What Empathy Is And How To Improve Yours

What empathy is and where it comes from

The dictionary definition of the word ‘empathy’ is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”. That seems fairly simple, but I think the concept of empathy is far more complex, especially because there are so many different parts to it.

Brain areas involved in empathy are the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula. Interestingly, those regions are activated when we feel pain ourselves AND when others feel pain. When we feel pain ourselves, other parts of the brain are activated as well, to determine where the pain is coming from, for example.

I always thought of empathy as only one thing and you either have it or you don’t. But there are various types of empathy, it is connected to so many other things, and most importantly: you can actually build empathy.

Different types of empathy

There are multiple different kinds of empathy, but those two are the most important:

cognitive empathy involves recognising and understanding someone else’s emotions, but that doesn’t mean you really have to feel them
affective empathy is the ability to feel what others are feeling; to mentally put yourself in their shoes and experience their emotions

Those two types of empathy work with different neural networks, so it is possible to score higher on one and lower on the other.

Fun fact: Studies have shown that women often have higher affective empathy, but no difference between genders was found on cognitive empathy.

empathy vs. sympathy vs. compassion

Empathy, sympathy and compassion are all connected, but they aren’t the same.

As we have already established, empathy involves understanding and feeling another person’s emotions. That means that empathy is mostly internal, except when it comes to actually expressing your empathy. But whether you express it or not, it’s there.

Sympathy means understanding someone else’s emotion and feeling happy or sorry for them. That may seem the same as with empathy, but sympathy is actually directed at the other person. When someone is sick, for example, there is a difference between feeling sorry for that person (you understand that it must be hard for them, and you wish they wouldn’t have to suffer) and actually feeling their pain yourself and relating to it.

Compassion on the other hand is the willingness to help the other person and make them feel better.

empathy vs. emotional intelligence

There is also emotional intelligence, which I thought was the same as empathy, but it is actually something completely different.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise emotions and manage them. So that doesn’t refer only to other people’s emotions, but to emotions in general.

It involves self-awareness and self-management, which is basically emotional regulation. I wrote an entire blog post only about emotional regulation a while ago, so you may want to check that out as well.

On the more external side of emotional intelligence are social awareness and relationship management. Empathy plays into social awareness as well (along with the awareness of social contexts and what is appropriate in which situation).

Signs of a lack of empathy

Signs of a lack of empathy include:

blaming people in distress for their situation (”If you would do X, Y wouldn’t be the case”)
thinking people around you are too sensitive (”It was just a joke!”)
lack of patience with people in distress (”Just get over it!”)

I personally think that those signs can be more subtle than you might assume. Contrary to what I used to think, you don’t have to be a complete asshole to lack empathy. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, your brain may just be wired differently.

One sign for example is a lack of patience with people in distress. But just because someone thinks “get over it already” doesn’t mean they actually say it, because they know it will probably hurt the other person. That is social awareness and it means they care, but that person still isn’t very empathetic in that situation.

How to develop empathy

Honestly, I think the most important part about empathy is just caring. We all make mistakes and no one always knows the right thing to say, but trying our best is a crucial part of showing the people who we love that they are important to us.

Luckily, there are numerous ways to improve empathy (those are a few things that have helped me ):

asking follow-up questions

The hardest part as someone who isn’t very empathetic is just understanding other people. So the first step in my opinion is just to ask lots of questions and especially follow-up questions in order to understand the other person better.

keeping an open mind

Not only in empathy, but in general it is so important to stay open to other perspectives. If you go into a conversation and immediately judge everything the other person says based on prejudices you have in your head for some reason, things may not work out so well. Everyone has prejudices, so there is no shame in that. It’s just the way our brains work, but being aware of them is crucial.

be aware that not everyone’s brains work the same

Different people think differently and just because you would want someone to react a certain way in a specific situation, that doesn’t mean that they would want the same from you. Notice how your own brain works and what you want and then keep in mind that those are your personal preferences.

ask family or friends for feedback

It feels a bit weird, admittedly, but if you are unsure if you acted right in a situation, you can just ask other people who were involved. That helps to gain perspective and builds connection at the same time.

I’m still working on improving my empathy and I hope this post helps you to do the same 🙂

Have a good week and I’ll see you next time!