Psychology Facts

▼ Empathy ▼

Where are my fellow empaths at??

》Empathy is the ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, see things from their point of view, and imagine yourself in their place. Essentially, it is putting yourself in someone else's position and feeling what they must be feeling.

》The words sympathy and empathy differ a lot in their meaning, as in while Sympathy is Expressed for the other person, Empathy is Shared with the other person.

》Empathy and sympathy aren't synonyms.
People often use the words interchangeably, but they are, in fact, separate processes. When you feel sympathy for someone, you identify with the situation that the person finds him or herself in. This can be a perfectly genuine feeling; you can feel sympathy for people you've never met and for a plight you've personally never experienced, as well as for people you know and scenarios that are familiar to you.
But feeling sympathy doesn't necessarily connect you to the person or what he or she is feeling. You can be sympathetic to someone's situation while being completely clueless about his feelings and thoughts.

》The emotional process called empathy is something else; it involves identifying with what someone is feeling and, additionally, actually feeling those feelings yourself. This isn't a metaphor like walking a mile in someone else's shoes, but more literal than not, as neuroscience has shown. Sympathy is feeling for someone; empathy involves feeling with them.

》According to a 2007 study on empathy, published in Nature Neuroscience, only 1 to 2 percent of the population consists of true empaths.

》"A true empath is a person who is sensitive and highly aware of the feelings of others around them to a point of taking the pain and agonies of others as their own." —Nereida Gonzalez-Berrios, MD

》scientists say empathy is not just something we develop through our upbringing and life experiences - it is also partly inherited. A study of 46,000 people found evidence for the first time that genes have a role in how empathetic we are. And it also found that women are generally more empathetic than men.

》Acetaminophen (pain killers) reduces pain, but according to a 2013 study, it also might temporarily dull your empathy.

》Perhaps unsurprisingly, research has shown that your emotional state influences your tendency to empathize with other people. For example, when one is feeling anxious they compare to other negative emotions like anger or disgust.

》Empaths (people with higher than normal lvls of empathy) are naturally giving, spiritually open, and good listeners. If you want heart, empaths have got it.

》Research shows that most people think of empathy as intuitive, more of a gut reaction than a function of reasoning, somehow connected to feeling or associated with the popular term "Mindfulness".

》Infants learn to identify and regulate their emotions through successful dyadic interactions with their caretakers, primarily their mothers.

》Empathy involves expectations. If you have it in you; you expect it to be in others as well.

》College students who hit campus after 2000 have empathy levels that are 40% lower than those who came before them, according to a stunning new study by University of Michigan researchers

》A recent study from Oxford University showed When a new task benefited another person, people with higher levels of empathy were quicker to figure out how to "win" than people who scored lower in measures of empathy. In short, it's possible that people who are more empathetic try harder to help others.

》According to a 2013 study, people who read perform higher on measures of empathy.

》There is three types of Empathy

Emotional empathy (also known as affective empathy) is the ability to share the feelings of another person. Some have described it as "your pain in my heart." This type of empathy helps you build emotional connections with others.

Compassionate empathy (also known as empathic concern) goes beyond simply understanding others and sharing their feelings: it actually moves us to take action, to help however we can.

Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand how a person feels and what they might be thinking. Cognitive empathy makes us better communicators, because it helps us relay information in a way that best reaches the other person.

》The next time you struggle to see something from another person's point of view, strive to remember the following:

You don't have the whole picture. At any given time, a person is dealing with many factors of which you're unaware.

The way you think and feel about a situation may be very different from one day to the next, influenced by various elements, including your current mood.

Under emotional stress, you may behave very differently than you think you would.

》Empath vs. empathetic: Here's the crucial difference
Simply put: Although you may be able to feel empathetic (which is a great thing!), that doesn't automatically render you an empath. Dr. Gonzalez-Berrios says "true empaths always go out of their comfort zone and start thinking, feeling, and acting for other people—even if they feel drained, emotionally overwhelmed, and exhausted—and can feel another person's happiness or sadness as a part of their own self."