Understanding Others' Emotions | Lisa Feldman Barrett

A great insight by Lisa Feldman Barrett: When someone expresses anxiety, the first thing you should do is ask: do you want empathy or do you want a solution?

Anxiety is the enemy of empathy. Fear makes us egocentric; egocentric makes us blind. An amygdala/prefrontal-cortex two-step that narrows the search parameters of the pattern recognition system. Pretty soon, as anxiety climbs too high, we lose our ability to find one another.

Respond to their emotions by saying “Sounds like you’re angry” or “Sounds like this really upsets you.” Hostage negotiators use this to show understanding and to cool hot emotions. And neuroscience research shows that giving a name to feelings helps reduce their intensity.

“When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?”