and sensitive. After years of being beaten down by you know all the things that narcissists do, you people have to crawl out of these relationships and build a new life and cut off the relationship cold turkey if possible, and never look back.
And if you need to have any kind of interaction with these people, to do it by text or make it very short that don't let yourself get emotionally triggered by them, because they get fed by your emotions.
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