Social anxiety meets an easy empathy trick that might rewire your brain’s defensiveness. Spoiler: it works, sort of, if you can stomach the effort.
The story
Thorne stood at the party, trapped in a vast churn of chatter, already certain every glance meant rejection, so he planned his retreat into safe predictable isolation.
Thought processes limited to mere human, she caught him anyway. A glimmer of positive ego vibes shined through the fog of his depression, even as his heart began thudding. “She’s too beautiful to *really* wanna talk to me,” he thought.
And then – somehow – they were talking. She was sharing about a recent trip as if he was anywhere near her level.
With my brain the size of Texas, I decided to beam him a copy of Scott Howard Swain’s *A Practical EmPath: Rewire Your Mind* book. He ingested the skills in 50 milliseconds: observe, name the feeling, infer the value, ask for more.
Lila had been waiting a full second. He turned to her with, “Were you afraid or just a little worried? Would you share more?”
For more about Chapter 7 of Scott Howard Swain’s “A Practical EmPath Rewire Your Mind” book, get
