(113) Day six of taking hits, woke up early thinking of this

Daniel Goleman says that there are three types of empathy- cognitive, emotional and empathic concern. Understanding each is important for the purposes of this article and with the hopes that knowing what emotional empathy and empathic concern are I will briefly only explain cognitive empathy. As a reminder, knowing what emotional empathy and empathic concern may not mean someone can possess these actual qualities meaning to experience them as an active part of their character or in their behavior. These are the differences that Goleman tries to explain. He shares that cognitive empathy does not feel but can recognize what hurts in others and when they may not hurt, but he claims that cognitive empathy stops here. His research shows that leaders that only have cognitive empathy but that lack the other two types are very good at hitting the target but that they do not care about the people. He goes on to say that in this instance that the people are usually ready to leave. I think that this explains the “gotcha culture” hit squad thing very well.

To create a story to derived seeking deeper meaning of your immediate circumstances and having situational awareness of the experiences we encounter is an important tool of emotional intelligence. Just using a list of facts is an identity/role, rule/compliance orientation from how a person has been socialized (externally driven in these two instances) that lacks the internalization process (higher form of development) due to looking within to seek deeper meaning to make decisions aligned to values and principles from a cognitive approach. Consequently, this is what is needed to seek objective truth and reality by seeing both side of the coin. This would mean that a leader would put greedy, selfish ambitions aside to have to have emotional empathy and the empathic concern would be to put your own emotion aside to have control of how you feel is to be aware because you care. The contrast would be the experience of being isolated from affect; to be unaware of how you yourself feel and to be unaware of how others feel as well. This isolated from affect thing goes further than feeling though it also has to do with moral conscience and moral reasoning, which is how we are able to see the story and reality by how we interpret the situational factors to that of how we perceive and create a story based on all the circumstances of the situation at beforehand. It is the mind at work, self-awareness, and volitional factors are at play, surely, the innate empathy versus apathy emotional/cognitive abilities may be intertwined, also how they unfold is surely linked to human development, thus intellectually and emotionally. Incidentally, to follow ethical and humane practices one must steer away from categorical thinking, likewise, to find deeper meaning would counter the limitations of cognitive bias by working out of one bucket. For example, as a means to distinguish yourself, to follow textbook ideologies, zer0-tolerance policies or make blanket generalized statements about an individual without seeking deeper meaning is short sighted and problematic often leading to lose/lose scenarios.

The mind does not develop or evolve well if not attuned and aligned to how you feel, theses not good because you will lack a self: a solid core identity the framework of perceiving and interpreting to understand reality is not black and white it has to be done by being moral and keeping the humanness in the equation. Working in a rigid, firm, competitive, and fixed mindset does not allow for growth, learning, experience or positive affect from making choices from a positive emotional state like empathy that reflects our own suffering and the suffering of others which is to have a moral rudder and conscience to be aware of the story (humanness) so that human dignity can prevail. When you are aware of other people’s suffering and accept them for it because they are human this comes from being aware of their suffering at the deeper level; through the suffering you have experienced in your own life. What Goleman speaks of is important because without emotional empathy and without empathic concern you are unable to correlate the story because of a lack of moral development (insufficiently socialized) this is apathy because suffering comes from not looking within to make meaning of what ails you and this being isolated from affect/feeling is from unresolved suffering.

This leads to understanding the lack of deeper meaning at the deeper level and the next point of what Goleman shares of leaders that run amok when you just have cognitive empathy. The hit squad and targeting individuals may represent that I can hit the mark really well, but without deeper meaning due to a lack o emotional empathy and empathic concern that a leader is doing it all for all the wrong reasons (pathology), further Golman confirms that it is to not care about the people. If this is so then the volition of this behavior is from personal issues that have gone unaddressed (unresolved suffering), which in a lack of deeper meaning (isolated from affect), lack of a moral conscience or a moral rudder leads to a deluded state of reality of not seeing the bigger picture and acting unethically instead. This pretty much is too generalize onto others what is ailing from within you without awareness or the cognive ability to frame a rational recourse that would actually be to look within and to make meaning of your own suffering and this is done through empathy by understanding and being attune to the suffering of others. In fact, this is the social emotional learning experience, and what I am trying to exemplify is that without empathy and empathic concern there will be a meaning crisis that will play out negatively in persons human development from low self-awareness and behavioral issues that will be pathological in nature due to this lack of attunement to self and to others. Consequently, this is suffering and being short sighted from a lack of meaning, explains the civil discontent we are experiencing as many derive meaning from making war with others often stems from an exacerbated case of burnout and the negative emotions like anxiety, anger, and hate that arise as a result.

Not a word of neurology or behavioral neurosciences. Ok just a line or two in brief based on how the amygdala corelates to all this. They say when the amygdala is hyperactive or even damaged that a person is running amok as well. The goal of finding deeper meaning is to utilize a cognitive response away from emotion. It may seem counterintuitive that being empathically attuned and having emotional empathy is separate from an emotional response, but it is. Having emotional empathy and empathic concern is to be aware of your underlying feeling so as to make meaning is the self-awareness that which prevents an emotional response. However this is what trains the amygdala to be silent so that a person can use all the other resources in the limbic area(where the amygdala is housed) like the hippocampus important for extended memory and the meso-limbic dopaminergic reward pathway which is crucial for being rewarded when you make choices that are aligned to the person that you have created.

Pretty cool what do you think? I realize some folks are like oh God, but really it begins with self-awareness to look within to understand how and why you feel a certain way and to use compassion to feel and to love it is through this understanding that you begin to realize that you matter too. May God Bless you and all those you love.  Thank you for taking the time to read this. I truly hope that these ideas can add to personal gain in a positive way to help you find significance and purpose through deeper meaning in ways that bring out the utmost in peace, happiness, and contentment in your life.     

Physiological development from finding deeper meaning through compassion that leads to rational outcomes through a cognitive approach to maintain reason over emotion is learning, it is what is needed to develop neuronal activity in the appropriate regions, accordingly bi-directional communication between these regions via pathways that must develop in this process is neural development. the brain does not continue this development till twenty-five years old and a social context is needed for this exemplifying the need for finding deeper meaning in adolescence and young adult hood so that intellectual and emotional maturity can be experienced in that of a developed adult brain. Goleman also mentions in his "Emotional Intelligence book" that when the amygdala becomes hyperactive or damaged that a person will experience an amygdala hijack. Meaning the pathway between the limbic area where the amygdala sits and the orbital frontal cortex gets affected due to that the amygdala will scan the environment for danger and due to the disconnected pathway there is no ability for the person to discriminate their thinking. Instead strong emotions of the sympathetic nervous system will be activated, emotions like anxiety, anger, and. hatred. A form of PTSD that is miles away from the flow state, when a person experiences only emotion of sadness or joy when in a parasympathetic nervous system. It really explains why and how the characteristics of the maladaptive stress response take place, and even how people become addicted to acting on impulse in risky behaviors due this emotionally dysregulated state and a lack of positive reinforcement.