Overview of Empathywork Educational Products
There is accumulating scholarly research that shows that social and
self-awareness, self-management, and relationship skills can be taught. Much of this research is based on
studies with very young children, some as young as kindergarten age. That these skills can be taught is a
very hopeful finding, since if we start early with our children, we should be
able to create a world with less conflict and hostility.
What about the rest of us who are way beyond kindergarten? Is it too late? My answer is an emphatic “no” Helping people develop these skills at any age is a primary purpose of Empathywork.com. The educational products you find here are specifically designed to help people build such skills. You can improve your abilities at empathy and self-understanding and improve your relationships with my guidance by working through these packages.
Becoming more empathic will help you be interpersonally sensitive and helpful, help you foster your own mental health, growth and creativity, and increase your capacity for intimacy by enhancing your ability to maintain respect and openness in your close relationships.
For some people, the cost of psychotherapy blocks them from utilizing that valuable resource. The Empathywork educational products are a lower-cost way of getting some of the same benefits on your own. And what you learn will help you utilize psychotherapy more effectively and efficiently should you later decide that you want to invest in face-to-face psychotherapy.
There are four packages summarized below:
Empathy for Yourself — Focusing. This package will help you learn and begin to practice Focusing. There are exercises for you to do, some questions for you to answer, and an opportunity to get answers to your questions in each module that makes up the package!
Delivering Empathy—Listening. This package will teach you empathic listening. It takes practice, so there are exercises for you to do. After you do the exercises, you can comment on your experiences and receive feedback.
1. The Listening Attitude. In this module you will learn what to strive for when you listen to someone, and what to do with your own feelings and thoughts that come in the process.
2. Basic Methods for Listening. In this Module, you will learn the basic behaviors and strategies required to do good empathic listening.
3. What to Listen to. There is more to communication than words, and in this module you will learn what else to pay attention to and how to respond to it in an empathic way.
4. How often to reflect what you hear when Listening. In this Module you will learn several things that will help you adjust the frequency of your listening responses so that they have the best empathic effect.
5. How to toggle "on" your non-dominant hemisphere. In Western cultures, education systems emphasize the analytic processes that are the province of the dominant hemisphere of the brain. But the best empathy, as well as creative new insights, often need the involvement of the non-dominant hemisphere. In this Module you will learn the functions of both hemispheres, and some simple things you can do to activate your non-dominant hemisphere.
Maintaining Joint Empathy — For Couples and Your Closest Relationships. Close relationships can be the biggest challenge in terms of keeping both people feeling well-understood and cared for. This is a bit ironic, since we get close to people because of what we admire about them, and for the things that we like about how it feels to be with them. But as relationships and individuals evolve over time, our habits and the habits of our partner can begin to irritate. We also tend to have the things we learned and residual feelings from experiences when we were growing up come to the surface in these relationships, and this can confuse us in terms of the meaning of what the other is saying and doing. The skills you will learn in this package are relationship savers!
1. Individual Differences That Contribute to Relationship Difficulties. People differ in the ways they express love, and in how they prefer to maintain emotional stability. If two people differ substantially on these things, but haven't explicitly acknowledged the differences, trouble and hurt feelings can result.
2. Five Love Languages. In this Module, you will learn five different ways that are commonly used by people to express love. A person who strongly favors one of these languages, will typically also expect to receive love from their partner in the same language. If the partner favors a different language, things done in the favored language may go over the head of the other, and leave both people feeling unfulfilled and unappreciated.
3. Ways of Maintaining Emotional Stability. In this Module you will learn five dimensions that are common elements of the strategies people use to feel efficient and comfortable in conducting their affairs. People in couples are often polar opposites on one or more of these dimensions. You will learn which ways you favor, and how to respect the opposite ways from your own.
4. Habits to Overcome. Research on couples has identified some common patterns in communication that predict the demise of the relationship, if they go on unchanged. Here you will learn to recognize these destructive habits so you are empowered to make different choices for how you pursue getting your needs met and your feelings treated well.
5. Habits to Cultivate. Couple research has also identified what long lasting, happy couples do habitually that enhances the relationship and promotes intimacy.
The Empathy Intensive includes the Listening and the Focusing packages plus two live teleseminars. This serves as a first step toward getting certified as a Focusing Trainer, or a Focusing-oriented Therapist, for those who become so interested in Focusing and Listening that they wish to become teachers themselves.
HOW THE PACKAGES WORK: The individual packages are paid for by the month, with no contractual commitment (monthly prices are listed at the end of the details for each package): If you want to, you can easily work through a package in one month, so the cost of one month is your minimum commitment. If you wish to maintain access to me as a coach to respond to questions as you continue to revisit the modules and learn more by practicing, you can stay with it by paying for an additional month. You can drop out and return again after a break, if you wish to do that. The Empathy Intensive is a flat $300 fee.
Once you wish to try a package, I will e-mail you instructions for how to pay for it. Next, I will e-mail you the initial content. It will contain something to read, and then some questions for you to answer and e-mail to me. I will respond, generally within 24 hours.
The questions are designed to help guide you through a learning process, and I will give you some personal coaching on how to keep learning. When you get my responses, you can write back to me for clarification or with additional questions.
Please take a look at the details of the packages in which you are interested, and I’ll be delighted if you decide to try one or more to improve your empathic abilities.
Jim Iberg, Ph.D.
What about the rest of us who are way beyond kindergarten? Is it too late? My answer is an emphatic “no” Helping people develop these skills at any age is a primary purpose of Empathywork.com. The educational products you find here are specifically designed to help people build such skills. You can improve your abilities at empathy and self-understanding and improve your relationships with my guidance by working through these packages.
Becoming more empathic will help you be interpersonally sensitive and helpful, help you foster your own mental health, growth and creativity, and increase your capacity for intimacy by enhancing your ability to maintain respect and openness in your close relationships.
For some people, the cost of psychotherapy blocks them from utilizing that valuable resource. The Empathywork educational products are a lower-cost way of getting some of the same benefits on your own. And what you learn will help you utilize psychotherapy more effectively and efficiently should you later decide that you want to invest in face-to-face psychotherapy.
There are four packages summarized below:
Empathy for Yourself — Focusing. This package will help you learn and begin to practice Focusing. There are exercises for you to do, some questions for you to answer, and an opportunity to get answers to your questions in each module that makes up the package!
- The Focusing Attitude. This module explains the ideal attitude to adopt when you are Focusing.
- The Felt Sense. One of the key parts of Focusing is the "Bodily Felt Sense." For some people, this is a mysterious term, but in this module you will get help understanding what it is and help in finding it for yourself.
- Steps to Guide You Through a Session of Focusing. Basic steps for learning and practicing Focusing.
- Clearing A Space. Clearing a space is like taking inventory of the concerns and problems that are currently active in your thoughts and feelings. The goal of this step is to come to solid, centered place inside yourself, which is a good place from which to do Focusing.
- Choosing What to Focus On. This module guides you to making a good choice of subjects to Focus on. It follows naturally from Clearing a Space.
- Letting and Helping a Felt Sense Form, and Getting a Handle. Once you have Cleared a Space, and Chosen something to Focus on, this module will guide you to find your Felt Sense.
- Checking and Resonating your Handle. This module shows you how to work with the words, images, and ideas that come to describe your Felt Sense.
- Asking, and Receiving What Comes. This module helps you invite your Felt Sense to bring insight and relieving change.
Delivering Empathy—Listening. This package will teach you empathic listening. It takes practice, so there are exercises for you to do. After you do the exercises, you can comment on your experiences and receive feedback.
1. The Listening Attitude. In this module you will learn what to strive for when you listen to someone, and what to do with your own feelings and thoughts that come in the process.
2. Basic Methods for Listening. In this Module, you will learn the basic behaviors and strategies required to do good empathic listening.
3. What to Listen to. There is more to communication than words, and in this module you will learn what else to pay attention to and how to respond to it in an empathic way.
4. How often to reflect what you hear when Listening. In this Module you will learn several things that will help you adjust the frequency of your listening responses so that they have the best empathic effect.
5. How to toggle "on" your non-dominant hemisphere. In Western cultures, education systems emphasize the analytic processes that are the province of the dominant hemisphere of the brain. But the best empathy, as well as creative new insights, often need the involvement of the non-dominant hemisphere. In this Module you will learn the functions of both hemispheres, and some simple things you can do to activate your non-dominant hemisphere.
Maintaining Joint Empathy — For Couples and Your Closest Relationships. Close relationships can be the biggest challenge in terms of keeping both people feeling well-understood and cared for. This is a bit ironic, since we get close to people because of what we admire about them, and for the things that we like about how it feels to be with them. But as relationships and individuals evolve over time, our habits and the habits of our partner can begin to irritate. We also tend to have the things we learned and residual feelings from experiences when we were growing up come to the surface in these relationships, and this can confuse us in terms of the meaning of what the other is saying and doing. The skills you will learn in this package are relationship savers!
1. Individual Differences That Contribute to Relationship Difficulties. People differ in the ways they express love, and in how they prefer to maintain emotional stability. If two people differ substantially on these things, but haven't explicitly acknowledged the differences, trouble and hurt feelings can result.
2. Five Love Languages. In this Module, you will learn five different ways that are commonly used by people to express love. A person who strongly favors one of these languages, will typically also expect to receive love from their partner in the same language. If the partner favors a different language, things done in the favored language may go over the head of the other, and leave both people feeling unfulfilled and unappreciated.
3. Ways of Maintaining Emotional Stability. In this Module you will learn five dimensions that are common elements of the strategies people use to feel efficient and comfortable in conducting their affairs. People in couples are often polar opposites on one or more of these dimensions. You will learn which ways you favor, and how to respect the opposite ways from your own.
4. Habits to Overcome. Research on couples has identified some common patterns in communication that predict the demise of the relationship, if they go on unchanged. Here you will learn to recognize these destructive habits so you are empowered to make different choices for how you pursue getting your needs met and your feelings treated well.
5. Habits to Cultivate. Couple research has also identified what long lasting, happy couples do habitually that enhances the relationship and promotes intimacy.
The Empathy Intensive includes the Listening and the Focusing packages plus two live teleseminars. This serves as a first step toward getting certified as a Focusing Trainer, or a Focusing-oriented Therapist, for those who become so interested in Focusing and Listening that they wish to become teachers themselves.
HOW THE PACKAGES WORK: The individual packages are paid for by the month, with no contractual commitment (monthly prices are listed at the end of the details for each package): If you want to, you can easily work through a package in one month, so the cost of one month is your minimum commitment. If you wish to maintain access to me as a coach to respond to questions as you continue to revisit the modules and learn more by practicing, you can stay with it by paying for an additional month. You can drop out and return again after a break, if you wish to do that. The Empathy Intensive is a flat $300 fee.
Once you wish to try a package, I will e-mail you instructions for how to pay for it. Next, I will e-mail you the initial content. It will contain something to read, and then some questions for you to answer and e-mail to me. I will respond, generally within 24 hours.
The questions are designed to help guide you through a learning process, and I will give you some personal coaching on how to keep learning. When you get my responses, you can write back to me for clarification or with additional questions.
Please take a look at the details of the packages in which you are interested, and I’ll be delighted if you decide to try one or more to improve your empathic abilities.
Jim Iberg, Ph.D.