Working with Empathy: Q&A with Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips

*Journalist and author Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips' book Future of Feeling was published in February, just prior to the global spread of Covid-19. The book covers key subjects and shared research and insights about managing digital communication, empathy, and healthy habits—matters which are all the more important now *that digital connections have become essential to protecting health for other reasons. Below is our brief conversation.

**Kaitlin: **Well, I did not expect there to be a global social experiment in what the “future of feeling” might be like, but here we are! I have been thinking a lot about how research shows we struggle to empathize when we’re upset, and/or when we feel our basic needs aren’t being met. Pretty much everyone is in that state right now, and a lot of us are spending a lot more time using social tech, so the issues I researched and wrote about - trolling, gamification of conversation, the flattening of context - are amplified. I see people lashing out at each other, and it’s really distressing.

We have seen a lot of schools, businesses, and cultural institutions move online and start to adopt new technology, from basic streaming to virtual reality. There have been some positive moves that I hope will continue, like more accessible telehealth (especially for mental health), but there are some developments (spying software on work and school computers, for one) that are pretty scary in terms of trying to preserve an empathetic future.

When it comes to social tech - since that’s what most people are familiar with - I have a feeling this experience might push innovation to move more quickly in the direction of empathy, privacy, and quality over quantity. I’ve heard whisperings about a shift from the newsfeed-dominant platforms we have now to smaller digital social groups where context (and empathy) can thrive. We’ll see!

I did not expect some of the negative effects of so much Zooming, but I’m feeling them. It’s truly not the same as being in a room with someone in terms of presence and body language; you are stuck looking at your own face for far longer than you’re used to, and you have zero privacy to yawn or look away or tend to something that comes up (which is happening a lot these days)!

Two main things that are related: expectation of constant work/productivity, and lack of family flexibility. For the latter, I don’t even mean paid time off, I mean flexibility throughout the average workday. I think it’s becoming a lot clearer just how difficult it is to juggle work, life, and family, and with everyone (for the most part) in this together, I hope some changes will be made to address that. Productivity has taken on a whole new meaning, whether you’re working from home or not. It would be nice to believe we would all walk away from this realizing we’ve been pushing ourselves and our employees too hard, but that may be too much to hope for… At the very least, though, we’re being forced to confront the burnout culture many of us have been living in, and it’s going to be hard to ignore going forward.

One of the hardest things for me has been accepting that one of the best, most empathetic actions I can take is to do nothing. To stay home or go out as little as possible. Beyond that, this concept of thanking those who work to keep us healthy, happy, and alive, from the mailman to the ICU nurse, should continue, but this crisis is also a reminder of how much more is needed. This is an opportunity, if we are lucky enough to be safe and healthy, to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are on the front lines, and ask what they need from a policy perspective to do their jobs and stay well, pandemic or not. Similarly, as we read and listen to stories about the hardest hit demographics, and put ourselves in their shoes regarding COVID, now we have a spot to come back to when this is over, to imagine how else we could address the broader systems that impact them in a disproportionately negative way. To spell it out: this crisis illuminates long-simmering problems like structural racism and poverty that can’t be fixed by a vaccine, but that we have always had - and will continue to have - the ability to speak/write/lobby our representatives about.

I’m gonna admit to being one of the millennials who has invaded TikTok… but I’m not posting! I just truly love watching people take on dance challenges, especially with family members they’re quarantined with who might not otherwise be cajoled into doing something like that. Any video of cooped-up people dancing together brings me joy, right now.

My usual answer to this question is to take a deep breath, count to three, and see if the benefit of you posting what you’re thinking of posting outweighs any potential harm it might do (intentional or not). These days, though, my answer is: take some time off. I think it can sometimes feel like we *have *to be online all the time to be participants in society (especially now, when we can’t literally go out and participate in real life). But it is okay - in fact, necessary - to give yourself a break, if not to prevent your own burnout, then to prevent lashing out at others. When you do go online, I suggest just trying to be a little more gentle right now, with yourself and everyone else. Assume everyone is even more anxious than you are, because there’s a good chance that’s true.

_Lead illustration by Aaron Fernandez_.