Change Your Brain Every Day - Can You Teach Your Children to Have More Empathy? With Dr. Judith Orloff

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

In this final episode of a series with ‘Thriving as an Empath’ author Dr. Judith Orloff, she and the Amens discuss the phenomenon of the mirror neuron system, and how it can create either empathy or narcissism in individuals. Orloff then explains how knowledge of this system can help parents guide their children to experiencing more empathy for others, and how that can lead to happier relationships in their future.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are still with Judith Orloff, and we're talking about her book on empaths. Read the title for me.

Thriving as an Empath, 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People. And Dr. Orloff actually has an event. Where can I buy the book? You can buy the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any bookstore. It's available everywhere. You can go to my website, drjudithorloff.com, and there's a journal that goes with it too, the Empath Empowerment Journal,

where you can journal about all of your empath issues and have it be your safe place to be and release and clarify and open up and write about it and own your empath self in the journal. I'm like looking at different people in my family now and thinking, oh, wait, this makes sense. I want to learn more. So it's so interesting. And you have an event coming up. I do on November 2nd in Venice, California, The Crystal Mystic Journeys Crystal Gallery, which is a space filled with these gorgeous life-size crystals where I'll be speaking.

And it's a fun place to launch the book and talk about what it is to be an empath and for empaths to network. As many empaths feel alone. And I'm having a retreat for empaths coming up pretty soon where it's just an empath retreat day. You can check on that on my website as well. Fantastic.

When empaths come together, it's such a beautiful thing because they see they're not alone. Once you see they're all these people, very similar to you, it's comforting. That's awesome. There's actually an empathy system in the brain and it's called the mirror neuron system. Tell our listeners or viewers about that. Well, the mirror neuron system, that's the compassion system in the brain. These are neurons that help us feel compassion, that beautiful emotion, that spiritual state of compassion and empathy for other people. And it's theorized that in empaths, the mirror neuron system is hyperactive, meaning

it's working over time. It's similar to what you had said, Daniel, earlier on about the part of the brain working, overworking. In empaths, it's similar with the mirror neurons, where it's thought that they're working over time in empaths so that the compassion input is intense compared to maybe somebody else's versus a narcissist who has empathy deficient disorder and doesn't really have the capacity for true empathy that empaths have though in the book I talk about the toxic attraction between empath and narcissist. Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah.

It happens all the time. It's deadly. And I'm constantly educating my patients about this. But narcissists are so deceptive at first because it seems like they have empathy. They're so charming and seductive and reel you in and make you think that you're the one or you're the, you know, the most important person. And then the minute you don't do something according to their plan, they become cold, withholding and punishing because they lack what empaths have. And empaths are such fixtures. They say, oh, this person just had a bad childhood. So we, you know, my love will fix them. And, you know, I'm sorry to say that's not true. Yeah. So I'm, I'm curious when you talked about mirror neurons just triggered something in me as as a mother i would assume that being maternal would turn that on more because i mean

you watch any mother with a baby and all of a sudden she's gooing and guying and copying the baby and getting the baby to copy her and right it's sort of a like it does that increase that that part of the brain yeah when you become a mother. Yes. You joke. You laugh at me because I'm so different or I was so different with my baby than I was with anybody else. It's like so much stronger. Oh, your voice would change.

I mean, it was like. You can't help it. It's just. No, you can't. But it's a beautiful thing. Plus the oxytocin, the bonding. Oh, yeah. It's flowing through you.

But that maternal feeling that you're describing, with empaths, that's often turned towards everybody. Interesting. So it's that connection. You want to help. You want to fix. You want to remove the pain. And unfortunately, what happens is that it comes into your own body

unless you learn how to hold space for somebody, but not take on. So these are exercises I work with my patients on. This is how you do it. Let's practice. So a lot of this is practice, practice techniques. How do you not take it on? Or I'll send a patient out and do a homework assignment saying, all right, go and sit next to that coworker at work, you know, who's so draining for you and practice this technique of not taking it on and then report back. So a lot of it is putting these self-care techniques into effect. It's a bit of behavioral modification, but it's how does it work in a real world? So it's not just theorizing about it. It's like, make yourself more comfortable by practicing these self-care techniques.

Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to enhance empathy in children? Ah, that's beautiful. I was part of a New York Times article on that. And it's such a great question. You teach, if you have an empath child, there's a chapter in the book on how to raise empathic children. And so you teach them how, what their empathy is, and maybe the downside of it. But when you teach somebody to develop empathy, it involves listening skills. It involves being quiet and having intuitive listening rather than always adding something to the conversation where you listen

with your heart and you try and feel where the person is coming from. And you can learn that a lot from animals, to be with animals and to see how you feel around them. But there have been studies in prisons where narcissists have been, you know, they try to teach empathy to narcissists by giving them an animal to take care of. And, you know, having that kind of connection to the animal and somebody else's well-being other than your own. Interesting. You have a bunch of books on Audible.

Because I think, you know, as people are listening to this podcast, they're going to want to get your new book. You've got competition. It's not competition. I'm joking. I mean, because I always tease him. He needs a 12-step program for writing because he just can't stop writing books. But what, besides the new book, Thriving as an Empath, what are some of the other books? And I've noticed you've actually read a lot of your own books that you would

recommend for our listeners to really begin to dig into your work. Well, I would recommend the Empath Survival Guide online course. If you're visual visual it's with me on video that you can experience me teaching various aspects of being an empath and it's downloadable so you can watch it whenever you want to at your convenience and it's empaths at work empaths and emotions empaths and relationships and love how to navigate that parenting and empaths so i go through various lessons on particular topics to guide empaths through the various parts of life and then i also have emotional freedom which is a book i wrote about emotional health and emotional healing because so much of being an empath is being in touch with your emotions and learning how to heal what has been traumatized or wounded from the past.

And so emotional freedom is a good companion to my empath books. And the other empath book is the empath survival guide. I have a trilogy of books, the empath survival guide, the thriving as an empath book, which is a day book of self-care exercises and the empath empowerment journal are all meant to go together. You know, one is to read the information.

One is to develop self-care techniques for every day. And the other is to write in journal and writing is so sacred and not to do it through an auditory, you know, or through a computer, but right. Get the pen in hand and get it down. It's so different. It's such a different experience than doing something on

a computer. It really is. It just reminds me of a learning disability that some children have. I call it finger agnosia, which means their fingers can't tell what their brain is thinking. So for some people, the act of writing actually sends interrupt signals to their brain and they get stuck. But if they dictate it, it can be better. So I would just say whatever your ability to get this down, because I'm a huge fan of journaling, to get things out of your head so you can assess them. You mentioned Stephen Mitchell, who's I think still married to my friend Byron Katie. She's amazing.

She's amazing. She's really helped me. I love Katie's work so much because the thing that she teaches is, I mean, what CBT has been teaching forever, which is not to believe every stupid thing you think. But if you don't get it out of your head and assess it, you believe it a hundred percent. If you have the thought, I'm defective. If you don't write it down, get it out of your head and then assess, is that true? Then the toxic thoughts can seriously damage you. And it sounds like empaths, if they grow up in an environment that shuts them

down, that they actually end up with a lot of, we call them ants, automatic negative thoughts that just steal their happiness. Such as there's something wrong with me. Right. And then I love that because I'm at my board. I have a big whiteboard in my office. And whenever a patient says something like that, I'm broken, you know, I'll go, I'll write it down.

I'm broken. And then we'll take them through the process of, is it true? Can you really know that that's true? How do you feel when you believe the thought devastated? Well, who would you be without the thought? And it's usually free. And then we turn it around. I'm not broken.

And they tell all the ways they're not broken. In fact, they're gifted. And that's really our conversation today. the turnaround is i'm not broken i am in fact gifted so i'm a beautiful person and not only that it is fun to be an empath it is such a blast to be an empath just go out and tana if you and i went for a walk we'd have so much fun. Oh, my gosh. My brain is spinning right now. I can't even. Yeah, you have to go to her event. I know.

I know. I want so much more information. So much fun. Well, unfortunately, we're out of time. Dr. Judith Orloff. You can learn more about her at drjudithorloff, O-R-L-O-F-F.com. Thriving as an Empath, 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People. Also the Empaths Empowerment Journal.

Dr. Orloff has a course online. I imagine they can find it at drjudithorloff.com. Right, right. On my website, all of the books and the courses on my website. Well, thank you so much for being our guest on the Brain Warriors Way podcast. It's been my pleasure. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode.

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