Join us as we really plunge into the topic of Empathy! Guest Jonathan B. Singer joins us sharing his expertise in social work and how empathy is best utilized in the field. We also dive into the types of empathy, when to use, or NOT use empathy and even share some tips at the end!
In this podcast we discuss:
About our guest Jonathan: Jonathan B. Singer, Ph.D., LCSW is associate professor of social work at Loyola University Chicago, founder and host of the award-winning Social Work Podcast, past-president of the American Association of Suicidology and coauthor of the 2015 Routledge text, Suicide in Schools: A Practitioner’s Guide to Multi-level Prevention, Assessment, Intervention, and Postvention.
Want a transcript? Read below!
Tami Calais: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the communication solution podcast. Here at IFIOC we love to talk communication. We love to talk Motivational Interviewing, and we love talking about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve. Today, we’ve got Casey Jackson on the line.
John Gilbert and I’m Tammy. Welcome to the conversation.
John Gilbert: All right. Hello everyone. Welcome back to another podcast with the IFIOC team and we have a very special guest today. Jonathan B singer that through a participant suggestion. Tammy reached out to, and Jonathan graciously agreed to do this, who has an amazing podcast, highly suggests listening to it.
Lots of incredible information that I hope to dive into and ask about today. And so, Jonathan you are an LCSW so, Casey as well, so licensed in social work. And [00:01:00] you’re an associate professor of social work at Loyola university Chicago. So that’s pretty, pretty big as far as I understand, pretty high up, founder and host of the award-winning social work podcast.
So if you’re looking to hear some. Something about social work, social work podcast. Look that up straightforward. And it’s a great podcast. You’re the past president of the American association of suicide-ology and co-author of the 2015 rutlidge text, which you can expand on that. Someone like me doesn’t know what that is.
And your, Dealing with suicide in schools, a practitioner’s guide to multilevel prevention. So I’m sure that’s had a big impact in the world. Assessment, intervention, and postvention. So you’ve done a lot in the social work field and we’re just really happy to have you. So thank you so much for agreeing to do this and just add your, your thought on empathy today as the main focus of what you’ve learned and all the people you’ve interviewed.
That’s the focus as I understand it for today, but before we dive in. Tammy. Casey, do you everything to [00:02:00] add before we ask Jonathan and get going?
Casey Jackson: I just want, I just wanna hear Jonathan respond to that intro. (laughing) that, that for me, I’m just waiting to hear…
Jonathan B. Singer: Thanks for that intro! . You know, the thing about all of those things is that, you know, I, I started out you know, after my MSW program, like everybody, I was looking for a job and like lots of folks, I found a job in community mental health and on the crisis unit.
And I started doing outpatient mobile crisis response with suicide kids. And I quickly realized that doing suicide risk assessment was, fully consistent with everything I learned in social work. Right. And speaking of empathy, right? You have these kids and their families that are going through really, really intense times.
And one of the most powerful things that you can do when you’re working with somebody that’s in that kind of crisis, is to let them know that you get where they are, right. That you, [00:03:00] want to hear their story and that when they tell you their story, you don’t say something Insulting like, oh yeah, man, I’ve been there too.
Right. Which is sort of the opposite of empathy. Right. And so after, after doing that for several years and then starting to teach as an adjunct at UT Austin, again, addressing some of these basic therapeutic skills like empathy I went back to get a PhD. It was just kind of a natural next step.
And then focused on suicide, wrote the book, suicide in schools because my co-author reached out one day and she was like, Hey, is there any, is there a handbook? Is there like a practical guide for practitioners, for folks in schools and folks that work in schools that they could just like pull off a shelf when there’s a suicidal kid in their office and they’re talking to an administrator or parent?
I was like, “no”. And she was like, well, Let’s write it, I was like, oh yeah, let’s, let’s do that. Right. And it’s really interesting because you know, when you, [00:04:00] when you, when you’re talking with teachers and when you’re talking with school staff, There’s a way in which you hang out with these students day in and day out.
And it becomes more like a, a, like a family relationship than it does when you’re just seeing somebody one hour a week. In an office. Right. You can sort of put on the therapist hat, but when a kid’s screaming down the hall and you’re like, “Hey, remember, don’t do that”. And then you see them 10 minutes later in your office, there’s this different sense of like, what is empathy?
Because you actually literally do know what they’ve been seeing. With that idea of empathy, of like being able to see things through somebody else’s eyes, like you literally have been doing that. And so for school folks too much empathy can be problematic because then it’s like, oh, you’re trying to therapize me.
Right. Oh, you’re trying to do that thing. And so it’s, it’s the, the, the, the challenge and the skill of using empathy well, is to know when to use it. [00:05:00] And when to not use it. Hmm. Right. And I’m talking about kids, but you can, you can talk about an adult who’s distrusting, or maybe experiencing some paranoia.
And if you use an incredibly empathetic comment, right. And you’re like, okay, this is where you are. They’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You don’t know me. like, why, why are you all up inside my head? Right. And so understanding when and how to use empathy is is part of using it well, like using it correctly. And so then we wrote the book and then
I had been involved with the American association of suicidology for years. And then I ran for the secretary position and then was elected and then got elected as president. And then I stopped that this past August. So, so that’s how all that happened.
Tami Calais: Wow.
Casey Jackson: You know, one of the things I want to kinda revisit you just talked about it.
It’s interesting. When we talk about this and train on this and it’s, this is perfect timing for me, cause I’m just on the heels of [00:06:00] doing a training for the SBIRT for middle schools in king county and Seattle. So the, all the counselors are dealing with the SBIRT screens and just all the things we’re trying to manage and how do we use Motivational Interviewing in line with that?
And so it’s just a great week of training. So I mean, my brain is so oriented to exactly what you’re talking. It’s been my whole week, this week, with these counselors. And what’s so interesting when you’re talking about empathy from that perspective, because they were talking about the same thing, especially in the middle of pandemic.
What they’re talking about is when we do have so many different relationships with these students and in pandemic, how do we get into deeper empathy? When, what I see is kind of this tussle of hair and a mask and eyes, and I don’t, I don’t recognize the, the kids the way I did pre pandemic now that we’re in person.
So it’s just like, literally, how, how does it imprint on my brain? What we’ve taught, talked about. When it is hard to differentiate some of these kiddos with just tussles of hair and, and masks and eyes, and running up and down the halls. And so that part of it, and the other thing that you were talking about that really [00:07:00] I want to dig further into is what we’ve tried to differentiate between more when we’re training, motivational interviewing is a difference between empathy and reflective listening.
I think people get annoyed with reflective listening, and that’s when they feel like they’re being therapiesed and then there’s this flip side that people genuinely want to feel heard and understood. And sometimes people don’t differ. I think professionals don’t differentiate between reflective listening and what high empathy is.
I mean, it’s a vehicle to express accurate empathy, but there is a differentiation that we really try to tease out. So I’m just curious what your thoughts are on that as walking through.
Jonathan B. Singer: Yeah, no, I, I totally agree. And, and, and this is where, you know, empathy, I think is one of the most complicated concepts in, in counseling, right.
In therapy. Because. it’s one thing to be listening to a kid. Who’s like, “dude, I hate this. I hate the masks. I hate all this. I, you know, I don’t wanna be here”, you know, and you can be like, “you’re really angry”. And it’s like, of course I’m angry. Right, right. But then there’s this whole [00:08:00] thing about like, what is it that they’re not wanting to feel?
Yes. Right. What is it that they’re not wanting to experience? What is it that they’re not wanting to do? Right. And, and empathy also includes acknowledging the things that. Our clients that people don’t want to experience. Right? Yeah. Cause that is part of their experience. And that’s an incredibly complicated thing and I love that you, that you put up said that reflective listening is not the same as e...
