 When someone attacks us verbally, it's our human instinct to get defensive and fight back, but is there a different way to respond to this? What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And man, I started this channel for so many reasons, so, so, so many reasons. And right now I'm sitting at, you know, about 1,540-something subscribers. And like, I, man, I have to use this platform to hopefully help, you know, as many people as possible and make this world a little bit better of a place. And that's why I got to talk about, you know, subjects like empathy. Like, empathy is, is the missing thing in our society today. You know what I mean? And we often don't think about it. I think people get empathy and sympathy mixed up. But the definition of empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Like, empathy is something that I lack for so long in my life. I live my life as such an angry, angry person. I hated everything. I hated everyone. When anybody disagreed with me or they had a better life than me, or I thought that my circumstances were worse than theirs, like, all I could do was get on the defensive. I always felt like I was being attacked. I was never happy, and it was just exhausting. It was ruining relationships, most of all with myself, but with other people. I was extremely disconnected from the world around me because I lacked this empathy. It was impossible for me to put myself in another person's shoes. Now, one of the reasons why I'm talking about this subject today is today, and this isn't the first day this has happened, but I had somebody shoot me a message. Those doesn't even know me. They saw one of my videos and they just came out attacking. I know some of you out there wondering like, Chris, who's going to attack you about anything? You're just so likable. Well, there are my critics, right? But the one thing that people attack me the most about is they see a video of mine that went viral last summer about addiction being a disease, right? So this guy just messages me out of nowhere, and he's just full on attack mode. And the initial reaction to that is to fight back, is to argue, explain the science, explain why I'm right, he's wrong, all these other things. But something I've learned over time, especially when it comes to this specific topic, is the people who are going out of their way to attack you on this subject, they're people who are hurting. Like, as a recovering drug addict myself, I know the pain I have inflicted. I know the damage that I've caused. I know the wreckage of my past. And I know that the people out there who are so upset about addiction, and when it's called a disease, I understand that these people are most likely hurting too. So typically, typically what I do is like, I'm a busy dude. Like, typically, I just blow these messages off. I'm like, okay, you're right, you're winning. I just kind of go on my way. And I had some time today, right? And I decided to reply to this guy, and I just started talking to him. Now, spoiler warning, this guy never really backed off, but I just proceeded to ask him questions. As we're talking, as I'm asking these questions, part of his anger, part of why he's hurting so bad, is because he has family members who are sick. We're talking about cancer. We're talking about MS. And he feels that the government is providing more assistance to drug addicts and alcoholics, rather than putting funds into helping people who are struggling with these other illnesses, right? So I understand the fear like I can only imagine, you know, my family going through that, you know, I have an aunt who has had cancer come back. I have my best friend who has had ovarian cancer come back. I know how scary it could be, how frightening it can be, especially if they don't have health insurance or adequate coverage. I'm looking for somebody to blame. It's scary and that fear turns into pain and it turns into hurt and it turns into anger. I did a video about this, talking about Star Wars of all things, but that's what they talk about is the path to the dark side. This fear turns into anger, right? So he's telling me about this, and I start talking to him a little bit more and a little bit more. I find out that this guy's father actually died of alcoholism. I'm the son of an alcoholic mom too. Like through this conversation, me and this guy have more in common than he is willing to admit. But I do my best to express this empathy. We have this huge problem in the world today where we don't sit down and have a conversation. The conversation ends at, you disagree with me, you're coming off aggressive, I don't care about your pain because you're trying to inflict pain on me. Now this isn't something that happened overnight for me. I used to be an extremely angry person, but through my practice of empathy and a lot of it has come through meditation, specifically loving kindness meditations, I'm able to be a little bit more empathetic towards people. Like people ask me all the time to like Chris, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with these people who are attacking you every day? Like you got to understand, I work at a drug and alcohol rehab center. We are literally taking away the one thing, the one thing that made these people feel okay. So I have clients who don't like what I have to say, right? I have to go in there and tell them a lot of things that they don't want to hear. I have clients who have come up to me and cuss me out right to my face, right? And how do I manage that? How do I go into work every single day? Because I love my job. How do I do that? Because I know that when they come at me, I know that they're coming from a place of hurt. I know that nobody ends up at a drug and alcohol treatment center because their life was going amazing back home. No, they have issues and they're all the way out here in Las Vegas. Their family's back home. Their children are back home. Their pets are back home. They're worried about money. They're worried about what they're gonna do. They're worried about how they're gonna live a clean life. So I know when they're attacking me, it's truly out of this fear that they actually have. And I do my best to be empathetic towards that. And this broadens so much and I just want you to sit back and imagine, imagine a world where we were more empathetic towards each other, right? Imagine a school teacher being more empathetic towards a kid who has these outbursts in class or has behavioral issues. Imagine if that teacher was a little bit more empathetic and took a step back instead of sending that kid to the principal's office or the dean's office. What if that teacher sat back and said, I wonder what's going on in this kid's home life? I wonder if this kid is hurting. I wonder if this kid isn't getting the attention that he deserves, right? Think about the bullies and things like that at school, something I'm working on empathy with my nine-year-old son. There's always so much I could teach all of you, but my son, he is right there with me. And my son's nine years old. He's had, you know, bullies, right? Kids are jerks sometimes. But we're able to sit down and talk and I ask him questions. I'm like, do you think this kid might be hurting? Do you think it's possible that maybe this kid's life at home isn't as good as yours? Do you feel that maybe that might be why he's angry towards other people at school? And it gets my son's wheels turning. And now what we do as part of our meditation practice is when people are mean, we send them loving kindness thoughts as part of meditation, right? But same thing in our every day encounters. You know, we get an angry email from our boss or our boss calls us or lashes out on us. How many times do we take a step back and say, what are they going through? How is their home life? How's their job? What is their boss telling them? Are they under pressure? You know what I mean? By default, we are very selfish and self-centered creatures. When things happen to us, the furthest we can see is how it is affecting us. Being empathetic allows us to start putting ourselves into other people's shoes and thinking like, man, I wonder if this person is maybe going through something, right? Think about road rage, the people who are cutting you off on the freeway. You know, all we think about is the fact that they cut us off. But do we ever take a second to think that maybe this guy who just cut me off, maybe he just got a call from his wife that she's going into labor and this guy's in a hurry? Do we ever think about that? Do we ever think that maybe this guy is on his last warning at work and he's running late because it was a pain in the butt getting his children ready for school. So that's why he's driving like a lunatic on the freeway. How can we be more empathetic? How can we ask ourselves what is that person going through? How are they hurting? And the best solution to when we do this is being able to sit down and have a conversation with this person. You'd be amazed. Like we're so disconnected in this society. Like a conversation can work wonders for you on telling you. When you sit down and you talk to the person who disagrees with you or feels like they're attacking you, I guarantee within 10 minutes sometimes, 20 minutes, an hour conversation, a cup of coffee. When you sit and you learn about their life, the puzzle pieces start to come together and you might start to understand a little bit of why they're hurting, why they're trying to hurt other people. You know what I mean? So anyways, I felt like I had to make this video. I'm huge on empathy. This world would be such a better place. You know, the stigma of mental illness, of addiction and all these other things, we would be treating them so much better if we started to sit back and ask, what is that person going through? What has that person gone through? What kind of worries and fears do they have that maybe I can connect with? By doing that, we'll start to become more of an integrated society and we'll work towards more common solutions. You know what I mean? But anyways, anyways, if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you're new here, make sure you click that little round subscribe button. I'm always making videos to help you out with your mental and emotional well-being. And don't be selfish. Share this video with people you know. All right? You can also click or tap on one of those videos right there to check out some other stuff on this channel. Thanks so much for watching. Put yourself in somebody else's shoes today and I'll see you next time.