How You Can Build More Empathy
How You Can Build More Empathy
Affective Empathy vs. Cognitive Empathy
First, I get if my blog title confused you. Many people think you either have empathy or you don’t. Or that if you have empathy that level of empathy remains static over the course of a life. The reality is that empathy can be developed or atrophied.
There’s another misconception about empathy. Most people, especially in Western culture, believe empathy is only emotive.
So it might look a little something like this: I cry because you cry and I laugh because you laugh. And while that is empathy, technically that is only one form of empathy, called “Affective Empathy.” There’s a second form of empathy called, “Cognitive Empathy,” which I’ll go over in a moment. To become more well-rounded with your empathetic skills, it’ll be important to possess both Affective and Cognitive Empathy.
Before we get going with how to build empathy, I first want to highlight why empathy is important.
Empathy is connective tissue between humans. It’s actually the greatest gift we can offer another person. Did you know that the more empathy you have, the less judgmental you’ll be?
Empathy is the only thing that allows us to connect to people of any group, regardless of color, socioeconomic status, gender, religion, age, personality type, etc. In a way, the ability to experience what another person is experiencing without even personally knowing another is a superpower.
Note: empathy is not to be confused with codependency. Often those who experience high empathy (empaths) can often merge identities with another. Therefore, if you have high empathy, you’re going to want to develop boundaries and understand the wisdom of how to use empathy. If you need help with that, look for previous blogs (here and here) on developing healthy boundaries.
When developing wise and healthy boundaries, you might be surprised that increasing your empathy will actually help decrease your anxiety. Why?
If you can’t deeply connect with others, people not only won’t want to deeply connect to you, but you won’t be able to express yourself how you want. You might be wondering why the heck people are always frustrated and short with you. Your relationships will suffer and you won’t even know why. You feel me?
Now onto developing both affective and cognitive empathy. Both types of empathy involve deeply connecting to the experience of another. Affective empathy is experiencing what someone could be feeling; cognitive empathy is experiencing what another person is thinking. And if you’re into Myers-Briggs, yes, this is linked to how someone processes information—a thinker vs. feeler.
When one side is overloaded, it’ll be a little off.
For someone with high affective empathy and low cognitive empathy, they very well may be able to understand another person’s emotions better than that person. Often, they’ll be able to sense a stranger’s ‘anger,’ ‘fear,’ ‘envy,’ ‘sadness,’ or ‘happiness,’ without anyone exchanging a word. I have friends with high affective empathy who can walk into a room and feel how either the entire room or individuals are feeling. Sometimes though, they cannot comprehend what another person could be thinking though, and when unhealthy their own feelings can easily be projected onto a person.
Now for cognitive empathy. This is near-and-dear to my heart because I used to be overloaded on cognitive empathy yet people would call me unempathetic. It’d confuse the heck out of me because I never had to be told to put myself in other people’s shoes; I was already walking in them. My default stance was to understand another person, but because my feelings lagged behind I rarely mirrored another’s emotion. However—and I get that this will sound strange and almost unbelievable to those who haven’t experienced it—I could understand what another person was cognitively experiencing, often better than that person. However, like affective empathy, when unbalanced, I could also project my thought process onto another person.
So if you want to increase your empathy, the good news is you can. You first want to identify whether you are lacking in affective or cognitive empathy (or both). I’ll start with how to build cognitive empathy, since I’m most familiar with that. I’ll also say that by being multiracial, I have an advantage because I grew up being programmed with almost antithetical perspectives (Eastern vs. Western).
Tips for Building Cognitive Empathy (Understanding of Perspectives):
Travel to different cities and countries - this will help you understand your own biases and open yourself up to completely different ways of living.
Get outside your comfort zone…with anything - as in, go outside your people group and hang out with people who do something different.
If you only hang out in athletic circles, join groups or classes that are into art, reading, or spirituality.
If you only hang out in cerebral circles, join a yoga or boxing class.
Try a different type of cuisine each week.
Learn another language.
Volunteer.
Find a way to hang out with different ethnicities, genders, religions (or non-religious people), and ages of people - I cannot stress this enough. Most people are stuck in their particular clique and social circle, which can be symptomatic of lower cognitive empathy.
Be curious about another’s perspective - try to understand more deeply where another person’s thoughts are coming from.
Even if you do know, hold yourself back from saying, “I know exactly how you feel.”
Tips for Building Affective Empathy (Experiencing Another’s Emotions):
Tap into your own feelings first - if you’re emotionally repressed, it’s going to be impossible to experience another’s sentiments.
If you need help with this, feel free to email me for a “Feelings Chart.” When you can readily begin identifying what you’re experiencing in the moment, it’ll be easier to identify what another is experiencing in the moment.
Take this stance: no matter what another person is experiencing, they are correct - every emotion comes from a logical place.
No matter what emotion someone is showing, do your best to take their side.
When a person is explaining a situation or showing emotion, connect back to a time when you experienced something similar to drive the emotional connection to how someone could feel. You can do this everywhere. Remember that everyone is always experiencing something in their lives that is difficult.
As the holidays are here, when you go to a restaurant, despite your server smiling, ask them how they are. Channel an experience that you had of working through the holidays and being unable to be with your family on that holiday because you needed to make or save money. Or imagine working through holidays by choice because a family situation is too difficult for them to show up.
Some people are overloaded on one side of the emotional spectrum - balance it out or it’ll be harder to connect with others (and you might also not be honest with yourself).
If you’re always negative, find 3 things a day to be thankful about.
If you’re always happy, tap into parts of your heart that might be hurting unbeknownst to yourself (i.e. are you lonely, marginalized, unappreciated, jealous, etc.).
Even if you have experienced something similar, hold yourself back from saying, “I’ve been there before.”
I realize this isn’t a comprehensive way of increasing empathy, but it’s a start. Hopefully there were a couple nuggets you picked up in here.