The answer is empathy – what’s the question? Stress pushes people down into survival. People stress other people, being difficult to deal with at home, on the job, in school, or at leisure with friends. In the Empathy Training Seminar (ETS) the participants get an opportunity to engage directly the obstacles that stopping them from getting the empathy. Participants acquire the empathic responsiveness needed to experience satisfaction in relationships of all kinds, personal and professional. Participants overcome the obstacles to effective relationships and shift out of survival mode and into empathic responsiveness in which fulfillment and satisfaction occur that did not previously seem possible. The top ten benefits of the empathy training seminar include

1. reduced conflict in one’s life and one’s organization, reducing dignity violations and related anger and rage

2. expanded cooperation in one’s personal and professional relations, increasing satisfaction with one’s individual and organizational goals

3. reduced time to results in personal and professional projects, expanding teamwork

4. expanded listening to other individuals and to oneself

5. the ability to get one’s power back in the face of resistance, no agreement, or bullying

6. what is empathy and the distinction between empathy and compassion, altruism, and charity (they are not the same!)

7. the ability to eliminate or significantly reduce compassion fatigue or burnout in working with difficult individuals, patients, or clients

8. expanded humor, creativity, and wisdom – closely related to empathy – in navigating the boundary between self and other

9. the ability to distinguish what happened from what you made it mean

10. demonstrate and deliver empathy – making empathy present in the conversation – as a leader, a liaison or a disturbance handler

Empathy is oxygen for the soul. Short of breath due to life stress? Perhaps you require expanded empathy. Get some in the Empathy Training Seminar.

One more thought. If you do not have a DSM diagnosis and do NOT want one, then I offer empathy consulting and training. For those individuals who have relational, personal, career, or business challenges and issues that require work and transformation, empathy consulting can make a difference. I start by listening to you as a possibility of engaging and shifting what you are dealing with. You start by being self-expressed about what you are really dealing with to the extent that you can confidentially do so. The difference from psychotherapy? Instead of working towards a diagnosis to satisfy an insurance company about what is wrong with you (where is the power in that?), we get to work on your possibilities, unacknowledged and hidden commitments, and strengths. The time to results can  proceed with a dramatically enhanced velocity when starting from the position that there is nothing wrong with you – or your team or company – but that there may be something missing, the availability of which would make a difference. We get to work on that difference.  Truth be told, I hope that my psychotherapy and counseling colleagues will not hate me for this post, since this is precisely what the vast majority of talented therapists actually do – and then they also do whatever needs to be done to accommodate bureaucratic requirements of paying entities. This may usefully be called out explicitly in the battle to expand empathy in the community. Call or write for further details or to have a complimentary conversation about how empathy can make a difference for you personally and your community, team, or business.