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Shadowing Brené Brown

Brené Brown on Empathy — This short animation uses Brown’s explanation of empathy and sympathy. Brief examples of responses to difficult news make the distinction concrete, although the key terms are less common words. Original video on YouTube: Brené Brown — Brené Brown on Empathy.

Summary

Brené Brown distinguishes empathy from sympathy by asking what helps a person feel connected when they are suffering. Drawing on nursing scholar Theresa Wiseman, she describes empathy as understanding another perspective, withholding judgment, recognizing emotion, and communicating that recognition. Her image of climbing into a hole with someone captures the willingness to share a difficult feeling. The goal is not to repair the situation with a clever response, but to help the person feel less alone.

Key points, in order

  1. Brown presents perspective taking as accepting another person's experience as real for them. It requires listening without immediately evaluating or correcting what they feel.
  2. Empathy involves vulnerability because connecting with someone else's emotion means finding a related feeling within ourselves. Sympathy, in her comparison, keeps a safer distance.
  3. Responses beginning with an optimistic comparison can minimize pain. Her examples of miscarriage, marriage trouble, and school difficulties show how attempts to find a silver lining can miss the need being expressed.
  4. An honest admission that we do not know what to say, coupled with gratitude for being trusted, can offer the connection that advice cannot provide.

Five useful phrases to practise

Choose a caption line to open Repeat mode. Listen, then say it after the speaker.

  1. 0:31 Perspective taking - ability to take the perspective of another person, or recognise their perspective as their truth.
  2. 0:48 Empathy is feeling WITH people.
  3. 1:24 Empathy is a choice and it's a vulnerable choice.
  4. 2:26 "I don't even know what to say. I'm just so glad you told me."
  5. 2:36 What makes something better is connection.

Based on the video’s captions. Original video: Brené Brown on Empathy · Royal Society of Arts.

Everyday phrases from this video

Brené Brown — Brené Brown on EmpathyStart from the beginning
  • Level: B2
  • Accent: American
  • Length: 3 min · 35 lines to practise
  • Speed: about 132 words a minute (slower than most talks)
  • Words: about 330; the talk asks 4 questions
  • Timing: Sada measures how far behind the speaker you are on every line

What to focus on in this talk

Practise the examples of responses, and notice which ones the explanation questions.

What this talk trains

Brené Brown speaks for about 3 minutes: roughly 330 words in 35 caption lines. Overall it is faster than 2 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 8.8 words, no longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 15.8% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 4 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy. Phrases that fast speech often shortens come up again and again: “out of” (2 times).

Lines from across the talk, and what each one trains

One line from each quarter of the talk. Press a line to open it in Sada, ready to record. “Linking” marks words that run together: a word ending in a consonant sound joins the vowel that starts the next one.

  1. 0:44 Recognising emotion in other people, then communicating that.

    Linking: say “Recognising emotion”, “emotion in”, “in other” without a break between the words.

  2. 0:51 I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space.

    “kind of”: fast speech often shortens it to “kinda”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “think of”, “of empathy”, “kind of” without a break between the words.

  3. 1:41 Yeah. And we do it all the time because, you know what?

    A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it. One of the quicker lines: about 212 words a minute by the caption timing, against 132 for the whole talk.

  4. 2:22 If I share something with you that's very difficult, I'd rather you say,

    Several commas: say it in short chunks first, then as one line. One of the quicker lines: about 170 words a minute by the caption timing, against 132 for the whole talk.

Words that keep coming up

Words outside the 3,000 most common English words that Brené Brown uses more than once. The number is how often each is said. Look up any you don’t know, then press it to practise the line where it first comes up.

How the talk opens: press any line to practise it

  1. 0:09 So, what is empathy and why is it VERY different than sympathy?
  2. 0:14 Empathy fuels connection.
  3. 0:17 Sympathy drives disconnection.
  4. 0:20 It's very interesting.
  5. 0:22 Theresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar
  6. 0:25 who studied very diverse professions where empathy is relevant and came up with four qualities of empathy.

How to practise this talk

  1. Start with the opening lines above.
  2. Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: linked words, a shortened phrase, a question, a quick line, a line said in chunks.
  3. On each line, press Record and say it after Brené Brown (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
  4. At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 3 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

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