"Listening, hearing and speaking from honesty, experience and acute awareness." Sharing my personal impacts of the Empathy Circle.

Speaker: Ruth Cook

OTTER.AI Summary 

Ruth Cook discussed the transformative power of empathy circles, emphasizing their role in fostering deep listening and connection. She highlighted the importance of non-judgmental, reflective listening without advice or diagnosis. Ruth shared her journey to becoming an empathy circle facilitator, inspired by the courage and vulnerability shared at the Empathy Summit in July 2023. She underscored the benefits of vulnerability, such as mutual understanding, personal growth, and community enrichment, while acknowledging risks like fear of judgment. Ruth concluded by encouraging participants to reflect on their listening practices and strive for genuine connection.

Transcript

https://otter.ai/u/2QYYcT36iwtHELlczTgmm8q14f8?view=transcript

Outline

Introduction of Ruth and Empathy Summit

• Edwin Rutsch introduces Ruth, highlighting her role as a host and her motivation to become an empathy circle facilitator and summit team member after attending the Empathy Summit in July 2023.

• Ruth expresses gratitude to the Empathy Center, Edwin, DJ Wendy, Jana, John Ara, and the Foundation for the Development of Compassion and Wisdom for their contributions.

• Ruth acknowledges the vast network of people who have influenced her understanding of empathy and prepares to share her thoughts on the foundational practice of empathy circles.

Foundational Practice of Empathy Circles

• Ruth explains the foundational practice of empathy circles, emphasizing the importance of listening, feeling, reflecting, and understanding without judgment, advice, or diagnosis.

• She highlights the challenge of experiencing rather than sympathizing in an empathy circle and the significance of connecting with oneself, others, and the world.

• Empathy circles are described as gateways to deeper understanding and genuine connection, focusing on authenticity and the strength and challenges of vulnerability.

Exploring Authenticity and Vulnerability

• Ruth discusses the importance of authenticity in empathy circles, where participants can share their vulnerabilities, fears, struggles, and imperfections.

• She explains how vulnerability can build bridges of understanding and trust, fostering mutual understanding, personal growth, and community strength.

• Ruth acknowledges the risks of vulnerability, such as the fear of being misunderstood or judged, and the potential for emotional overwhelm.

• She emphasizes the need for self-awareness, recognizing personal boundaries, and honoring limits as valuable choices.

Navigating Challenges and Reaping Rewards

• Ruth outlines the importance of trust in the empathy circle process, including the facilitator's commitment to non-judgmental listening and clear guidelines for participants.

• She shares her profound experience from a summit on the peace and reconciliation process in Rwanda, highlighting the courage and healing power of shared vulnerabilities.

• Ruth reflects on the challenge and gift of revealing vulnerabilities, noting that it can be both insightful and surprising for participants.

• She emphasizes the value of listening and reflecting to understand oneself and others more deeply, fostering genuine connection and understanding.

The Art of Listening

• Ruth explores the concept of listening, noting that it is often taken for granted and often passive, focused on responding or giving advice rather than truly connecting.

• She discusses the importance of presence in listening, as surface-level listening leaves little room for real connection and understanding.

• Ruth highlights how fragmented listening can miss the emotions behind words and how personal filters and judgments can shape what we hear.

• She encourages participants to reflect on their own listening practices and to strive for deeper, more present listening that connects with the feelings behind the words.

Closing Remarks and Vision for Empathy

• Ruth invites participants to imagine a world where everyone feels heard, and conversations deepen understanding and connection.

• She emphasizes the extraordinary potential of empathy circles to create a world where connection replaces division and where listening with care and intention can transform interactions.

• Ruth encourages participants to reflect on their listening practices and to strive to be extraordinary empathy circles, fostering connection and understanding in their daily lives.

• Edwin Rutsch thanks Ruth for her insights and acknowledges the impact of her experience at the Empathy Summit on her dedication to the cause.

Edwin Rutsch  

It's my honor to introduce Ruth, who was our for our host. And Ruth was let me read a little bio here. Was drawn to become an empathy circle facilitator and trainer by listening to the courage shared of hardships lived through and are still being lived through via the empathy summit in July of 2023, so attending one of these summits was what motivated you to get involved in also becoming a summit team member and helping produce and host these summits. And so you've been also for, you know, for over a year, almost. Yeah, supporter and team member here. So it's I'll pass it on to you and your topic, which you'll introduce. So that's it. Take it away. Ruth,

Ruth Cook

thank you very much. So some powerful speakers to follow here. I'd like to start off with saying how much I would like to say thank you to the empathy center, Edwin, everyone involved in the empathy circles and special thank you goes to Edwin and DJ Wendy, Jana, John Ara, and and all the amazing folks at the empathy center. I'd also like to extend my thanks to the generosity of the foundation for the development of compassion and wisdom ftcw for their invaluable wisdom training contributions and dedication to spreading love, compassion, wisdom, empathy and more. Of course, the list of people where we learn empathy is vast, so I'm going to share my little dinky, dinky slides. So bear with me here. Appreciate that. Thank you. So here we are.

 So the foundational practice of the empathy movement through the empathy circles. So it's not as though we have not been practicing empathy prior to engaging with empathy circles, or maybe some of us haven't, and that's a presumption. I have to be careful not to presume. However, the foundational practice of the empathy circles gives us the opportunities to stop or even pause, just listen, feel, reflect, bounce, bounce around what we think we are hearing the other person is saying. 

So in the empathy circle, you know, hopefully we're, you know, taking off all the rough edges. We're not applying judgements, we're not asking questions. Hopefully we're not diagnosing, no no no no advising, no, no, no, no detaching. And a strange one that I thought was, you know, was experiencing not sympathizing in an empathy circle that was very difficult when I first but it was enlightening at the same table. 

Sorry, my slide just fell off my table anyway, so I shall continue as if nothing happened and so yes, good morning, good afternoon and good evening, everybody. It is an honor to be here today to discuss the practice that has the potential to transform not just the way we listen, but the way we connect. What are we connecting with no, we're connecting with ourselves. We're connecting with others, and some of us, if we wish to, we can connect with the whole wide world. And so the foundational practice of empathy. 

Circles are more than a tool for communication, they are a gateway to a deeper understanding of the speaker, along with a genuine connection. So today, I'm going to explore a few key ideas with you, so authenticity exposing the strength and challenges of the vulnerable aspects of ourselves, or it could be a feeling, a thought, an idea, an event. So how do we normally listen? You know, what are we actually hearing, whether we truly feel, what we are we embodying, and what the other person is saying to us. 

How can we reflect without allowing our own opinions, biases or advice to cloud that process? You know, we need to keep ourselves at the bottom of the stairways. We you know, listen to that other person. We need to separate. Treat ourselves for that temporary moment or that temporary time that we're listening to the other person. And then finally, I'll talk about how empathy circles provide a framework to address these challenges and open the door to authentic connection. So I have a cute little slide here and there we go. There's my share button. I

Speaker 1  

So authenticity exposing the strength and challenges of the vulnerable aspects of ourselves. So we're going to explore a poignant aspect inside the foundational empathy circle process and of course, one of the reasons I like this image is because it's shown in evening, adverse conditions. We can outshine us. We can, you know, show, our show, our beauty show, our strong self.

Speaker 1  

So a simple truth vulnerability is not easy to open up and share deep personal aspects of ourselves can require courage and humility in empathy circles, this challenge could be amplified by the setting itself. You may be sitting with people you've only just met or individuals you've known for a few months or a year or more, either way, the sense of uncertainty can, or could feel immense. Um, so, yeah, in vulnerability, does connection arise? 

Can connection arise in this state we're in a vulnerable state, when we share our fears, our struggles, our imperfections, are we allowing our others to see us as we truly are. You know, can we be authentic and show or reveal that to others? This authenticity can build bridges of understanding and trust that might have otherwise taken years to form. It is this moment of raw openness that the empathy circle reveals its greatest strength, creating a space where judgment is suspended and listening takes center stage. So the benefits of revealing vulnerabilities in such a setting can be profound, so it can foster mutual understanding. Hearing and other struggles reminds us of our shared humility breaking down walls of isolation.

 Let's break down those walls of isolation. Secondly, it cultivates personal growth. By daring to speak our truths, we often find clarity and even healing. So lastly, it strengthens the fabric of community, the trust built in empathy circles often extends beyond recession, enriching relationships in broader context, but let's not ignore the disadvantages. 

So vulnerability, especially with relative strangers, carries risks. There could be the fear of being misunderstood or judged, regardless of the empathy circles intent to avoid these outcomes. There could also be the potential for emotional overwhelm. A sharing or hearing deeply personal experiences can be intense, and for some revisiting painful memories might feel this debilising So being self aware, and you know, the the speakers today have brought that up a lot. You know, being self aware, knowing and recognizing our personal boundaries is essential. Exposing our vulnerability as a choice, honoring our limits is valuable. So honoring our limits is as valuable as stepping outside of them. 

So how do we navigate these challenges while reaping the rewards? It begins with trust, trust in the process. So the facilitator and the group's commitment to active, non judgmental listening, so clear guidelines are crucial, and participants should know that they can share only what they feel comfortable revealing. And I have this little this is the link to the summit that I attended two years ago. Empathy. The peace and reconciliation process from a Rwanda and perspective, wow. So when I heard the vulnerabilities that were shared in the summit, there were tears just rolling. It was like, yeah, just rolling down my face. So I had a profound impact I mean, listening to these people sharing their truths to a bunch of people they've never met before. And so the courage of those sharing the vulnerabilities were open and boundless. 

They were so extremely emotionally powerful, extraordinary healing. So healing was, was taking place, you know, and this healing is always a work in progress, so that is worth maintaining harmony. The sheer courage behind these experiences from either side were incredibly moving. They sounded raw, open and boundless and extraordinary tribute to the human spirit's strength. So again, I offer my thanks to Edwin Rutsch for the opportunity to be able to be part of a community of people who have discovered way to communicate through the empathy circles and holding that space of empathy. 

So again, revealing our vulnerabilities in an empathy circle is both a challenge and a gift challenge due to possibly confronting a fear of exposure and judgment, something can come up in an empathy circle that you weren't expecting to come up, and so it can be a surprise to the participant that they weren't even aware they had this Fear. And it's like, Oh, wow. It can be insightful for some people at some moments, which is amazing to see and experience. And so, yeah, being able to listen and empathetically to another is precious. Being able to actually acknowledge and hear ourselves as the other person reflects this so we speak, they reflect back what they hear. And maybe we haven't heard ourselves in that light before it can be like, really I said that. Oh, wow, right. It could be a good thing or a bad thing, but, but yeah, so being able to actually acknowledge and hear ourselves can turn our perspective to what we are thinking, we are saying towards what we are actually saying. 

So the empathy circle offers an opportunity to repeat what we say, to feel and reflect what indeed we are intending others to hear if that makes any sense, I hope it does. So listening to some Okay, so how do we normally listening? Listening is something we can often take for granted. From a young age, we're taught to hear words, but rarely are we taught how to listen. The most of us listening is passive. We listen to respond or give advice or simply wait for our turn to speak. Sometimes we half listen while our minds are elsewhere, thinking about what's next on our agenda or how we feel about what's being said. 

The type of surface level listening serves a purpose and daily interactions, but it leaves little room to real connection. Why? Because it's not grounded in presence. So when, what do we actually hear? When lost my point there? So when we when we only half Listen, what we hear is often fragmented. We might catch the words but miss the emotions behind them. Consider this. So how often do we hear someone's pain? Well, we dismiss it because it's inconvenient or it's uncomfortable for us. So we, or we hear their joy and then fail to join in. Like Cara was saying, you know, like, amplify that joy. 

It's like, like, yeah, and, and I know that Zach is going to speak after me about house parties, so there's going to be a lot of joy there. I'm thinking. So what we think we hear is shaped by our own filters, our past experiences as functions and judgments. So in this way, we don't just hear others. We overlay their words with our internal noise can be quite loud sometimes. So I'd just like to pause here and give everybody in the Zoom Room a moment to kind of take a moment to feel what the what you're feeling right now, just kind of take a deep breath. I invite you to breathe in and breathe out and. I can't see anybody because I haven't got the gallery view. Let me see if I can. There you go. I can see you now. There we are. So should we try that again, inviting me just to feel and we are. One minute thing, Edwin,

Edwin Rutsch  

you've got about a minute and a half.

Speaker 1  

All right, so let's do that again. Just breathe in

Unknown Speaker  

and breathe out.

Speaker 1  

So I've got a lot more to say. I guess I haven't sent to my little timeline here, so I'm going to close with a slide. Thank you very much for listening, And we go find it. I

Speaker 1  

So in closing, I'd like you to imagine a world where everyone feels heard, where every conversation deepen our understanding of one another, and where connection replaces division. That's the world empathy circles invites us to create as we leave here today, I encourage you to reflect on your own listening practices. Are we truly present? Are we hearing beyond the words, and most importantly, are we connecting with the feelings behind them? Empathy circles reminds us that the simple act of listening, when done with care and intention, can be extraordinary. Let's be extraordinary. Let's be an extraordinary empathy circle and one moment of connection to time and may your empathy be lifted to new heights, inspiring and connecting you in ways that are excel beyond the regular daily interactions. On that note, thank you so much again.

Edwin Rutsch  

Yeah, thanks for that, Ruth. And you know, I didn't know that it was your experience in one of the empathy summits that a meaningful experience that really got you involved in being a very dedicated summit team volunteer. So that was really, really appreciate hearing those prayers.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai