"Teacher, Can You Have Less Empathy?'

Hello there, your long-awaited couple's therapist has finally and officially returned to town. Let's babble for a bit before we get started. So for the past few days, I was attending a very interesting seminar abroad, not too far, just in New York City. A couple hours flight. No big deal. But one thing at that seminar caught my full-attention: Did you know that releasing your feelings to your partner once and awhile retain a much more promising relationship than those who normally absorb partner's feeling without saying any words in return? That sounds kind of obvious isn't it? Well, that is certainly true. And that smoothly leads into our today's topic.

Ahem. Endothermic and Exothermic. They both have the root-word thermic. And presumably all of you have used a Thermos at some point of your life. Or anything kind that's similar. That will get you started with the definition. Anyhow, endothermic reaction has the tendency to absorb energy in the surrounding where exothermic reaction release energy. (And I'm sure you can tell which one has a more preferable behaviour. LOL)

So molecules are generally assembled together by chemical bonds.
If energy used to breaks bonds > energy gives off to forms bonds ->   endothermic reaction
If energy used to breaks bonds < energy gives off to forms bonds  ->   exothermic reaction

Empathy, I mean Enthalpy, H, is the heat contained in the system.

Endothermic and exothermic reactions can be made into a charted diagram where Potential Energy is the dependent variable and Reaction Progress is the independent variable. And an actual diagram like such can explain it all:

                       Exothermic reaction:

    Endothermic reaction:        

voilà and until next time!