008: Tiffany & Sanju

COVID-19
Written By Tiffany Yu

Tiffany & Sanju | Mental Health in Thailand & Why We Need Empathetic Listening ft. Amornthep Sachamuneewongse

Listen on: Apple // Spotify // Google

In this episode, we’re joined by Amornthep (Sanju) Sachamuneewongse--Thai mental health advocate, Davos delegate, and CEO & Founder of Sati App--to share his mental health lived experience and why we need empathetic listening.

Content Warning: mentions of self-harm, suicide and suicidal ideation. If you're in the U.S. and experiencing a crisis, text MADE to 741741 for free, 24/7 support. In Canada text HELLO to 686868 and in the U.K., text HELLO to 85258. If you need other mental health support, visit http://mentalhealth.wearespur.com/

We discussed:

  • Sanju’s mental health journey and what led him to start Sati App

  • His experience speaking on mental health at Davos 2020

  • COVID-19 and mental health situation in Thailand

  • Why we need empathetic listening to address the surge in mental health

  • What empathy looks like versus sympathy

  • Resources to becoming a better empathetic listener

Show Notes

About Amornthep (Sanju) Sachamuneewongse

Amornthep (Sanju) Sachamuneewongse is an advocate of mental health and mental well-being. Living with depression and schizophrenia, Sanju understands the need for a more compassionate and empathetic world. He is Founder & CEO of Sati App, which provides "on-demand listening" services to users, creating a safe space for people to share their feelings. Based on his personal experience, there is a 400% difference in treatment rates between getting treatment at a public hospital vs private hospital and a person will have to spend at least 4-5 hours more at a public hospital. Sanju aims to set a ceiling for treatment rates so that everyone is able to access and afford high-quality treatment.

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Transcript

[Opening medley by RootHub]

Tiffany Yu: Welcome to Tiffany & Yu. I’m your host, Tiffany Yu. May is Mental Health Month and on this episode, we’re joined by Amornthep Sachamuneewongse, who is a mental health and mental well-being advocate based in Bangkok, Thailand. He’s also the founder of an application currently in development called Sati App, which has a few phases of development, the first of which going to provide "on-demand listening" services via a mobile application with hopes to help create an army of empathetic listeners and potentially reduce the suicide rate by creating a safe space for people to share their feelings. We’re going to be chatting with Sanju a little bit about his mental health journey of being diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia and why it’s more important now more than ever to have and be empathic listeners to each other. To be an empathetic listener is to use our heart to listen to another person’s story or situation. We’re imposing our understanding and advice on another person, however we show compassion and humility to them, to help them feel safe. During this period of the COVID-19 pandemic, not only are we facing the threat of the virus but we’re also facing another threat around the implications— the mental health implications of this crisis. I wanted to preface this episode by providing a content warning. There are mentions of self-harm, suicide, and suicidal ideation. If you're in the U.S. and experiencing a crisis, text MADE to 741741 for free, 24/7 support. In Canada text 686868 and in the U.K., text 85258. If you need other mental health support, visit http://mentalhealth.wearespur.com/. Thanks so much for listening!

Tiffany Yu: Hi everyone, and welcome to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. This is your host Tiffany Yu. Today I have with me, mental health and mental well-being advocate Amornthep Sachamuneewongse. Also, affectionately known as Sanju. Sanju, did I get your name right?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Yes, you got it right.

Tiffany Yu: So this is actually my-- Sanju is actually my first international guest. So, we have managed to navigate time zones, a 14 hour time difference between San Francisco and Bangkok. But one of the things I like doing is providing a little bit of background of how I know my guest. So Sanju and I have actually never met in person before, which is very common for those of us who are part of the Global Shapers Community. We've had a bunch of different Global Shapers on this show, Lingerr, Kasley, who are both from the San Francisco Hub so I'm excited to kind of branch out the Shapers that we're featuring outside of my own hub. For those of you who are new to the Global Shapers, it's a community of impact leaders in their 20s and early 30s are passionate about social change and take on projects within their local communities to hopefully make them better. So Sanju, super excited to have you on and also-- forgot to mention that Sanju and I are both serving on the Equity and Inclusion Steering Committee. You are the, you are helping to lead the Health Equity part of that?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Yes, I'm the Global Co-Lead for Mental Health.

Tiffany Yu: Awesome, awesome. So wanted to bring Sanju on because he is creating a startup that is really based around something called "empathetic listening," which we'll get into in a little bit. But Sanju would love to just start by first of all welcoming you and then would love to hear a little bit more about your own mental health journey and what led you to becoming an advocate.

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Sure, I'm really excited about this as well. So, I come from a part of the world where mental health, it's not really talked about, or where it is widely stigmatized. So back in 2015, I started having weird conditions, such as like sleeping a lot, not wanting to go out, wanting to stay in bed all the time, not wanting to shower, feeling stressed. And I didn't know what was going on and we went to the doctor, we thought I had migraine. We did an MRI and nothing showed up. Suddenly I started feeling worthless. I felt, where I was doing everything wrong and nothing was going right in my life and I felt like I keep on blaming myself. It wasn't until towards the end of the year, I would say November 2015, that I started having hallucinations. I was having both auditory and visual hallucinations. I kept seeing this lady in white, standing next to my bed, or in my car, or in my office, and she kept yelling to me to just end it all. And I didn't know what was going on. And because I come from the world where its gears towards the spiritual side, my family thought it would be best for me to go towards that route to make myself better. Now for me, who consider myself as a non-believer in any [inaudible] of some sort, it was very hard for me to to go to that route and I remember hearing weird things about being possessed and all of that. And it was just getting more and more scary. It wasn't until December 2015, that I finally saw my first real psychiatrist. And by January, he told me that I have major chronic depression and schizophrenia. The thing with mental health is that you never know what drugs is going to work best for you. So we had to go with different sort of cocktails of drugs until we found the right one for me. But by the time he found the right one for me, I was really self harming. I was talking a lot to myself, hearing a lot of things, trying to be alone most of the time, and I would not stay home. Or if I'm at home I will not go out of my room. And by April 2016, I was already having 16 pills of antidepressants, anti psychotic, sleeping pills, Xanax, just to keep me able to just go about my day to day life. So we had to do a thing called electroconvulsive therapy. Now this therapy is not legal in a lot of countries, but they are still practicing it in Thailand. It's where they electrically charge your brain while you're put under anesthesia. And they charge your brain for a few minutes and then you wake up and you just feel as if you've forgotten almost everything that was happening. So I did that for about 36 times. And by doing that, what happened was that also because I was on meds for 16 pills a day, my weight gained from 95kg to 150kg. And because I have to go into anesthesia, I stopped breathing when I was at that weight. So that stopped the whole ECT therapy, and then they had to put me back into hospital to do normal talking therapy, cooking, singing, painting, and just having a talk with my psychologists and psychiatrists. So that for me was very hard because it felt like I was getting better. And then, I was knocked off the horse, and I had to start it all again. So this went on for a long time and until 2017, I couldn't take it anymore that I decided to commit suicide. So I pretty much sent a text message to people close to me and I did what I had to do. But my parents came in the room in time and they took me into the hospital in time, and then I was put into the ICU and then into the mental health facility. When I came out in 2018, I wasn't feeling any better, so I decided to commit suicide again. But before doing so, I called the suicide hotline. And my call went unanswered. So after that, I just decided to commit suicide. When I came out of the hospital, I was very, very angry at the fact that no one picked up my call. Maybe if someone picked up my call, I would have stopped myself from doing that. So I started calling that suicide hotline again and it took about four trials -- one trial a day, so four days, until someone actually answered my call. And they told me that they're overwhelmed with the number of calls that are coming in, and that they don't know what to do. So I decided that you know it's probably for me now to do something. They also provided me a number of the government run hotline, and then I tried calling that number and after five minutes, no one answered my call either. And that was when I decided that I need to do something because if not me, then it's going to be the next person and the next person who's committed suicide and they might not be as lucky as me. And that was when the idea of Sati came to me. The word "sati" is actually a Buddhist word, which means to be mindful, to be present. And that was the word that one of my friends would always tell me whenever I had a panic attack. He was telling me [Thai], which means be present, be mindful of your emotions. And because, during that time, I was driving Uber a lot. So I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if you can just find someone to listen to you as easy as it is for someone to come pick you up using Uber. And so, Sati App runs around that idea where you can just come in, click "listen to me" and it will just connect you right away to a trained empathetic listener who is available at that time. By doing so, we hope that this way, the listeners will not have to be in an office area, or in a confined space where they have to answer the call ight hours a day. This way they can use their mobile phone, tablet to come online or offline whenever they feel like, and they just have the freedom to roam around and do anything else that they want to as well. So we are currently working to make this a reality right now.

Tiffany Yu: That's great. First of all, thank you so much for sharing your story. I know for many of us who live with mental health conditions sometimes sharing that story has its own emotional baggage with it. And I think with that, how did you feel when you first got the diagnosis? Did you feel relief that it was something that was happening psychologically?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): For me, I felt relieved because now I'm able to label what I have. Before it was like, "What the hell is wrong with me? Like what is it, like is it migraine, is it a headache, what is it?" But now that I know that it is depression and schizophrenia, at least I know that you know I can go online and search for ways to just to take care of myself and listen to my doctor and go to the right doctor. But yeah, I think myself at the moment was relieved, able to talk to someone who understand what was going on in my head, what I was feeling, and how to take care of me.

Tiffany Yu: Yeah. Beautiful. I was actually formally diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) last year, 2019, in relation to something that had happened to me in 1997. And, you know, here in the US, we talk a lot about kind of life over diagnosis culture, but I think for me, I just felt like validation in the fact that what had happened to me as a kid was-- I could label it as trauma, and that there were lingering effects of how it was impacting and the lens through which I viewed the world. I don't know if this is-- and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I had heard that you were attending one of these Global Shapers conferences in Asia Pacific. Is that where you first shared your mental health story publicly and that's where this Sati journey kind of started?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): So a lot of times, I was just talking about depression and schizophrenia and sharing my-- just like what I'm feeling today on Facebook. And a lot of times, people close to me will know how to handle it, and people who are not that close to me will just you know say like "fight on" and a lot of those things where it doesn't really-- it triggers a lot of emotions negatively. But, Bangkok-- our hub hosted Shape APAC in 2018. And it was actually my first time meeting a lot of Shapers from so many different countries. I mean, I was a Shaper since 2016 but I was never really active until that year. And when everyone came, I was like, "oh my god, they all know each other, like, it's like a huge family gathering." We had 140 something Shapers from around the world came, and it was just like a family reunion, but better than family reunion because no one is fighting. It was just amazing and I just felt very empowered by everyone. And James [Forsyth], who is our country manager. He knows a bit about me. And then, he told me that I should share my story. So I wrote up a draft of what I want to talk about for him, and he was the one who hen motivated me even more that I need to share this with Wadia [Ait Hamza, Head of the Global Shapers Community]. And Wadia motivated me even more to share it with all the Shapers. So when, when we were doing a closing sort of ceremony, I went up to-- took about five minutes to share my story to everyone. And I got goosebumps because when it was done, no one judged me. No one said anything negative to me. They all just stood up, clapped. I couldn't even remember the number of people who came and gave me a hug. And that just shows how genuine this community is and how loving and supportive this community is. That really made me even more empowered and more motivated to focus on making what I think would be the best solution, if not the best and at least one of the solution to become a reality.

Tiffany Yu: For sure, and was this the first time that you had shared your mental health story publicly?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Yeah, to like 100 and something people, it was my first time. It was my first time to just be presenting about myself, and you know, being as vulnerable as I could be.

Tiffany Yu: Beautiful. I mean, I think there are so many lessons there. I mean, the power of community, supporting you, being seen to share something so vulnerable and personal as well. And I think that this whole journey for you, but then allowed you the opportunity to go to the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. That was this year, right?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Yes, that was crazy, I would say. I mean, we had thousands and thousands of applicants right. And I didn't even thought of me being selected. And then got the news, I think I quickly ran down and told my mom and dad and they're like, what is Davos? And I was like, it's a big deal. It's something really-- it's going to be a great opportunity. And we were then put into this WhatsApp group with all the other 50 Davos Shapers, Shapers who were going to Davos. And we just got connected right away and it was just an amazing experience. And I think towards going there, I got notified that I'll be on two different panels as well.

Tiffany Yu: Amazing.

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): One was a panel inside the Congress Centre. And the other one was outside but both as amazing and with so many amazing people on the panel as me. I just felt like, will I be able to do this justice, will I be able to rise to the occasion and you know, be as good as they are? I think one of the things that gave me, sort of, in one case to the rest of the panelists is the fact that I have a lived experience, and talk about what me and a lot of other people who have lived experience feel when they have depression or schizophrenia or are panic attacks and anxiety attacks. So it does give me an edge to be able to sort of challenge them in a way that, you know, like this is how I feel when it happened to me. And so sometimes you know like just an outsider looking in. They probably need the insider's perspective as well to get things done the right way.

Tiffany Yu: For sure, and even in my own work, I can't stress the power and the expertise that does sit in the lived experience. And I think for a place like Davos to be able to bring mental health to the platform and agenda in that way is huge. What were some of the main takeaways from that experience for you?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): At Davos as a whole, my main takeaway not just from mental health perspective is, Shapers are awesome. I think we are ready to-- We had so many Shapers who were ready to challenge the panelists, ask them uncomfortable questions, and have some of the panelists, just moving on and not answering their questions, probably because they didn't know what to answer. And you walk along that corridor and you have like you know those people with high, elite status walking past you and you don't feel safe. But when you see another Shaper walking past you, you just know that you feel safe and that you know you can just have someone to lean on when you feel overwhelmed or have some sort of processing syndrome going on. My Davos experience was probably a positive and not so positive one, because I fell ill for two of the days. But even when I was so sick that I couldn't get out of bed, I had Shapers coming to my room, giving me meds and taking care of me. And it was just an amazing feeling to know that you know you're well taken care of. In terms of the other people that are there, honestly, Shapers are those people that work on the ground, and so they are in touch with the communities that they're with. Like for example, if we are talking about you, you're going to know a lot about you know disabilities and how to take care of or how to like, you know, make projects around that because you have been involved in it. And you also have Shapers who are involved in mental health and climate change. And so, you feel that, you know like, even those who are empowered, they sometimes don't even have enough information as we do, because we are actually doing the real work. We are actually trying to make the world a better place and not being diplomatic and politics and playing politics. We just want it to be better.

Tiffany Yu: Yeah, I love that. So we'll give a plug for the Global Shapers. If you are-- I believe it's now 18 to 29. There are there almost 400 hubs and almost 10,000 across the whole world. And so if you're interested in local impact and an opportunity to kind of take the stage at some of the largest international gatherings, we'll include that there. But I also love the learning of just knowing that even as isolating, I guess I'll say, or lonely as it may be to be among all of these different world leaders and CEOs, you'll always have the Shapers at your back. And you'll always have that community with you, which I think is so beautiful. So we'll take a quick pause here and when we come back, we'll chat a little bit more about what's going on with the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in Thailand, and then chat a little bit more about empathetic listening and how you can get started.

[break]

Tiffany Yu: And we're back. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. Before the break, we were chatting with mental health advocate and mental well-being advocate Amornthep Sachamuneewongse, also known as Sanju. And we were chatting a little bit more about his own mental health journey, and being able to share that in public spheres, which empowered him to start his current startup Sati, and also the opportunity to be able to attend to Davos, and talk about mental health from a lived experience perspective. So welcome back Sanju.

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Thank you.

Tiffany Yu: We of course have to talk about the elephant in the room, and sometimes I joke that I do not think it's an elephant. It's like an elephant of the world, COVID-19. Of course, there is very much the health component-- the real health threat of the fact that this virus is in the air. But then there's also a big mental health component, I mean what are you seeing in Thailand?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): So in Thailand, with COVID coming in, we don't have a lockdown in place, but we do have a curfew. So from 10pm to 5am or 4am, you're not allowed to leave the house. And department stores and a lot of places are closed down, even restaurants, you're not allowed to eat in a restaurant, you can only buy back. So it's not as bad as lockdown. But with this problem means that a lot of people are losing their jobs, either their jobs are on hold, and so they're not getting paid, or they're just losing their job completely, especially those who are daily wage earners or taxi drivers. And this shows the cracks in our society. It shows that those who are rich can survive, and those who are poor are either not going to survive, or just commit suicide. And the thing I've been talking about since the beginning when a lot of people were talking about, just to lock it down, lock it down. But the problem with lock it down is that me and a lot of people, we are able to sit in our room, have Netflix, have nothing to do, or just work through our computers. But then there are those people who do not have access to the Internet or have a computer or, you know, those who do not have a big house but have maybe eight people crammed in. They are going to have a lot of problems. And we are now already seeing that problem even though we're not under lockdown. We are already having millions of people were are now, losing their jobs, who are registering for the government to help support them. But the support from the government is also not coming fast enough. And because of that, right now in Thailand, we have about 2000+ COVID cases. The number of new cases have been going down, though it went up to about 300, came down to about 100, to 80, 50 and now it's down to single digits. So that's good. But the number of deaths by COVID is about 50, if not 51. And the number of suicides, over the last, I would say, one month is about 45. So the number of suicides in our country is almost as bad as the number of deaths by COVID. So people are now saying that there are people who are just shoplifting so that they can be put into jail so that they can have a place to sleep and food to eat. There are homeless people who say that, you know what maybe I should just have COVID so that I go into the hospital and I will have, you know, I'll be taken care of and I'll have food to eat. And this is not the right way. People should not be opting to get sick in order to be taken care of. People should be taken care of [inaudible] nonetheless. So it just feels like I've been talking about this for months now that we need to take care of people's mental health. And we are just realizing this too little, too late. And we already seeing the consequences of that happening now. It's just sad because we have the option to help. We have a lot of rich people--the 1% elite of Thailand are able to help-- but we don't see any help coming yet. We have people who are now gathering donations to provide supplies to different communities. We have a group called COVID Bangkok Relief, who raised a lot of money and now supporting over 2,000 families already within Bangkok themself. But this is not just a Bangkok problem, this is the whole country problem, and then the whole planet problem.

Tiffany Yu: I know one of the things-- I think what's interesting and of course you know I come at this from a very US centric perspective but the stigma around mental health in Thailand sounds much worse than than it is here in the US and it sounds like the outcomes, you know, instead of asking for help or going to therapy is to almost turn to suicide or suicidal ideation. I'm a little bit curious, with you being as vocal and visible as you are, do you feel that the stigma is getting a little bit better? Do people know that they can turn to resources like Sati for help?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): So, I think there are about two to three answers to that. So number one, we are seeing certain communities de-stigmatizing mental health now, which is a silver lining I would say. But you know when it comes to mental health, you never want to find silver lining. You just want people to understand it more. But yeah, we are seeing certain communities de-stigmatizing it and you know just talking about how stressed they are now. The second problem is that, the reason it's being very stigmatized in Thailand is also the word that is used for it. So for example, the word for mental disorder or psychosis is "Rokhcit", but "Rokhcit" has also been used by a lot of people and by media as slang for "pervert." So you know "Rokh" is disease, and "cit" is mental so it's sort of like straight up translation as mental disease. But again, when people have been using it for so long, as pervert, because they didn't have a proper understanding of mental health before, it just made people feel that much stigmatized. That if they have this, it means they're a pervert. So we are trying to sort of change the narrative of that word, and trying to have more media, you know, be more literate about mental health as well because we have a lot of media problem in Thailand when it comes to them talking about mental health. A lot of times when media talk about suicide in Thailand, we have a thing called copycat suicide afterwards, which means that the few suicide after that one that have been portrayed in the media will be the same way. And this is because media tends to share too much information, either of how they did it, why they did it, where they got the supplies, and that's not a good thing. That means that you're providing all the answers to the person who has already vulnerable to know that, "okay this is the reason they did it this way, and I can go get the supplies and I'll pay this much, and then it's done." So yeah, we need to look into copycat suicide as well, because at least for suicide after that one that has been portrayed by the media is going to be the same way. The other part is that even though Thailand is stigmatizing mental health, but when it becomes a global crisis, we do not have enough psychiatrists to take care of everyone who is going to have mental health problems. We have about nine mental health workers for every 100,000 people. Now, that is just a global average, but when you go into countries, like many countries in Africa, or even in Southeast Asia, that number is way higher, and that's because you don't have enough psychiatrists. In Thailand, we have about 800 or so psychiatrists, but half of them are in Bangkok and half of those in Bangkok are working for private hospitals. And because of that, the cost of going to a private hospital is about 400% higher than the cost of going to a government hospital. So it means that you know, mental health for the poor becomes far less affordable and accessible because they cannot access [inaudible] now because it's only in government hospital, and it's not affordable very well now because it's 400%, more expensive. And so there is a lot of problem. when it comes to that. But the one way that we can actually help, you know, sort of be the frontline for anyone who's going to go deep into mental health disorder is to ourselves practice empathetic listening. So this was actually started-- first done by Dr. Dixon [Chibanda] in Zimbabwe I think back in 2014, where he trained grandmothers to listen to locals who are having problems, or who are stressed. And by doing so, he saw that the rate of suicide in that locality had dropped. And that was when he started, you know, the Friendship Bench, and where he started training more and more grandmothers on empathetic listening. And this goes for suicide hotlines as well where, you know, if you're not a psychologist, you can also be empathetic listener who understand the skills of being an empathetic listener, you know, and use those skills to provide that first-- the psychological first aid to anyone who calls into the line or who reaches out for you.

Tiffany Yu: Yeah. So, if I take a step back. And I know you had shared a document called "Empathetic Listening" in a WhatsApp group that we're part of, but what's wrong with the way that we're listening right now? What what about it is not empathetic?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): When we listen to someone, right. Our logical sense is always turn up. But when we listen to someone, especially when it's someone that we know, it turn up even higher. So you could be talking to anyone that you already know. And when they're telling you something, you will probably just listen to half of what they're saying, while the other half is, you're thinking about what to answer, or how can I make myself look smart, or how can I answer in a way where I look better than that person? And when that comes in, you're not truly listening to the other person. So that's not empathetic listening. But when you're really having that empathetic, active listening is where you sort of like, turn down your logical sense, because a lot of times when people have problem, they themselves are being illogical and not making any sense, but they just need someone to listen to them without, you know, judging them or anything. So I can come to you and say that "oh my god, I have a problem. I don't know. My dog is doing something crazy." And it can be something very stupid for you when they say that, but for me it's a real problem. But what you can do is basically just open up and just listen to me. Let me say it all out. Let me tell all my worries to you. And then you can just, you know, sort of push the conversation along, maybe, "what else? Tell me more. Oh, is that what he's doing? Oh, and what is it? How are you feeling? How do you deal with it?" So these are the way that you can continue to push the conversation forward. And when you meet someone who you feel is having trouble, and they are not opening up, you can just say, "hey you look a little, you know, you look a little different. Do you want to share with me what's going on?" Or you know when you feel that someone is not opening up you can also ask them, "Oh, what have you eaten today?" Don't ask them, "Have you eaten today?" Ask them, "What have you eaten today?" Now, that question, even though it's the same but it's also very different. Have you eaten today is where a person will have the answer of yes or no. But when you ask them, What have you eaten today, they'll sort of describe to you what they have eaten today. And then they'll allow you to just continue the conversation, until that person is, you know, feeling safe enough to open up even more about how they're feeling.

Tiffany Yu: Yeah, one of the things I've been thinking about with this conversation is how oftentimes you know when someone close to us comes comes to us and is you know in a place of distress, our first instinct is to fix, right. If someone comes and presents a problem, we want to fix it. And so I think it's really interesting. You know, we have this general desire to like want to help and want to provide advice, but with empathetic listening, it's really kind of creating space for allowing that person to feel what they need to feel. So, I think that definitions are really important here so I'm curious if you have distinctions for empathy, sympathy, and compassion?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju) Yes, but before going into, I'll go back to that, when you talked about just now about giving advice. So let's take an example where that you know with their three friends walking up the stairs. And one of them fell down. Now, the person who's gonna, you know, be sympathetic is the person who's going to try to find a silver lining for you. The person who is not going to run down to come help you but the person who is going to stay at the top and ask you, "Can you move your leg? Is it broken? If it's not broken, that's good. That means that it's not broken." So it's sort of like trying to find the silver lining. But the person who's really empathetic is going to run down the stairs. Look at you and ask you, "Is everything okay? Do you need any help? Let me support you up. Can you walk? I can support you to go to the chair." So that's the difference, you know, not trying to find a silver lining and actually helping out. There's a lot of difference between sympathy and empathy and a lot of times people just sort of mix the two together because they feel that, to feel sorry for someone is to be empathetic for them. But that's not really the case. Sympathetic is where you don't lower yourself to the other person. You stay where you are and you try to understand that person from your own perspective. You try to see what they can do from your own perspective. You try to think of how they can better your life from your own perspective and from the resources that you have. So you don't truly understand them, even though you feel sorry for them. Empathy is where you lower yourself down to the other person. You try to put yourself into their shoes, try to understand the resources that they have, try to understand the problem that they are in and try to understand the environment, the social situation that they're in and try to help them from there. And also, it's where you just try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, and to be truly empathetic. I would say compassion is for me almost the same as empathy, where you share-- show to the person that you care, and where you sort of show some love to them that, "hey you know what, we're here together, you know, right, we'll get through it together."

Tiffany Yu: Yeah. Thanks Thanks for making those clarifications, and I think one of the things that's important here is that, you know, everyone has mental health right. There's a subset of us who have diagnosed mental health conditions, but I think right now, you know, empathetic listeners are needed now more than ever as things are exacerbated within homes and within different environments. And so I think that we can all learn. We can all become, I would say, better empathetic listeners. So if I'm listening to this episode, how would you suggest I get started if I want to be better at empathetic listening?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju)": You can actually go to R U OK? (ruok.org.au). They have a lot of resources for you to look into on how to prepare yourself, how to you know make sure the other person is in the right environment to talk to you, and how to push the conversation forward. You can also go to 7 Cups (7cups.com) and sort of enroll yourself as a listener. And when you enroll yourself, what they are going to do is that they're going to have a set of questions to test how good of a listener you are. And that's also one of the ways where you can find out how well of a listener you are. I think the WHO also have some documents on psychological first aid. It's pretty long but I think it will have very valuable information for you, especially if you know someone in your family or in your community, who is probably going through any sort of mental hardship at the moment. This can truly help you help them.

Tiffany Yu: For sure, and I think that, again, like all of us, all of us will benefit from becoming more empathetic listeners in general. So I wanted to close or was there anything else you wanted to chat about with regard to empathetic listening? I think those are all great resources I'll include them in the show notes.

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Yeah, I just I just want to tell people that this is very important, because it's not just that you're going to be able to help someone with mental health. But, you know, showing that you're empathetic, showing that you can be vulnerable. It can make you a better person and it can make you a better leader, and it can make you a better follower as well. Because now you know as a leader you are more empathetic to anyone who is, you know, following you. Or you know as someone who runs a business, when you are more empathetic to your staff, you tend to understand your staff more. And when you also vulnerable at a certain point with your staff, they're going to trust you more as well. So these are the sort of, you know, things that people don't talk-- they talk about them as soft skills but I think of them as more often essential skills that can actually allow you to understand the problems of the world, you know through the perspective of other people as well. Because, even with the COVID-19, not everyone is riding this wave the same way. We might be in the same boat but we are experiencing the seasickness totally differently. But if you're empathetic, we will at least be able to understand how each one of us are feeling at the moment.

Tiffany Yu: For sure, and I think that one of the things I'm hoping we come out of this pandemic with is really, I don't know if I would call it like a culture of compassion or a culture of empathy, but really, I think, a better understanding of each other. Because one of the things I've been noticing is. I've been starting, most of my meetings with a quick check in and what I'll call regulation, which is, you know, when you come into a meeting, you don't know what prior experiences you're bringing into that room-- virtual-- since there's no in person meetings right now. But the first question we often start with is like, "How was your sheltering going?" or "How are you doing?" And I think in the past when we asked people, how are you, it was just pleasantries of, "How are you?" "Fine." You know not really like, I really want to understand how you're doing. And I think now especially during this time for us here in the US and for me in San Francisco, I'm now entering my seventh week of sheltering and yeah I think just curiosity and interest around how people are doing during this time.

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Yeah, and I think it's also because a lot of people are sharing the same experience. And so, they feel that they're in that safe space to be able to share me with more because they feel that the other person talking to me also is in the same experience, sort of, you know, in like lockdown as me as well. So, we just need to you know, create a safe space for people to continue to share. And, I mean, I believe that the more you create a safe space for people to share, the more people are willing to give you as well. And it's just-- you just feel very powerful and empowered and inspired in a way when people open up about themselves to you and then you realize, "oh my god, how bad things were them and they're still able to come to work every day or be able to you know, join the call every single day" and it's just very inspiring.

Tiffany Yu: I love that and I think one of the things you said made me think about how, when we share, when we are vulnerable and we share things about ourselves, we actually give permission for other people to do the same. So I appreciate you Sanju by leading by example. And so wanted to close the conversation for our listeners you know what's the best way we can support you and Sati in this work?

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): So right now Sati is probably going to be getting funding from the government, because we want to make the app completely free for everyone. I don't think right now there's any support for Sati but I think the best thing for anyone to do right now is just to get familiarized with empathetic listening and sort of share the share the idea of what empathetic listening really is to your peers. The more we have listeners out there, the better it is for everyone and not just for us. And I think for everyone who are feeling very overwhelmed right now with a lot of things that's going on. I think a few simple, you know, minor habits that we can take up is, for example, me and my friend, we're now doing like you know, three things we are grateful for every day. You know it can be as simple as you know having this computer in front of me or something that you never thought was so important, running water, you know. And if we just talked about what being grateful for right now, it can also shed some light that you know, "okay, I'm still in a good place. I still have things to be grateful for even though, you know, the whole thing is, is going up and down and up and down."

Tiffany Yu: For sure I'm listening to-- I'm participating in this Deepak & Oprah 21 day meditation challenge and one of the things on one of the days was talking about how hope and gratitude and fear can't exist at the same time. I mean, you can exist in those contradictions on that spectrum but if you're sitting in a place of gratitude, you kind of will oscillate along that spectrum of sitting in fear versus kind of sitting in gratitude. That's great. I mean, we have shared on Diversability, Sati created a great breathing video that I thought was really well done just around again the regulation of the breath. So I know I'm gonna follow Sati at what is it @mindfulsati on Instagram. Love that message around just kind of spreading the word around empathetic listening. I think we'll close it there, we have a lot of great content here. Sanju, thank you so much for taking the time. It's early morning here in San Francisco, which means it's late night in Bangkok and Thailand.

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): It's almost 11pm. But I'll just let you know that-- what is today, today's Monday, right. Monday has been good, so I think Monday will be good for you as well.

Tiffany Yu: For sure. Oh yeah, I always make this joke that I feel like everyone in the rest of the world is living in the future. But yeah I wanted to close maybe just by asking you what you're grateful for today.

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): I think I'm grateful for my girlfriend who pushed me to exercise every time she comes and work at my place. I'm grateful for my mom who cooks amazing food for us and taking care of us. I'm grateful for my dad who sort of help us with every problem that we have. And I'm also grateful for my dog who just keep us company and just make us, you know, feel the compassion from something that cannot talk to us.

Tiffany Yu: I love that. Thanks so much for being on the show Sanju.

Amornthep Sachamuneewongse (Sanju): Thank you and good night from Bangkok.

Tiffany Yu: Thanks for listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. This is your host, Tiffany Yu. If you enjoyed this conversation, please leave us a rating and write us a review over at Apple Podcasts. It allows these conversations and these episodes to be discovered by other podcast listeners. I’m hoping that we can co-create something here that’s valuable for you, so to the extent that you have feedback or other topics you’d like us to explore, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can find us at http://tiffanyyu.com/podcast. And a special shoutout to RootHub for our opening and closing podcast medleys. We release episodes weekly, so I hope that you’ll join us next week for the next episode.

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