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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps taking someone's problems as your own instead of letting them resolve the situation.
I feel its whatever the opposite of just saying "damn that's crazy" when people complain at you.
This anxiety has jack to do with you actually helping them, it’s just that you get so anxious about their problems that it impedes working on your own problems.
I agree with greatly dislike this, on the surface... but this article suffers from basically the same thing itself?! > I asked our Customer Success Champion, Natasha, about this topic. Empathy is one of her many superpowers. Groan ! ... unless I misunderstood it... now I'm wondering if the 'think positive' lead image was used unironically..?
I'm increasingly beginning to suspect that business culture is inherently hallucinogenic.
Between title inflation (everyone is an "executive" or maybe a "champion" and has "superpowers"), emotional distortions (don't be too negative, don't be too positive, never be sure where the line is or what the correct emotional state is), and perpetual overhyping ('Our incredible journey...') - it's very literally an altered state of consciousness designed to exclude reality.
I agree with greatly dislike this, on the surface... but this article suffers from basically the same thing itself?! > I asked our Customer Success Champion, Natasha, about this topic. Empathy is one of her many superpowers. Groan ! ... unless I misunderstood it... now I'm wondering if the 'think positive' lead image was used unironically..?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30947595
[2] https://www.npr.org/2022/04/05/1091077398/checkout-startup-f...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. Was quite excited when I saw the title, but not a great piece. Be interested if anyone's seen any better pieces on the same subject
There's a new book on this subject - "Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy" https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Positivity-Keeping-World-Obsess... I also found these articles/posts to be pretty decent: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-toxic-positivity-509395... https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/tired-of-being-told-cheer-up-th...
Just using the word "toxic" as a binary classifier of "things I don't like" is a problem. That includes people not being positive enough.
To my mind, I think toxic is a byword for 'extreme behaviour'; and furthermore, extreme behaviour is often a symptom of a personality disorder at its most pronounced.
For actual information about Toxic Positivity, I think the following posts and articles are likely to be much more helpful: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-toxic-positivity-509395... https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/tired-of-being-told-cheer-up-th... And I haven't read it yet, but I saw a new book on the subject is out "Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obs…
Although shitty articles sometimes give nice topics for a better discussion here in the comments, so why not.
This article is fine and all, but maybe we should also have a warning about toxic empathy. This is all a lot of emotional work, guess it is something we can all work on but so much other stuff going on.
Seen a few pieces about how we should be prioritising compassion over empathy to save ourselves from exhaustion. Only place I remember reading off top of my head was Rutger Bregman's Humankind. Interesting to ponder
This article is fine and all, but maybe we should also have a warning about toxic empathy. This is all a lot of emotional work, guess it is something we can all work on but so much other stuff going on.
Can you give an example of toxic empathy?
Trivial example - phone services with the stock "Your call is important to us but we're experiencing an unusually high level of calls right now" message. When the truth is the company is spending a bare minimum on phone support and knows it.
Or customer service scripts that say something like "I understand you're frustrated that you're having this problem."
In reality there's no understanding. And there may not even be any interest in fixing the problem - because when you read back through other messages you see the problem has been there for years and there's been absolutely no effort to find a fix.