Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another person's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of emotional states. Types of empathy include Cognitive Empathy, Emotional Empathy, and Compassionate Empathy .
“Cognitive empathy,” is simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. Sometimes called perspective-taking, this kind of empathy can help in, say, a negotiation or in motivating people. This person usually can read other people very well, Sometimes seeming if they could read you mind.
A Dark Side to Cognitive Empathy
It is possible to show cognitive empathy without having any fellow-feeling or sympathy with it. It is fair to say that most of us would understand this fellow-feeling to be a key part of empathy.
"Emotional empathy," A person with emotional Empathy will pick up on every emotion that other people they encounter are having. Sometimes when a person has this ability, they have a hard time discerning whether the emotions are theirs or not. This ability feels the real intentions of others.
Emotional empathy is when you quite literally feel the other person’s emotions alongside them, as if you had ‘caught’ the emotions.
Emotional empathy is also known as ‘personal distress’ or ‘emotional contagion’. This is closer to the usual understanding of the word ‘empathy’, but more emotional.
Emotional empathy is probably the first type of empathy that any of us feel as children. It can be seen when a mother smiles at her baby, and the baby ‘catches’ her emotion and smiles back. Less happily, perhaps, a baby will often start to cry if he or she hears another baby crying.
Emotional Empathy can be both Good and Bad
Emotional empathy is good because it means that we can readily understand and feel other people’s emotions. This is vital for those in caring professions, such as doctors and nurses, to be able to respond to their patients appropriately. It also means that we can respond to friends and others when they are distressed.
Emotional empathy is bad, because it is possible to become overwhelmed by those emotions, and therefore unable to respond. This is known as empathy overload, and is explained in more detail in our page on Understanding Others. Those with a tendency to become overwhelmed need to work on their self-regulation, and particularly their self-control, so that they become better able to manage their own emotions.
"Compassionate Empathy" is where you feel all the above and you feel the need to help wherever you can. You feel every emotion and know every thought, and you are the one to do something about it. Being The Compassionate Empath you are continually doing for others because you feel every bit of pain and sorrow others feel. You are the one who makes it your goal to change this world.
Finally, compassionate empathy is what we usually understand by empathy: feeling someone’s pain, and taking action to help.
The name, compassionate empathy, is consistent with what we usually understand by compassion. Like sympathy, compassion is about feeling concern for someone, but with an additional move towards action to mitigate the problem.
Compassionate empathy is the type of empathy that is usually most appropriate.
As a general rule, people who want or need your empathy don’t just need you to understand (cognitive empathy), and they certainly don’t need you just to feel their pain or, worse, to burst into tears alongside them (emotional empathy).
Instead, they need you to understand and sympathise with what they are going through and, crucially, either take, or help them to take, action to resolve the problem, which is compassionate empathy.
Finding the Balance
Cognitive empathy can often be considered under-emotional.
It involves insufficient feeling, and therefore perhaps too much logical analysis. It may be perceived as an unsympathetic response by those in distress.
Emotional empathy, by contrast, is over-emotional.
Too much emotion or feeling can be unhelpful. As our page on Managing Emotions explains, emotions are very primitive. Feeling strong emotions, especially distress, takes us back to childhood. More or less by definition, that makes us less able to cope, and certainly less able to think and apply reason to the situation. It is very hard to help anyone else if you are overcome by your own emotions.
In exercising compassionate empathy, we can find the right balance between logic and emotion.
We can feel another person’s pain, as if it was happening to us, and therefore express the appropriate amount of sympathy.
At the same time, we can also remain in control of our own emotions, and apply reason to the situation.
This means that we can make better decisions and provide appropriate support to them when and where it is necessary.
Two Other Types of Empathy
For completion, it is worth mentioning that some people suggest that there are two other forms of empathy, somatic and spiritual.
Somatic empathy is defined as feeling someone else’s pain physically.
For example, if you see someone hurt, you too might feel physical pain. Anecdotally, identical twins sometimes report that they know when the other has been hurt, which might be an example of somatic empathy. You can see an echo of somatic empathy, for example, if someone is hit in the stomach with a ball during a sports game, and one or two of the spectators may double over as if they too had been hit.
Spiritual empathy is defined as a direct connection with a ‘higher being’ or consciousness.
It is the same as ‘enlightenment’ in the eastern philosophical tradition, and considered to be achievable through meditation.
Science Finally Confirms That People Absorb Energy From Others
A biological research team at Bielefeld University has made a groundbreaking discovery showing that plants can draw an alternative source of energy from other plants. This finding could also have a major impact on the future of bioenergy eventually providing the evidence to show that people draw energy from others in much the same way.
Members of Professor Dr. Olaf Kruse’s biological research team have confirmed for the first time that a plant, the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, not only engages in photosynthesis, but also has an alternative source of energy: it can draw it from other plants. The research findings were released this week in the online journal Nature Communications published by the renowned journal Nature.
Flowers need water and light to grow and people are no different. Our physical bodies are like sponges, soaking up the environment. “This is exactly why there are certain people who feel uncomfortable in specific group settings where there is a mix of energy and emotions,” said psychologist and energy healer Dr. Olivia Bader-Lee.
If you are interested in finding out what your personal vibrational frequency resonates at, you can check it here.
Plants engage in the photosynthesis of carbon dioxide, water, and light. In a series of experiments, Professor Dr. Olaf Kruse and his team cultivated the microscopically small green alga species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and observed that when faced with a shortage of energy, these single-cell plants can draw energy from neighbouring vegetable cellulose instead. The alga secretes enzymes (so-called cellulose enzymes) that ‘digest’ the cellulose, breaking it down into smaller sugar components.
These are then transported into the cells and transformed into a source of energy: the alga can continue to grow. ‘This is the first time that such a behaviour has been confirmed in a vegetable organism’, says Professor Kruse. ‘That algae can digest cellulose contradicts every previous textbook. To a certain extent, what we are seeing is plants eating plants’. Currently, the scientists are studying whether this mechanism can also be found in other types of alga. Preliminary findings indicate that this is the case.
These are then transported into the cells and transformed into a source of energy: the alga can continue to grow. ‘This is the first time that such a behaviour has been confirmed in a vegetable organism’, says Professor Kruse. ‘That algae can digest cellulose contradicts every previous textbook. To a certain extent, what we are seeing is plants eating plants’. Currently, the scientists are studying whether this mechanism can also be found in other types of alga. Preliminary findings indicate that this is the case.
“When energy studies become more advanced in the coming years, we will eventually see this translated to human beings as well,” stated Bader-Lee. “The human organism is very much like a plant, it draws needed energy to feed emotional states and this can essentially energize cells or cause increases in cortisol and catabolize cells depending on the emotional trigger.”
Bader-Lee suggests that the field of bioenergy is now ever evolving and that studies on the plant and animal world will soon translate and demonstrate what energy metaphysicians have known all along — that humans can heal each other simply through energy transfer just as plants do. “Human can absorb and heal through other humans, animals, and any part of nature. That’s why being around nature is often uplifting and energizing for so many people,” she concluded.
Here are five energy tools to use to clear your space and prevent energy drains while releasing people’s energy:
Stay centered and grounded. If you are centered within your spiritual self (instead of your analyzer or ego) you will sense right away when something has moved into your space. If you are fully grounded, you can easily release other people’s energy and emotions down your grounding cord with your intention.
Be in a state of non-resistance. What we resists sticks. If you feel uncomfortable around a certain person or in a group, don’t go into resistance as a way to protect yourself as this will only keep foreign energy stuck in your space. Move into a state of non-resistance by imagining that your body is clear and translucent like clear glass or water. This way, if someone throws some invalidation at you, it will pass right through you.
Own your personal aura space. We each have an energetic aura surrounding our body. If we don’t own this personal space we are vulnerable to foreign energy entering it. Become aware of your aura boundaries (about an arms length away from your body all the way around, above and below) as a way to own your personal space.
Give yourself an energy cleanse. The color gold has a high vibration which is useful for clearing away foreign energy. Imagine a gold shower nozzle at the top of your aura (a few feet above your head) and turn it on, allowing clear gold energy to flow through your aura and body space and release down your grounding. You will immediately feel cleansed and refreshed.
Call back your energy. When we have our energy in our own space there is less room for other’s energy to enter. But as we focus on other people and projects we sometimes spread our energy around. Create an image of a clear gold sun several feet above your head and let it be a magnet, attracting all of your energy back into it (and purifying it in the gold energy). Then bring it down through the top of your aura and into your body space, releasing your energy back into your personal space.
Originally written by Michael Forrester and published on Prevent Disease
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