Introduction to empathy

Empathy in its simplest form means 'the ability to put yourself in someones place and feel as they would'. It is different from Sympathy even though both are used collectively most of the time. 'Sympathy' is the act of showing pity on someone or feeling sorry for someone's misfortunes.

It is loving someone from a distance. An act of sympathy is more like asserting the fact that 'I am doing you a favor'. Its more of a societal compulsion. You can count it under acceptable manners I guess like how relatives come to console you after there's been a death in the family. Forced and entirely useless social construct where people genuinely don't know what to say to make the family feel better as nothing can be changed. Sympathy is more like imposing yourself externally in order to help someone but 'empathy' is holding someones hand and pulling them out of an emotional black hole.

Anyway 'empathy' is more like 'I am you' (Soham humsa, humsa soham). There is a connection when someone is actually reaching out to you through empathy. You will feel like someone actually cares and this is the one person you can hide yourself in and sob relentlessly. Now as much as it is something to be treasured and practiced over sympathy, it is also something that is easily discarded, disregarded or discredited by all of us in general. It's not something that the mainstream media promotes, its not something we can brag about to our peers or colleagues, its not something that will get you an auto or a taxi (since it involves fighting over fare), it also won't help when your boss is yelling at you. I totally understand why its not a desirable characteristic trait in today's time. But after a long tiresome hard days work, when you get to sit with yourself, your kindness to others allows you to be kind to yourself. And when you practice more of this, at least the world around you gets better or so I'd like to think. 

Now to make things little complicated, there are three kinds of empathy. Namely cognitive empathy, emotional empathy and compassionate empathy. 

Cognitive empathy as the name suggests is the kind of empathy wherein you empathize with the person's situation or circumstances by placing yourself in their place or position. It can be particularly useful when you are negotiating with someone because you will be able to give them the right kind of incentive to draw them in and close the deal. One of the more important thing to note is that someone with cognitive empathy could be emotionally cold and distant contrary to popular notion of an 'empath'.

Emotional empathy is when someone can feel the emotions that you are feeling. Emotional empathy might be useful for healers or yoga practitioners but more often I feel an emotional empath gets so overwhelmed by the intensity of emotions that they are not able to act rationally or focus on finding a solution of the problem at hand.

Compassionate empathy is basically the ability to reach out to someone when they are in pain, and take action to help. This is what is majorly perceived of 'empathy' in general. This is also the kind of empathy that is useful for others because you are driven by the need to help.

It is possible to possess all the three types of empathy in varying degrees. But we can always find a balance between less emotive cognitive empathy and excessive emotional empathy and find our way to compassionate empathy.