[mponw]

First, make sure this is really what you want and need.

It helps to be a Jungian personality type that has a strong focus on the feeling cognitive function, i.e. Fi/Fe. If that's not you, then empathy/sympathy will probably not come natural to you.

Also, I have personally found that a very refined culture of giving and receiving empathy is found in the Non-Violent Communication (NVC) "universe" created by Marshall Rosenberg.

[laurent92]

A lot of people implement NVC wrong and it becomes a codeword to divert the results of the discussion to /dev/null. “I’d like that we solve X” => “So I hear X makes you feel really bad, right?” => “Yes exactly, what can we do about it” => “Can you tell me more about X?” and so on. In fact, I have not seen people who talk about NVC and are able to listen to my request (well listen they do, but “act upon” they don’t). It becomes a passive strategy to soothe the other while avoiding what he needs, and yet, still rephrase it perfectly.

To counter that, I use another strategy: Threat. I say “If you keep rephrasing like this, I will pour acid on the roots of a tree until it dies.” And they know I am capable of it.

At least it has the effect of snapping the person into stopping his NVC and actually telling me he/she has no intent on solving the issue which, as an Asperger, is much easier to deal with, because I can quit, deal with it another way - at least the cards are on the table. I can’t stand social games, and NVC became so misused by polite-agressive people that it became a social game.

I feel sorry for the people who invented NVC, it’s certainly not what they built it for.

[mponw]

Well, thank you for you honesty and openness. (How does that sound to ears that are averse to classical NVC?)

Kelly Bryson ("Don't be nice, be real") mentioned how he experienced Marshall Rosenberg being quite torn about teaching people to be overly empathic as a habit. Kelly recommends radical honesty as an antidote to that.

[laurent92]

It’s cool, we’re online anyway. Yes, radical honesty is much easier to manage, because it doesn’t require trying to guess what the other is playing, and it doesn’t create unmerited expectations. I didn’t know Kelly Bryson, I’ll look into it.