What is an Empath?
As an elder millennial (thank you Iliza Schlessinger ) whose working hours provide limited internet access, I am often introduced to new words by my younger, hipper patients. One of those words, which I have been seeing everywhere is empath. My first thought years back when I heard it was “isn’t that a sci-fi term?”. And indeed it is. A Scottish author JT McIntosh wrote a story called “The Empath” in 1956 about supernatural beings who could sense other people’s emotions only to be exploited by the government. Since then, this concept of the empath has existed in a number of science fiction stories and even in Dungeons and Dragons. In our current zeitgeist, an empath is described as a person “highly attuned to the feelings and emotions of those around them. Their ability to discern what others are feeling goes beyond empathy [and] extends to actually taking those feelings on”. And I’d argue that, similar to their sci-fi counterparts, this ability happens unconsciously and can feel like a psychic superpower or a burden. This level of empathy can help these individuals develop deep connections with others, but at times may also be overwhelming and overstimulating. The latter reaction may induce a need to retreat and isolate. These varying responses, both relatable to me, inspire a teasing apart of the differences and overlaps between empathy and empath. In doing so, I hope to explore a happy union between unconscious and conscious processes.
What is Empathy?
Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another''. However, in psychoanalysis, the definition tends to be more complex than the dictionary definition. I believe that empathy requires curiosity and humility, because although we can never truly walk in another person’s shoes, we can try. We acknowledge the commonality of human experiences while making space for difference. That’s why it is often more accurate to say “I can imagine how you are feeling” rather than “I know how you feel”.
Although it is impossible to truly understand exactly what another person is feeling, especially if their life circumstances vary greatly from yours, it is a worthy endeavor to attempt. For example, I work with a diverse group of individuals including people from different races, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, genders and sexualities. To tell a Black patient that I completely understand the crazy-making experience of subtle racism and unarticulated microaggressions would be insulting. But I can use my own experiences of prejudice and being gaslit as a jumping off point and then admit what I can’t understand. Similarly, to equate my experience of sexism and misogyny with a transgender person who faces daily hate speech and the constant violating stares of others would be disingenuous. Instead, I listen carefully and use a kernel of my truth that connects to theirs as a stepping stone. It helps me acknowledge what I can never know. Perhaps that is something helpful for empaths to remember, it is ok to accept our limits and differentiate from others.. An empath may feel the pain or the joy of another, but I suspect that they are also feeling their own pain or joy to a degree. Not believing that our personal suffering assuages the suffering of others is an essential part of being a therapist and human. It’s asserting a conscious effort to self-introspect and acknowledge triggers (verbal and non-verbal) that may encourage an intense reaction that is based on personal history. It allows a level of self-care that can be likened to the metaphor of putting the oxygen mask on yourself before your dependent.
Is it Nature or Nurture? (Hint: Both!)
The good news is that although it’s unlikely someone can learn to be an empath, empathy is a skill that can be learned. And empaths can learn to hone and control their abilities. That scary crime show you saw with the sociopathic child and two loving parents is really the exception, and something I’ve never come across. In general, it is a learned behavior and our capacity for empathy is based on our early life experiences. We learn it from our parents, caregivers, teachers and other influential figures. Treating your children with empathy and modeling it in your interactions with others is going to improve their capacity to experience it. In fact, babies are first able to read non-verbal behavior before language, thus what we show them and how we respond to them has a huge impact. Psychotherapists, as well as other professionals learn to attune to non-verbal communications in a very conscious way by observing and even discussing what they notice with patients. When I am working with a patient I focus on what they show me as much as, and sometimes even more than what they tell me. How are they sitting? What’s the positioning of their arms and legs? Does their body seem calm or jittery? Where do their eyes fall, what are they telling me with their mouth and eyebrows? I pay attention to their tone of voice, cadence and language. It seems that those who conduct these processes unconsciously may identify more as empaths whereas those who are more conscious and directed in their interventions may call it empathy. However, empaths can also apply these conscious efforts to magnify and control their abilities. Another factor in understanding empathy and empaths is research in mirror neurons, which has helped demystify the aspects of each process that have seemed a bit like magic. We have visuomotor mirror neurons related to our body sensations of pressure, pain and warmth. We have audiovisual mirror neurons related to physical coordination and visual perception. We have somatosensory mirror neurons related to combining our sight and hearing. All of these activate and organize sensory information. Mirror neurons give us cues about what someone else may be thinking, what they are planning to do next and even anticipate their reactions. This is key in empathy and in creating the experience of feeling another person’s emotions. It also helps explain why when you see someone stub their toe or witness a loved one crying, you may feel the pain of the other person and maybe even want to cover your eyes and ears to self-regulate. It has been suggested that empaths may have more mirror neurons which amplifies this capacity. For empaths, sometimes the ability to feel someone else’s pain or emotions may actually encourage us to behave in a way that is the opposite of empathic. We may shut down, isolate or disconnect because we feel flooded- and in some ways actually behave in a way that is less empathic. This is not always true of empaths, but certainly can be. Experiencing your world as if it is always on high volume can be exhausting and detrimental to your emotional well-being. This is where the more logical side of empathy can be beneficial because it encourages an acknowledgement that although we may feel someone else’s pain, it is not actually ours pain. Mirror neurons are fascinating and the research into them goes beyond the scope of this blog, but I suggest you read up on your own time. An article that I used in the writing of this blog is “I Feel Your Pain: Mirror Neurons and Empathy” by Lindsey MacGillivray, BSc (2009). There are a number of other books and articles that explore this topic in depth.
Finally, the impact of trauma, especially chronic relational trauma, can be significant in the development of empathy and the identity of the empath. For example, children who grow up in emotionally and/or physically abusive homes may grow up learning how to evaluate the moods of their parents to assess what to expect from their caregivers and even how to survive. Think about the codependent who needs to take care of others to feel safe, common in the adult children of alcoholics or narcissists. Noticing body language, facial expressions, tone of voice can become survival mechanisms to organize an unpredictable world and learn how to get what is needed from parents. Like a highly sensitive person that becomes overstimulated through some of the processes described in the section of mirror neuron, the empathy of individuals with trauma histories can feel adaptive or burdensome- encouraging behavior that is overly empathic or not empathic at all. I suspect many people who identify as empaths are survivors of trauma, and their superpower is a blessing and a curse.
The Takeaway
Empathy may feel innate, but like so many other skills, it is also something that can be nurtured and developed. As a therapist I have learned that we are all have similar feeling words in our vocabulary (sad, happy, scared, angry etc) but that the way we embody them and express them has more nuance. Keeping that in mind can help the person struggling with empathy to find it, and the empath struggling with self-regulation to ground themselves. And for those who need a little help, there is always therapy!