In my blog, Critical Thinking In A Social Media World, I highlighted how critical thinking, by opening up our minds to other perspectives, is a necessary ingredient to having empathy. I’ve talked many times about the importance of empathy in our walk through life. So I wanted to take some time to help us all have a better understanding of what empathy is, how we can develop it and why it’s so important, especially in the season we’re currently in.
What Is Empathy?
I, along with many others, have described empathy as “walking in someone else’s shoes”. The definition of empathy is the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. This is opening ourselves up to feel someone else’s reality. But did you know there are three different types of empathy? I didn’t realize it until I started doing more research. It was eye opening for me and helped me understand my own empathy journey. It also showed me how people can have empathy but still not feel that connection with others or become too overwhelmed and drawn into someone else’s feelings. The three types of empathy I discovered are: emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and compassionate empathy. Let’s dig into each a bit.
Emotional Empathy
This is where I started my empathy journey as I’ve always been in touch with the emotions of others. Emotional Empathy, according to Daniel Goleman renowned psychologist and author of the 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, is “when you feel physically along with the other person, as though their emotions were contagious.” Emotional empathy focuses on feeling, physical sensation and mirror neurons in the brain, Mirror neurons respond to actions that we observe in others. For example, your loved one coming to you crying and immediately you feel sadness in your heart. As you can imagine, emotional empathy helps in close interpersonal relationships. Something we have to watch out for with emotional empathy is that it can be overwhelming or inappropriate in certain circumstances, especially if we don’t have the ability to manage our own emotions
Cognitive Empathy
Cognitive empathy responds to a problem with brainpower. I had to learn to develop cognitive empathy because my natural inclination is to display emotional empathy. Cognitive empathy, according to Goleman, is “simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. Sometimes called perspective-taking.” This type of empathy focuses on thought, understanding and intellect. It helps in motivating others and understanding diverse viewpoints. Cognitive empathy is tricky though because it can be disconnected from or ignore deep emotions, and doesn’t necessarily put you in another person’s shoes. It is more about thought than emotion.
Compassionate Empathy
This is the type of empathy I’m working to achieve. Compassionate empathy according to Goleman is when, “we not only understand a person’s predicament and feel with them, but are spontaneously moved to help, if needed.” This type of empathy is concerned with intellect, emotion and action. It is concerned with the whole person. It is balancing the brain with the heart to effectively respond to a situation with thoughtfulness, compassion and love. Take a moment to imagine what social media, mainstream media and our relationships would look like if we all had compassionate empathy!
How Do I Develop Empathy?
If you’ve read through this and feel you don’t have any of the 3 types of empathy don’t worry because it’s never too late to develop empathy. Developing empathy will require a few things from us up front: open-mindedness, imagination and commitment. Open-mindness allows us to take in other perspectives but it also requires us to have to an open heart. It creates a desire within you to want to understand more about someone else. We have to truly detach from ourselves and use our imaginations to walk in someone else’s shoes. Empathy requires our commitment to be fully present with someone else to understand their needs and what they are going through. We have to fight the tendency to allow our biases to take over and judge a person without truly knowing them. To do this we need to slow down, be more aware of those who are not like us, and allow them to not only be heard but feel heard.
Why Is All Of This Important?
Empathy is powerful because it focuses on the other person and not yourself; it gives a person the feeling of being heard; it creates a connection between you and the person; it acknowledges someone else’s point of view and most importantly increases understanding and discussion. It allows for us to believe that just because someone else’s reality is not our reality it can still exist. Their feelings are still valid and by understanding that we can work through the struggles to arrive at a common ground where we can move forward. Then it’s not my way or your way, it’s our way.
While there are three different types of empathy they are similar in that each displays our desire to understand what someone other than ourselves is feeling. When we can get to the point of having compassionate empathy then we’re not only walking in someone else’s shoes but we’re taking action to make their walk a little better. This is what we need in our world today, not just a desire to feel for others but a desire to help make things better for them as well.
Remember that empathy doesn’t just happen, it takes commitment. We can’t just intend to have empathy, we have to act to have empathy, all the while remaining truthful to who we are and more importantly who we are called to be. This is when we can make a difference in our lives, our country and in our world for generations to come. So to answer the question in the title of this article, YES we really need to have empathy!
Evolution of Self!
