Practice of Empathy

VERITAS ET MISERICORDIA
DEVELOPING EMPATHY: THE PRACTICE OF

EMPATHY
WHAT IS EMPATHY?
 Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware
of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the
feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either
the past or present without having the feelings,
thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an
objectively explicit manner also: the capacity for this
 Empathy is the imaginative projection of a subjective

state into an object so that the object appears to be
infused with it.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMPATHY AND SYMPATHY?
 Sympathy and Empathy are closely related words, bound by

shared origins and the similar circumstances in which each is
applicable, yet they are not synonymous. For one thing, sympathy
is considerably older than empathy, having existed in our
language for several hundred years before its cousin was
introduced and its greater age is reflected in a wider breadth of
meaning. Sympathy may refer to "feelings of loyalty" or "unity or
harmony in action or effect," meanings not shared by empathy. In
the contexts where the two words do overlap, sympathy implies
sharing (or having the capacity to share) the feelings of another,
while empathy tends to be used to mean imagining, or having the
capacity to imagine, feelings that one does not actually have.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMPATHY AND
SYMPATHY?
 Empathy is the experience of understanding another

person's thoughts, feelings, and condition from his or
her point of view, rather than from one's
own. Empathy facilitates prosocial or
helping behaviors that come from within, rather than
being forced, so that people behave in a more
compassionate manner. Although there may be
individual differences in empathy based on genetic
differences, research suggests it is possible to boost
the capacity for empathic understanding.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMPATHY AND
SYMPATHY?
 Empathy refers to the ability to relate to another

person’s pain vicariously, as if one has
experienced that pain themselves:
 For instance, people who are highly egoistic and
presumably lacking in empathy keep their own
welfare paramount in making moral decisions
like how or whether to help the poor.
TYPES OF EMPATHY
 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.
 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.
EMPATHY
 To illustrate how these three branches of empathy work together,
imagine that a friend has recently lost a close family member. Your
natural reaction may be sympathy, a feeling of pity, or sorrow.
Sympathy may move you to express condolences or to send a card--
and your friend may appreciate these actions but showing empathy
takes more time and effort. It begins with cognitive empathy:
imagining what the person is going through. Whom did they lose? How
close were they to this person? Besides feelings of pain and loss, how
will their life now change?
 Emotional empathy will help you not only understand your friend's
feelings, but also share them somehow. You try to connect with
something in yourself that knows the feeling of deep sorrow and
emotional pain. You might remember how it felt when you lost
someone close, or imagine how you would feel if you have not had that
experience.
EMPATHY
 Compassionate empathy moves you to take action. You
might provide a meal, so your friend does not need to worry
about cooking. You could offer to help make necessary
phone calls or do some chores around the house. Maybe
you could go over to help keep them company; or, if they
need to be alone, you could pick up the children and watch
them for a while.
 This is just one example of how empathy works, but every
day will bring new opportunities to develop this trait. In
fact, every interaction you share with another person is a
chance to see things from a different perspective, to share
their feelings, and to help.

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VERITAS ET MISERICORDIA

DEVELOPING EMPATHY: THE PRACTICE OF

 Empathy is the imaginative projection of a subjective

 Sympathy and Empathy are closely related words, bound by

 Empathy is the experience of understanding another

 Empathy refers to the ability to relate to another

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