Helen Riess: Seven Keys to Increase Empathy

Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

Tami Simon

Religion, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2018

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Helen Riess is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. With Sounds True, she has published The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Helen about the development of the E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. program—a method for teaching and promoting empathy that draws on neuroscience and physiology. They talk about how Helen became interested in the science of empathy and why recent research into the subject has yielded such positive results. Helen walks listeners through each step of the E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. process, highlighting the benefits of more actively attending to every social interaction. Finally, Helen and Tami discuss the active training of empathy in education, business, and the medical community, emphasizing why these skills are necessary for the survival of human civilization. (64 minutes) Tami's Takeaway: A very simple technique that Dr. Helen Riess teaches for establishing empathic connection with people is to mentally note the eye color of the person when you first meet. This is a technique that she teaches to doctors and medical practitioners who are often moving quickly in a task-oriented way, not pausing to make genuine contact with the people they are serving. (Sound familiar, anyone?) My takeaway is to employ this technique in the office at Sounds True with the 130 people who work here. The early reports indicate that these experiments in noting eye color (even during hallway conversations and in meetings) have quickly created a sense of real connection—moments that I cherish.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This program is brought to you by sounds true.com.
0:04.0	At sounds true.com, you can find hundreds of downloadable audio
0:08.0	learning programs, plus books, music, videos, and online courses, and events. At sounds true.com, we think of ourselves
0:17.1	as a trusted partner on the spiritual journey, offering diverse, in-depth, and life-changing wisdom.
0:24.0	Sounds True.com. You're listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Dr Helen Reese.
0:42.2	Helen is the Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
0:47.7	and Director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.
0:55.2	Dr. Reese is a psychiatrist who developed an empathy training approach based on research in the
1:02.3	neurobiology and physiology of empathy.
1:06.0	And she's devoted her career to teaching and research in the art and science of the patient-doctor relationship.
1:14.0	Here's my conversation on Seven Keys
1:18.0	to Increasing Empathy with Dr Helen Reese. Helen Reese.
1:29.2	To begin with Helen, I'd love to know how it is that empathy became the focus of your research.
1:37.0	Well that answer actually has two levels.
1:45.0	And the more proximal level is that as a psychiatrist I began to notice that more and more of my patients in my practice
1:58.8	were spending a lot of time sharing their unhappiness with how their visits to the doctors were going.
2:07.9	And I realized that there really was a pattern of patients feeling unseen, unheard, and somewhat dismissed.
2:19.1	And some of them felt that even their attempts to try to improve their health or make lifestyle
2:26.0	changes weren't really being appreciated or reinforced by by their doctors.
2:35.3	And what seemed at first to be kind of a unique window
2:39.6	into what was going on in medical and surgical visits. I started to notice that there were headlines
2:48.6	in major media talking about the need that for patients to have a more connected
	...

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