- Oh, if everyone had these emotional auras,
I would be out of a job.
This is really useful.
(mysterious music)
My name's Dr. Sam Greenblatt. I'm a clinical psychologist.
Today, I'll be looking at the new Life Is Strange
and we'll be looking at it through that psychological lens.
So I'm excited, let's get started.
- You know the mines?
- I know they exist.
- I think I found a way into one.
- [Alex] Ethan didn't tell Gabe about going
to explore the old mine.
Should I, or should I blow his cover?
- I mean, I don't know these characters,
I'm just coming at this a little blind,
but the main character is already looking
at kind of an interesting decision.
Two different priorities, somebody's physical safety
or kind of the safety of a relationship.
We have to weigh these risks and physical safety
and wellbeing is more important than anything else.
I mean, if this kid dies, then there's no point
in preserving that kind of relationship.
But for the interest of keeping things interesting,
let's see what happens if we keep the secret over here.
- Yeah, fine.
Just thinking about you as the Hobbs to Ethan's Calvin.
- I mean, I love Calvin and Hobbs,
but she's using such a different metaphor, right?
He's using, "I wanna be a dad plus I wanna be
more than a fatherly figure."
He's using this metaphor of, "I'm thinking of you
as kind of an imaginary friend to this kid."
(Mac knocks)
- Just give me a sec.
- Hey Mac.
- Already, his body languages is telling me something.
When someone's physical affect isn't matching
what they're trying to communicate, right?
Clearly he's very angry.
When we wanna communicate to somebody,
we want to communicate kind of openly and freely
and there's a lot of benefits to being able
to display the affect, display the emotion
that you're intending to communicate with your words.
- 'Cause I thought you were fucking my girlfriend!
- Dude, I promise, you've got it all wrong.
- [Mac] Tell me why I shouldn't get your ass right now!
- [Alex] No, no, no, no, no, no, not here.
No, no, not here.
- [Gabe] It's not my place, Mac.
You really need to talk to your girlfriend.
- [Mac] I'm talking to you!
(Gabe grunts)
- No!
(Alex grunts)
- Alright, good time here to talk about, I think,
the difference between empathy and sympathy.
Those are two words that are commonly misconstrued.
People say, "Oh, I'm an empath, et cetera, et cetera."
There's a really important difference.
Sym kind of is something that denotes the same.
Empathy is we understand what the other person
is going through.
Sympathy is you are currently feeling the same feelings
that the other person is feeling.
If somebody else is grieving and I start
to feel the same level of grief, to the same intensity,
even though it's not my personal grief,
I don't know the person who passed,
that could be kind of a chaotic way to live.
What she's experiencing right now,
it certainly seems like she's being a little more
sympathetic than empathetic.
It's a subtle difference in terms
of the words themselves,
but the differences is so important.
It's an inappropriate time,
but it reminds me of my favorite joke for psychologists.
So the psychologist is walking down the street
and he sees someone who is beaten and bloodied,
bruised on the ground.
And he looks at this guy in horror and he says,
"Oh my God, whoever did this to him needs help!"
A lot of times we're looking at not just the victim,
but the aggressors as the people
that really need the therapeutic intervention.
"We have a session scheduled."
So even something like that,
I would never send an email to a patient saying,
"This is strike one."
That sounds really punitive.
In terms of whether or not I would want
to see my patients' texts,
I almost think that it would be irrelevant.
It's a collaboration.
I'm the expert in cognitive behavioral therapy
and they're the expert in themselves and there's a trust.
And if they choose to withhold something, then that's okay.
- I wanna talk to Gabe, but what can I even say right now?
I know what other people are feeling.
I can see these auras around them.
- Because they're kind of hyperbolizing something
that people experience.
I'm so wary when people are talking about,
"Oh, I'm just an empath.
I can really sense and I'm really there
when people are kind of experiencing these things."
The sympathy has all of the pros of empathy, but extra cons.
Being too attached and feeling what they're feeling.
- He wasn't just angry at you.
He's angry at himself.
He thinks he's gonna lose Riley.
- Did Riley told you that?
- It's so funny here 'cause she's saying,
"Nobody told me that, I just feel it."
I think one of the most toxic statements
is, "I can feel it in my gut.
It's my gut feeling, it's my instinct."
We have this kind of primal part of our brains
that send these emotions and those emotions
aren't always linked up with real life.
Our brain kinda gaslighting us into thinking
that there is a problem when there actually isn't.
- Earlier, when I was talking with Ethan,
he told me he was hiking up the mountains
to explore the old mine.
- [Gabe] Ethan? Ethan!
Ethan!
- Ethan!
- Alex? I'm scared!
- Good thing she has the power that tells her he's scared.
- Ethan, I need you to calm down.
Can you breathe for me?
- So she tries two different interventions here
to kind of reduce his emotional intensity.
The first is, "Let's go through a breathing exercise."
Sometimes that could bring down some anxiety,
but I know it's kind of a trope that therapists
just told me to breathe.
But then the other thing that she does is starts
to appeal to his kind of rational self to kind of
help ground him and hopefully emotionally stabilize him.
He had the rope tied around himself?
- [Alex] Gabe?
- This is why you don't tie the rope around yourself.
- No! No!
- That did not seem necessary.
- What happened to Gabe was a senseless tragic accident.
And I just wish--
- It wasn't an accident.
Pretty wild that you come stumbling out
of Gabe's apartment with your face all fucked up.
- Ryan-- - And just
a couple hours later, you just so happened to miss the call
that would have saved his life?
- So grief is one of those really complicated things.
We want to allow our brain and our body to do two things,
be able to release some kind of emotions
or to kind of talk things through
with other people that are grieving.
And we wanna give ourselves some time
to not have to think about it and to not process it.
So these people in the scene,
when they're taking the anger out on other people,
I think that wouldn't pass that litmus test of is it useful.
In this situation, if these people were very skillful.
And it's hard to be in a really kind of
emotionally challenging situation like this,
and I don't blame them.
But if they were being kinda optimally skillful
in this kind of situation, they'd be able to recognize
that they're kind of misplacing their anger onto each other
and they'd find some other ways to kind of regulate
those challenging emotions.
We just finished playing chapter one over here.
They're saying that she has this power
of empathy and no, not at all.
This is sympathy.
I wouldn't see it as a super power.
You know, I'd see it as something
that is not serving her, right?
Again, is it useful?
Does this improving the quality of my life?
It doesn't seem like, so far,
this is kind of enhancing her life experience.
So what I'd like to see from her
is to really understand the patterns
that are happening in her life.
All of these things that are happening in her life
that are so similar to each other.
So not, "Oh, this is different situation
because now it's this person that's mad at me
and now I, you know, I've never dealt with X or Y before."
But really to see, "Okay, this is really same shit,
different story."
Then navigating through life becomes so much easier.
Of course, you know, I could have fun kinda nitpicking it,
but at least it's there, you know, and people playing it
could get the benefit of being able to label emotions.
I think overall it's a net win for psychology.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you wanna see more content from me,
of playing this video game or some other things,
let me know in the comments below.
(optimistic music)