Insights, notes, execution details
The purpose of the “Empathy” exercise: to develop the ability to better understand another person, feel him, see the world through his eyes, it is easier to find a common language with people, avoid unnecessary conflicts or easily extinguish them.
In order not to be distracted by a person’s gait and to exclude the influence of social boundaries, men were chosen who were waiting for someone in the subway, near the subway, in shopping centers. Walked past a man to ascertain the features of his clothing. He stopped opposite diagonally a few meters in the line of sight. He shifted the focus of attention from himself and the environment to the person. I imagined that I was looking at the world through his eyes. In fact, the second position of perception. It’s like I’m in another person’s body. Tried to feel the touch of clothes on the skin. Feelings from the shoes, from the bag in the hands, if any.
I set myself the task not to consciously change the position of my body, but to watch how the position of my body would change itself in accordance with the sensations of the person being studied.
He noted that for the best body, the body must be relaxed as much as possible, go through the “beam of attention” through your body and remove all the clamps as much as possible — relax the facial muscles, relax your shoulders, unclench your fists, stand straight on your feet.
After one or two minutes, he noted that the bodily sensations really changed: the shoulders relaxed or tense, the posture changed, I wanted to change the position of the hands, the position of the legs, the facial expression changed. He noted that the speed of thoughts changes.
An interesting observation was the fact that if I consciously tried to adjust the body to a person, then the focus of attention went to me and, according to subjective sensations, I stopped feeling the person.
The only exception was the initial posture: if a person stood, for example, with one leg loosened, then it was better to stand up in the same way from the very beginning.
This mode of operation was used for the initial training and could not be confirmed by human feedback.
I noticed that I choose outwardly pleasant people for me and switched to unpleasant ones. At the same time, he noticed that interest in performing the exercise decreased sharply.
An interesting example: a man of about 50 years old who was standing near the metro station, whom I felt deeply, suddenly approached me and began to tell me that he was waiting for his son, who is studying at Baumanka and should come soon, and what difficulties his son has when studying. When asked why he came up to me specifically to tell me this, he thought about it and said that I had a “positive face”.
According to the results of empathy, he approached, stood next to the person and after some time addressed the person with a contextual phrase. I found that she often violated empathy, because she was exactly mine.
Then he changed his tactics: after standing for a short time next to a person in the empathy mode, “looking at the world through his eyes”, he gave out a thought or phrase that came into his voice. (However, it also often turned out to be contextual.)
I understand that the decision is strange. In most episodes, the phrases were associated with bodily sensations.
In such cases, people answered with one or more phrases, I kept the conversation going. Eight times, when I was already saying goodbye and leaving, I was stopped by the questions “what is your name”, “where are you from”, “who are you waiting for”, “wait, I’ll tell you a joke”, “you often come here”. From this I conclude that people wanted to continue communication. I observed this effect only with positive, sympathetic people, whose internal state I liked when I felt it.
An interesting example: a man looked a little up at the falling snowfields, I said the phrase that came to mind “it’s cold in such boots”, he thoughtfully answered “yes, you need to buy warmer”, then looked at me in surprise. I caught myself feeling genuine surprise and slight fear as well. I guess I just guessed his thoughts.
I needed an environment in which a stranger would comfortably communicate with me for several minutes and then the communication would be easily completed. Ideal from this point of view is the speed dating format.
I saw the difficulty for myself in the need to immediately maintain a conversation and feel deeply at the same time.
Also, the difficulty was the need not to impress the girl as a man, not to flirt, but simply to feel into her.
Impressions are contradictory. Some sensations are so unusual that I cannot describe them in words.
He noted a change in his vocabulary, facial expressions.
Some girls, in whom, as I thought, I felt especially good, noted that they were not very pleased to communicate with me. One said she spoke «as if to herself or to a mirror.» At the same time, I did not copy either female gestures or the manner of conversation. But the tone has definitely changed. I suppose that I felt too strongly and lost conscious control, moving instead of empathizing into the stage of empathy.
Three girls, on the contrary, right in the process of communication, noticed that I was some kind of native and I wanted to tell everything, everything.
In the course of empathy in the process of communication, I caught the transition of the internal state from mild anxiety, embarrassment, excitement to boredom, keen interest, fun.
Again, some sensations are so vague that I can’t describe them.
Often, in a split second, I predicted that the girl would now smile or change her position.
The following feedback was noted: “you seem to be leading me”, “I want to follow you”, “you are strange”, “you are kind of native”.
An interesting example:
In the middle of communication, the girl and I simultaneously extended our right hands to each other and at the same time touched the shoulder, while uttering the interrogative phrase “are you real / real?”. I experienced a slight fright. This made a strong impression on me and empathy was immediately lost.
The speed dating format without words has become the most interesting in terms of sensations and, for some reason, the most emotionally costly. It starts with calm presence and empathy while maintaining eye contact. It always turned out to feel only the first two girls. Then, for some reason, I shifted the focus of attention to myself too much and thought more about whether I was feeling right now and what the sensations were in my body, rather than feeling the girl’s sensations. Several times there were simultaneous twitching of the fingers of me and the girl, and twice simultaneous scratching of the nose.
Eye contact without a single word did not give a complete picture, but after the completion of the events, there was an opportunity to communicate with everyone and make sure of the correctness or erroneousness of their feelings during a date. Coincidence was in 10 cases out of 18.
Experiment
On one of the silent dates, he established a conscious state of calm presence without empathy on the first three girls and on the last three of the seven.
On the central girl carried out empathy. Then he imagined the following: if I were such a girl, and this man (that is, me) was sitting opposite me, how would I want him to hug me, how could I hug him. An interesting feeling — as if I was simultaneously in her body and in my own, vividly imagining our warm spiritual embrace from two points of view.
Result: six girls gave a wide variety of feedback that had nothing to do with my calm presence from «challenging me» to «flirting».
But the one with whom the empathy was going on came up and asked to hug her. She hugged me exactly the way I imagined.
The result was surprising.
Conclusions
Feel — you can! At the same time, this is some kind of semi-mystical thing.
Empathy allows you to experience the world as it is felt by another person.
The world through the eyes of another person can be both better and worse.
Feeling helps to establish emotional contact.
Empathy contributes to the understanding that all people can be very different (not bad and not good, just different).
There are people who feel almost physically unpleasant.
And there are people from whom «I do not want to get out.»
Empathizing with men and women works very differently.
Sometimes, after empathy, a person seems very dear.
Empathy for me is, let’s say, emotionally costly, often after empathy I felt empty.
Continued work is required so that empathy becomes jumping, takes less time and effort.
Going to speed dates and talking to random people by the subway is something I don’t normally do.
I suppose that I complicated the implementation of empathy, and perhaps did not work quite correctly at all. At the same time, I consider my experience to be very interesting.