Empathy Definition: How to Show Empathy

Derived from the Greek word “empatheia” (meaning “passion”) and the German word “einfühlung” (meaning “feeling into something”), empathy means understanding and feeling another person’s emotions as if they were your own emotions. In a broader sense, empathy is a cognitive and emotional skill to understand, relate, and mutually share in another person’s experience to understand their emotional pain better.

According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, understanding the emotional state of others is one of the primary components of emotional intelligence. Neuroscientists believe mirror neurons in the brain activate empathetic emotional responses, making it possible for you to understand and feel another person’s emotions.

Psychological experts describe two types of empathy:

1. 1. Emotional empathy: Emotional empathy, also known as affective empathy, means you experience emotions that stem from another person’s well-being or negative emotions. From a neuroscience standpoint, emotional empathy can mean your own feelings mirror how the other person feels or trigger discomfort when another person expresses suffering.
2. 2. Cognitive empathy: Also known as perspective-taking, cognitive empathy relies on the listener’s capacity to relate to another person’s perspective without imposing their own experience, point of view, or biases. Psychologists describe cognitive empathy as a theory of mind—in other words thinking about another person’s thoughts or the perspectives of others without attribution of feelings or matching another person’s emotional state.

Someone may have a lack of human empathy, altruism, or pro-social behaviors for several reasons, not limited to:

• Autism spectrum disorder: Some people with autism have trouble reading facial expressions. Those who cannot interpret facial expressions may have difficulty understanding people’s emotions.
• Blaming the victim: If a person expects fairness and justice, they may find it challenging to experience empathy for victims of crimes and make the cognitive choice to assign blame to the victim to maintain their perceived view of the world.
• Cognitive bias: Some people have cognitive biases that keep them from understanding how others feel. Biases may materialize as believing that while external factors cause your own emotions, other people’s emotional problems occur due to personal weakness.
• Lack of connection: You might lack empathy if you believe other people who differ from you don’t feel the same feelings you do. For example, personal distress in the daily lives of people who live in a different country far away may not spur an empathetic response.
• Personality disorders: Some disorders that may impact empathy skills include borderline personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder.

Understanding another person’s perspective fosters trust, reduces conflict, and improves relationships. Follow these suggestions to increase your levels of empathy and emotional intelligence:

1. 1. Be vulnerable. Honesty and authenticity when sharing your feelings can encourage the other person to be honest with you.
2. 2. Explore your own biases. People usually believe their behavior arises from particular circumstances, while another person’s behavior is a personality flaw. If you have opposing views, understanding your biases will help you see how they block your ability to empathize with others. Learn more about cognitive bias.
3. 3. Get to know others. When you know someone well, it becomes easier to understand how they think and why they behave the way they do. Ask questions about their lives and feelings, and try to understand your differences without judgment.
4. 4. Imagine yourself in their shoes. Even if you disagree, imagining how the other person might feel in a situation makes room for understanding and an empathetic response.
5. 5. Listen without interrupting. Empathy means giving full attention to the person trying to explain their feelings without interruption, argument, or inserting your opinion. Learn how to be a better listener.
6. 6. Watch body language and facial expressions. Even if the person is silent, you can tell a lot about how someone feels by their body language and facial expressions. Do they appear angry? Sad? Use these indicators to help guide you when speaking with someone with whom you’d like to empathize. Learn more about how to read body language.

Excessive empathizing can cause burnout, guilt, anxiety, and depression. Healthcare workers and caregivers who witness suffering and death, in particular, can experience empathy fatigue when they become emotionally attached to the well-being of their patients.

Over time, witnessing traumatic or disturbing events triggers empathy fatigue as a defense mechanism, affecting your ability to care about others. You may experience social isolation, emotional numbness, depression, anger, self-blame, and an inability to relate to others. It can also manifest physically as exhaustion, headaches, nausea, insomnia, and substance abuse.

Empathy is the ability to take on another person’s plight as your own. Here are three examples of how or when you could practice empathy in your own life:

1. 1. A direct similarity: “Believe it or not, I remember what it was like to be in high school—I have so much empathy for you trying to fit in.” If you can directly relate to another person’s experience and conjure up how they feel, you are being empathetic.
2. 2. A developed skill: Empathy is a skill you can learn. While many people can naturally empathize, others develop empathy by sitting with a person in distress. It’s hard only to express sympathy when another person’s sorrow starts becoming your own.
3. 3. A feeling of commonality: “I’ve had my own mental health struggles, so I have a lot of empathy for you.” An experience similar to another person’s is one of the key signifiers of empathy. The more you have in common with another person, the more likely you are to feel empathy.

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