Empathy vs. Sympathy — A Conversation with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller

Are you caring for a loved one with dementia? You don't have to figure this out all on your own. Welcome to Truth, Lies Alzheimer's, the show that helps you reimagine a new relationship with your loved one, a relationship a little more free of stress and anxiety. Join host Lisa Skinner and her 30+ years of experience as she guides you on a new path to a better relationship with those you care for.

Here's Lisa.

Welcome back, everybody, to a brand new episode of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host, and I have with me today a very special guest. As a matter of fact, she and I belong to a speakers bureau, and we both ended up going to Oxford, England a year ago to speak at an event. And I want to tell you, I was so excited to invite her onto my show because she is an expert in empathy. And empathy is a very foundational part of the human connection in general, but also in dementia care. So I thought that she and I could have a really dynamic conversation about empathy. And we both agreed when we talked the other day that it seems to be a lost art form of human communication. So I'm sure we're going to talk about that. But anyway, let me introduce you to my friend and colleague, Dr. Melissa Robinson Weinmiller. And Melissa is not just talking about leadership, she's challenging us to do it differently. With over 20 years of cross-industry experience, she helps leaders build emotionally intelligent cultures that don't just feel better, they actually perform better. Can't wait to hear about that. She is an internationally known TEDx speaker, an emotional intelligence coach, and the author of the book, The Empathic Leader. Melissa blends research, real-world insight, and lived experience to make empathy actionable at every level of leadership. And she is on a mission to prove that the so-called soft skills are the ones driving the hard results, and the future of leadership depends on them. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the show, Melissa. I'm so happy to have you here today.

Oh, Lisa, it is my pleasure. Thank you so much. And just, you know, like we were saying before we started recording, the timing is perfect since we were live and in person together just a year ago.

That's right. We had a good time, didn't we? That was fun. Yeah. So my experience being in the 30 years that I've been working with families, the core of successful communication and a harmonious relationship with people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia is empathy. It's foundational to compassionate dementia care. It informs how caregivers understand and respond to the lived experience of people who are living with dementia, guiding interactions, decision-making, and the overall quality of life And I have found that to be so true in working with these folks who are living with constant progressive cognitive decline. How does empathy fit into our world in just a general sense? Because you and I talked about this in our first conversation about having you come on the show. And I think we both agreed that in the last, I don't know, at least 10 years, maybe more, empathy seems to be becoming a lost art of communication. You want to elaborate on that for us?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So first, your feeling that there is a lessening of empathy is actually being backed up by research. There is a longitudinal study that's been going on since the '70s. And what they looked at was empathy specifically in college students. I mean, just, that's the population they chose. And between the 1970s and 2008, they found a decrease in the amount of empathy in this population by 40%.

Oh, that's huge.

Yes, it is.

I mean, so could you define empathy for us and maybe even tell us what the difference is between empathy and sympathy? Sympathy? Because I think that people maybe, um, aren't quite sure what the difference is between actual empathy and actual sympathy.

Yeah, no, that's a great question because I— that's actually one of them I get a lot because it does— we kind of think of it all in one big ball, you know, empathy, sympathy, compassion, and they're really different things. So empathy, as far as to define it, it's understanding and connection by taking the perspective of the other. And a lot of times we think empathy is just about feeling, about I feel what you feel. And yeah, that's part of it. But over the years, there's actually been 43 different definitions of empathy. So the feeling is part of it, but it's a small part of it. It's more about perspective taking, understanding what it is to be that other person and seeing the world through their eyes. That's the difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy, you're trying to see the world through that other person's eyes. Sympathy, you're seeing it through your own, which means that you always end up with a comparison. You know, what must this look like compared to what I do? And that can bring in an element of judgment. That's why when we're talking medical people and people in the medical establishments, they're actually trained not to use sympathy because of that reason. If you're dealing with patients and you know they're, they're having a hard time, if you come at them with anything that even kind of seems like judgment, you're going to get a negative response. So yeah, that's the big difference. Empathy, you're always trying to see it through their perspective. It's taking the me out and putting the we in is really what it comes down to.

And that is exactly what I teach to family members and caregivers, is to— yeah, and it's actually a matter of having to retrain our brains to think that way. Do you find that to be true?

You know, it kind of depends on the person, because empathy is another one of those things, you know, with human behavior where it's on a spectrum. And you're going to have some people that just take to it really naturally. I mean, on the far end you have dark triad, which are people that have no empathy at all. And those are psychopaths, sociopaths, Machiavellians, and narcissists. So there is a small part of humanity that doesn't have any. But then on the other side of that is the light triad, which are people that have a lot of empathy and that ability to relate to other people. So, but most of us are going to fall in the middle, right? The, the bell curve and stuff averages in the middle. So most of us are going to have to work at it a little bit, but we're also going to have a little bit of innate talent to be able to build on. It's just a matter of actually building it as a skill, which you can. Empathy isn't all inherent. There's part of it that's environmental and that you can work on and get better at.

So do you— have you seen, in these studies that you're talking about that have supported it, have you seen the instinctive, inherent part of our DNA, our, our human being, that just inherently is empathetic towards others? Just waning?

Not the biological part so much. And there is a biological part. It's more the environmental and socialized part where we learn as kids, you know, well, how would you feel if you were that person? Well, how would you feel if someone hit you with that stick? Or, you know, that kind of thing.

So what's happening? Why is that disappearing?

There's a lot of scholars that think it goes back to the iPhone and social media and too much technology. It's called main character syndrome. You get that limelight on you dealing with social media and that sort of thing, and you kind of forget there are other people out there.

Well, that would make sense since it seems to, uh, be an emotion that's waning since we've been adopting and adapting all this high-tech stuff.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So how does compassion then fit into the spectrum between empathy and sympathy?

So sympathy is kind of its own thing out on an island. You know, it's just the difference in the viewpoint like we were talking about, whether you see it through your own eyes or through the eyes of the other person. But empathy, there's no action. You're just feeling it. So you're not taking responsibility, you're not passing judgment, you're not doing anything. Compassion is the action you take. So empathy is what you feel and compassion is what you do. So the two are linked.

Oh, that makes complete sense. Can you give us an example?

Sure. So let's say that you are dealing with a family member that has, you know, a medical condition that is You know, like my father, he's recently gone through some stuff. He had prostate cancer, he had all this other stuff going on. And because of that, he kind of went into a depression. Well, you know, what empathy said is that I needed to be in that feeling with him. And that doesn't mean I needed to take that on necessarily, but I needed to try and understand from his point of view why he was facing some of the mental health challenges he was, why he was having problems you know, just even doing day-to-day stuff 'cause he was just kind of, it's what Brené Brown calls being in the suck. And that's very much what he was dealing with. But I wasn't doing anything. I was just in it with him. But then the compassion part of that was, okay, he's having trouble getting through. I'm trying to see this through his point of view. So forcing him to try and get up and be happy and woo is not going to be compassionate. What's gonna be compassionate is going to be to meet him where he's at. And take the small steps with him that he needs to be able to maybe just get out of bed today and get dressed. Maybe today is just, you know, well, let's clean up the house just a little bit. Well, maybe we'll just, you know, sit and watch TV together and not say anything, but I'm going to be here with you, you know. So that's the difference between the empathy, just being in that feeling with him, and the compassion, where I'm trying to actually give the help that he needs, not the help that I think he needs the help he needs.

And it's so ironic, that's the exact same approach we take with people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. I think it's just part of our, our human being.

Yeah.

And it really, you know, based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it falls right there at being one of our very, very basic human needs. That we all have, regardless of whether you're functioning, you know, 100% cognitively or you're not. You agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely. That's the foundation. That's like the bottom.

It really is. It really is. It really is. So was there anything in particular that inspired you to write your book, The Empathic Leader?

Well, part of it is just that there's so many myths out there about empathy, like that it's all about feeling, or that empathy, you know, is the doing part of things, that you're taking responsibility and you're doing all this other stuff. And I kind of wanted to set the record straight because in many of the conversations that I've had— so my doctorate's in interdisciplinary leadership, and I'm finishing up the dissertation, which is actually on empathy and leadership. And a lot of the conversations that I've had with people in leadership positions had to start with actually figuring out definitions and making sure we were talking about the same thing. So part of wanting to write this was, this is what empathy is, this is what empathy isn't, and this is how it fits into leadership. The other part of that is that, you know, through working on this dissertation, I've kind of developed my own methodology as far as being able to apply it in leadership for better profit, productivity, and innovation. And I wanted to write it down. So it's kind of a handbook and a methodology too, so that if I'm working with clients, they have that, they can look at it. And people that I'm not as well, I mean, you know, it's there, it's all in there. It's just a matter of applying it. And the third part of it too is just this reminder that we're all leaders, you know, even if we're only a leader of one and we're trying to get ourselves through, there's stuff in there that's applicable for everybody in any situation. So that's kind of what happened.

Okay, so let's talk about Integrating and applying empathy just in daily life in general.

Mm-hmm.

How can someone cultivate more empathy in their everyday interactions? Because as we've both mentioned and agreed, it seems to be disappearing from our culture.

Yeah. I think the number one place to start is to start with self-empathy, because—

oh, that's interesting. How do you do that?

Well, there's, there's four basic steps, because if the idea is understanding and connection through perspective-taking, you need to create a better understanding and connection with yourself by understanding different perspectives, right? Because if you can't do something for yourself, how are you going to do it for somebody else?

You know, that's true.

Yeah, you Yeah, so the way I teach that actually is in 4 steps, and the first one is self-observation, being able to step outside yourself and objectively watch what you're doing without judgment, without, you know, adding any emotion. You're like a computer, you're just taking in information, you're trying to understand what you're doing, but you're not putting an emotional value on it, you're just watching. And that's hard for us to do because we immediately leap to judgment, you know, oh, that was stupid, or why did I do that, or well, so-and-so does it better, you know, imposter syndrome, that kind of thing. So just understanding different perspectives, right? The second thing is self-reflection, which is where we turn the lens in and we try to connect. Why are these things happening? What's happened that makes me respond this way? What is it about this person that's triggering me? What is it about this situation that's triggering me? You know, you're, you're actually asking some of the hard questions. At that point, once you begin to understand yourself, you turn the lens outward into self-awareness, which is hard. And I think that's one of the things that we're missing most when we talk about how the world is kind of losing this skill, because we're not aware of what our actions or inactions do to the people around us. We're not taking their perspective because we haven't figured out what our perspective is. So, you know, we can actually start to say, oh yeah, when I was triggered by that person, I completely shut down the entire room. We got nothing done. And I'm still not exactly sure why that happened at all, because, you know, we were supposed to be working together and now all of a sudden everybody's scared of me. And then at that point, you can move to self-empathy, meaning that you can actually start to understand and connect with yourself. And like, that may be where you need to actually use self-compassion. That may be where you need to use some self-forgiveness. That may be where you need to actually make some changes, but always within the understanding of, I'm a human and I'm doing the best I can with the tools I have at the time, and I can get better. So when I'm talking to, to people, those are the 4 steps we go through, which, I mean, that sounds easier than it is because it's an iterative process, right? We're doing it over and over and over again. But, you know, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. So if You're practicing it over and over and over again.

Okay, well, what have you found are some of the common barriers to empathy and how can we start to overcome them?

You know, one of the biggest things I see is just that people get very caught up in themselves, their own stressors, their own life problems, their own, this is what I feel, this is what I think, this is, you know, again, putting the me in front of the we. Instead of the other way around. When you're busy looking through your own eyes and putting this judgment out into the world, it becomes hard to see through somebody else's eyes because you get blinders on.

Yeah.

You know, and sometimes it's just a matter of slowing down and saying, okay, I think I know what this is from my point of view. What is it from their point of view? What is it that I may be adding gasoline to this fire? You know, how, how am I adding more to this by being sucked up into my own head? And it's easy to do. Life is stressful. I mean, you know, it's not to say that—

I see it every single day in my world of Alzheimer's disease and dementia with family members and caregivers. And I, you know, there are just so many parallels to what you've been sharing with us and what I see. And they're, they just, they're just so connected. So it doesn't matter if you're living with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I mean, this is really a fundamental core part of our being.

Yes.

From what I'm hearing you say. So, and I can relate this to my world because this is really difficult for family members and caregivers. So let's speak to this. How does one stay empathetic? When they are in challenging or very, really high-stress environments. And this kind of falls back to what I was saying, that we have to practice and work on retraining the brain, especially in situations like this, because your gut reaction, your instinctive reaction to stressful situations is based on emotion and not on logic. And it sounds like we have to really fall back and understand empathy through a logistical lens, not an emotional lens, where sympathy is more through an emotional lens. Would you agree with what I'm saying there?

You know, it's, it's actually interesting because what, what you've put your finger on and I appreciate this, is at first that there is such a thing as empathy fatigue. Medical people deal with it all the time where they reach the point that it's just like, I can't take anymore. Which is why we talk about what's called the dual root model of empathy in that there's two ways to experience empathy and one is emotional, but the other is cognitive. You know, I logically understand what you're feeling, I just don't feel anything. So a lot of times, you know, when, when it emotionally, it gets to be too much, we can move away from that emotional or affective version of empathy and move into this cognitive empathy, which is a different thing. It takes, it's a different part of the brain. That's why it's called dual root, because neurologically it hits the brain in different places. But when empathy is really at its best, those two kind of work together in tandem. And if you're in a situation where you're dealing with someone with a long-term disease, you know, like Alzheimer's or dementia, sometimes you have to rely on cognitive empathy so you don't end up with empathy fatigue. True.

And I equate empathy fatigue in my world, I see it being synonymous with caregiver burnout, which is very, very common. It, uh, and I think it, it has a lot to do with what you're just explaining.

Yeah, and I can imagine, because I mean, talk about a long-term, high-stress, really difficult situation. I mean, you know, that's— it's, it's— you would almost have to rely on cognitive empathy if you didn't want to burn out.

So how do you go about doing that? It's not easy because your emotions will kick in before your logic, right?

Yeah, they will. And that's part of it, 'cause like the affective or emotional empathy is fast, it's instinctive, and it's just like boom, there it is. Cognitive empathy is slower, but it's iterative. So you can go back and think about it again and think about it again. So a lot of times if you feel that emotional snap, you know that, oh, there's the empathy, oh, there's the feeling, and you can kind of step back and go, okay, now let's think about this. Let's actually tease this apart cognitively. You know, we're back again to the self-reflection and the self-awareness. Over time, you can start to integrate this, and you can actually make it a skill. The interesting thing about empathy too— there was another study that was done on this, and what it showed is that people will tend to shy away from things that require empathy because neurologically it's harder. It's a lot harder to give empathy, and they actually broke it down that If people were given two tasks and one had empathy and one didn't, they would only choose the one that needed empathy about 35% of the time, especially if there was a chance that it would be rejected or that they wouldn't get any kind of feedback out of it, which I think may speak, you know, directly to some of the Alzheimer's and dementia patients you talk about, 'cause they're not always in a position to have a lot of gratitude or be thankful for what's going on. You know, so I think in this case, cognitive empathy, even though it might take a little more skill to learn, would definitely be the way to go, especially in the long run.

So could you maybe tell us, so this would be relatable to people listening to this episode, in a caregiver's world or a family member's world, that they've been thrust into with a loved one or caring for somebody with dementia, what would it look like for them to do what you just said, to take a step back and tap into the logical aspect of the situation versus reacting completely on the emotional side of it, because that definitely would lead to the caregiver burnout and the resentment and, um, you know, the, the— even the way they respond to the people, to their loved ones. So what would— what are some exercises or practices that people could use to help them, um, be able to accomplish what you just described?

So when I'm working with medical people, and I'll admit that I haven't done a lot of work with Alzheimer's and dementia caregivers, so you're probably the expert on this more than I am. But in dealing with the medical professionals, the first thing is just that ability to take a step back without guilt or judgment, because a lot of times they're really wrapped up in the caregiving, right? I mean, and it can be a 24/7 thing. Even when you're dealing with nursing or physicians or that kind of thing, they get very wrapped up in their career. And because it's such a big thing for them personally, for them to take a step back almost leaves them feeling like they're not doing the job well enough, that they're guilty that they're not giving enough or they're not stepping in like they should. And that's going to lead to burnout. So the first thing is to be able to take a step back without emotion, like we were talking about— no guilt, no judgment. No, oh, I should have, or I could have, but actually, okay, this is going to be better for them in the long run if I take this step back, if I take these 10 or 15 minutes for myself, if there's a day that I have to step aside so that I can take care of myself, you know, if I don't let myself get forgotten in the middle of all of this, you know, that's one of the first things is just you have to take care of yourself first, which may mean taking a step back. Which may mean not throwing yourself in emotionally all the time, which may mean doing some journaling and actually writing out why, you know, how could I have related to this in a cognitive way so that my emotions didn't get involved? What can I do to kind of separate this out? Because after a while, those neural pathways will shut down. I mean, the effect of empathy, if you get just fatigued for too long, it's like burnout. Eventually it just, it's like, we're done. So if you can take a step back, if you can start writing it out— this is how cognitively I could have dealt with this now that I have time to think about it, that I'm outside of the situation, you know, I'm not—

that's a great idea—

I'm not in an emergency stressful kind of thing. I can actually stop and think, because as we think about things that way, then they're ready for us to put in place next time, because we're not creating new neurological ways of dealing with it, we're recreating something we've already thought about.

Now I see with a lot of medical professionals that they actually become desensitized to being empathetic towards family members, what they're going through, and the— their patients, because it's almost overwhelming and too much to bear to, to put themselves in the emotional funnel piece of having to tell them the diagnosis and all of that. So, but I don't think quite as much desensitization occurs with the caregivers or the family members. I think it might actually intensify their them being sensitive to, well, what they're going through, not so much. We have to kind of switch, turn things around and kind of retrain them to have more of a perspective of what the person they're caring for is going through, or their loved one. That's not an easy thing because that's not the way we're wired.

No, no. And it's— but there you are again, it's about perspective taking, right? I mean, not only the other person, but also in touch with your own. That, you know, we're back to self-empathy, that, you know, maybe I snapped in that place where I shouldn't have. Maybe I've been pushing too hard and it's pushing me over the edge and these emotions are getting too much, and that's okay. I'm a human being. It's okay for me to take a step back. It's okay for me to try and figure this out. You know, you're looking at the perspectives through your own eyes as well as through the eyes of the other person. Empathy is fascinating in that way. I mean, it encompasses so much.

It really does. So can we take that a step farther? And let's say they were journaling what happened and they acknowledge how, how, um, what they did to maybe exacerbate the situation. What if we took that a step farther and they actually included Okay, if this situation comes up again, how would I handle it better next time?

Absolutely. That's precisely— yeah, you know, but, and it allows you to think about it cognitively outside of the actual event.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um, so how can someone distinguish This is an interest— going to be an interesting question. I'm curious how you're going to answer this. How can someone distinguish between genuine empathy and performative, or pretending to be empathetic?

So you know how we said that actually using empathy takes more effort because you're actually trying to see it through the other person's eyes. If you're dealing with someone with performative empathy, they're probably not going to put that effort in. So, you know, you're going to understand that they're not really seeing it from the other person's perspective. They might layer their own perspective in it. That's when you get things like, oh, when this happened to me, oh, I know how you feel because when it happened to me, you know, as opposed to 'Well, I don't really know how you feel, but I, I want to know more. Can you explain your side to me?' They're not going to want to put in that extra work. So I would think that would be a dead giveaway if you're really listening, you know. Are they talking about the other person, or are they talking about themselves in terms of the other person?

The other thing I think that probably would not carry forward would be the compassionate component that you spoke about, like what you ended up doing with your dad, that piece would completely be missing. Is that pretty accurate?

Yes. And the funny thing—

go ahead.

Well, just the funny thing about compassion is if you don't plug in empathy first, sometimes you can do things that look compassionate but aren't compassionate. You take like completely the wrong route because you haven't actually plugged the empathy piece in to understand and connect first.

You're not understanding things from, from, from their side of the fence. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. Yeah. Wow, this has really been powerful and dynamic, and you have given us such, you know, a, a different look at how to communicate with people, how to relate to people. How does this fit into the workplace? Because I know that, you know, you actually work a lot with, um, in, in a leadership environment to probably bring into the workplace to enhance communication or relationships within that type of environment. So how does— what does that look like in, in more of a corporate structured environment?

So when I'm looking at corporate specifically, A lot of times I talk about how to take empathy and plug it into emotional intelligence skills. 'Cause for a long time, we thought of emotional intelligence kind of as this big bucket, right? And it's got motivation and it's got communication and it's got technical skill. You know, it's got all this stuff in it. And for a long time, we put empathy in that tool bag. But what I actually talk about is how we have to take empathy out of that tool bag so that we can understand and connect first, before we reach into that tool bag, because otherwise we don't really know which emotional intelligence skill is going to be the best to use. We don't know if we're going for a chisel or a left-handed screwdriver without first understanding and connecting. So when I'm in corporate and I'm dealing specifically with leaders, we talk a lot about the connection and, and human-to-human aspect of empathy in terms of being able to grab those emotional intelligence skills to communicate better, to be able to motivate better, to self-motivate better. You know, we're back to the self-empathy side of things again. You know, that way they're able to actually lead better. And there are studies that show that if you can lead with empathy, that you are going to create better profit, productivity, and innovation. Profit to the tune of like 84%, you know. So that, that's a lot of what my work in corporate looks like in a nutshell.

Well, that's, that's almost a double-edged sword because leaders tend to be very numbers-driven. They're under a lot of pressure. They have to answer to shareholders, the bottom line. And so they're driven. They want to drive the people who are underneath them. So how do you accomplish being empathetic when those are completely, um, almost a contradiction within itself?

Well, first of all, I mean, empathy does not mean you don't have boundaries. Having empathy doesn't mean you don't get business done. You know, it's like we were talking about earlier, that empathy— you don't actually do anything. You seek to connect and understand. So the better you're able to connect and understand with all people, like you were talking about, right? Any stakeholder, whether it's the board of directors to middle management to the people below you, the better you're going to be able to understand how to direct them, to be able to move them into the best possible version of themselves within this organization that you can.

So they want to remain driven versus feeling like they are being bullied into being driven. Okay, that makes total sense.

Yep. It's a difference between management and leadership.

Yeah, management theory, self-motivation. Yes, precisely, because they feel somebody understands them. Yeah, that's the root of, of, um, my methodology and what I've been trained to teach is, you know, validate, acknowledge let them know that you hear them. Yeah. And I think that probably applies to people in general. It's part of our just being.

Yeah, absolutely.

The workplace, it works with, you know, people living with cognitive decline. Yeah. Anything else? We've talked about a lot and we've covered, you know, a lot of really important points. Um, what's the one piece of advice you would give to people listening to this show today that might help them break the unempathetic barrier that a lot of us, you know, may have developed over time to get started on a new path to trying to be more empathetic with other people in any given situation?

You know, I think it helps just to remember that it isn't an all or nothing kind of thing. You know, if you can take 5 minutes today and just think, well, what would the perspective be through the eyes of that person? What is that person actually seeing and feeling and thinking? You know, and you can raise your empathy by 5% then that's 5%. It isn't like everything has to suddenly be puppies and rainbows, but you can work on it just a little bit every day. And if you do it every day and every day and every day, that's how you build a skill. That's how you become Michael Jordan and the greatest basketball player of all time, is you work on those skills every day. And empathy is the same. So just a little bit every day.

We see a lot of anger in the world now. So how do you stop yourself from feeling that way and pivot to trying to understand a situation from somebody else's point of view?

That's precisely where I would switch from emotional empathy, because you can feel it. I mean, and it is hard not to give into it when you feel it strongly, you know, into cognitive empathy. And understand that cognitive empathy doesn't mean I have to agree with that person.

No, no.

You know, I definitely have boundaries. You know, I, I don't like what someone's doing, but at least I'm like, okay, well, they're probably doing this for this reason or this reason or this reason, and I don't have to give in to that. I have control over my empathy and how I want to react to those emotions. And if I want the world to react with empathy, then I need to be the first one to do it. Even if it's 2%.

I like that. I like, I love that. So Melissa, how do people find your book and find out more about your area of expertise and what you do?

So the easiest place is my website, and that's eqvia, that's V as in Victor, I-A, empathy.com. And you can order my book there, or you can get it at Barnes Noble or Amazon, or, you know, the usual places. And my TEDx talk was just released a week ago, and we are up to 31,000 views. Congratulations! Thank you.

I'm sorry, where did you do your TED Talk?

Tulsa.

Oh, in Tulsa?

Uh-huh.

Yeah, how exciting.

Yeah, go ahead.

Oh, I was just saying I did mine— gosh, it was about a year and a half ago in Canada. Oh, cool. Yeah, in Grand Prairie, Alberta.

Oh, how cool is that? So we got that in common too. How cool is that?

Check that off the bucket list, right? Such an amazing experience. It really was. Of course, I did mine on Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I was drawing parallels. With a story that we can all relate to, to how that is similar to living with Alzheimer's disease, because I wanted people to be more empathetic to what it's really like to live with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I imagine you did yours on empathy, huh?

I did. I did mine on self-empathy and self-judgment because—

oh, beautiful. Congratulations! Congratulations! That's, that's a huge accomplishment. Anything else you'd like to share with our, with our viewers, with my viewers, before we, um, come to a close today?

I just think that, you know, what I— the way I break it down for my people is, because you're using cognitive and affective empathy, to just remember to keep a cool head and a warm heart.

I like that. Yeah, it's not a— it's not always as easy done as it is said, but it's— yeah, it's doable. It's quite possible.

Yes, but anything worth having is worth doing the work for.

I agree. All right, my friend, thank you again for coming on the show today. This, uh, information you've shared to me is absolutely invaluable. And I appreciate you taking the time to come on and share this. So, um, for now, you take good care, you stay happy and healthy, and you keep up all your just invaluable work.

Thank you, and thank you so much for having me, and I hope your audience gets a lot of use out of this.

Oh, me too. I'm sure they will. I have no doubt, actually. All right, we'll be talking to you soon, Melissa. Take care.

All right, thank you.

Well, that'll do it for this week's episode of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. I'm your host, Lisa Skinner. Thank you again, Melissa, for being such an amazing guest, and we will be back next week with another brand new episode of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. So Don't go too far because we will be back next week. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to Truth, Lies Alzheimer's. We hope you found something in today's episode that helps. We understand that caring for a loved one with dementia can be the challenge of a lifetime, but you don't have to do it alone. If you're ready for exclusive access to even more great content and resources. Head on over to Facebook and join Lisa Skinner's Minding Dementia support group. We're a community of like-minded caregivers, and we're here to help.