The Importance of Empathy

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Your primary empathy style — cognitive, emotional, intuitive, or spiritual — reflects how you most naturally express empathy to yourself and others. Although you may relate to other styles as well, your primary style is your default setting — how you naturally express empathy most of the time. Knowing your style is the starting point for appreciating how your own empathy functions and how you can comfortably give and receive caring. (Note that people high in narcissism and others with empathy-deficient disorders will not have a style of empathy because they lack this quality.)

All styles of empathy can be healing in their own ways. The goal is to make the most of your personal assets and perhaps to experiment with different styles to broaden your options. In my book The Genius of Empathy, I write about the four types of empathy, their advantages and disadvantages, and how to balance them. Here is a brief description of each; see if you can recognize your own:

Style 1. Cognitive Empathy: The Thinker/Fixer

If your primary empathy style is cognitive, you’re most comfortable with a concrete, cerebral approach to emotions. Consider this style “thinking empathy.” You use your mind to understand others and wish the best for them. You are solution-oriented. You want to logically fix a problem with brain power but are frustrated if you can’t. You may respond to a friend in distress with “I understand that this situation is hurtful, and here’s what you can do about it,” rather than “My heart feels for you,” and then give them space to express their discomfort.

Style 2. Emotional Empathy: The Feeler

If your primary empathy style is emotional, you empathize with others through your emotions. Consider this style “feeling empathy.” You have a big heart and are responsive to people’s needs. You feel everything, but sometimes to an extreme. Like me and many other sensitive empaths, you may be an emotional sponge whose body absorbs others’ distress as well their joy. Since emotions can be contagious, you are vulnerable to catching them.

Style 3. Intuitive Empathy: The Subtle Senser

If your primary empathy style is intuitive, your keen intuition and sensitivity let you read people and their nonverbal cues more easily. Consider this style “sensing empathy.” Your intuition senses if someone is being authentic or if they aren’t. You have strong gut feelings and a-ha insights, knowings, or dreams. You also feel the positive and negative vibes that people emit. These vibes relate to the concept of "chi" from traditional Chinese medicine, which refers to a subtle energy which extends inches or feet from the skin.

Style 4. Spiritual Empathy: The Mystic

If your primary empathy style is spiritual, you empathize with others through your spirituality. Consider this style “divining empathy,” which describes the process of connecting to spirituality — however you define it — to open your heart. For some, spirituality could represent God, Goddess, nature, a creative intelligence, or the power of love. The divine is a stepping stone to your larger, compassionate self. You become a vessel for this siprituality as you give and receive empathy.

The most significant relationship you’ll ever have is with yourself. Knowing your empathy style provides a basic understanding of how you can productively express caring and where you might be off balance. Understanding his can help you love yourself more and find a comfortable, healing mode of giving and self-care.

The Importance of Empathy

Take our Empathy Test

Find a therapist near me

Beheshti A, Arashlow FT, Fata L, Barzkar F, Baradaran HR. The relationship between Empathy and listening styles is complex: implications for doctors in training. BMC Med Educ. 2024 Mar 8;24(1):267. doi: 10.1186/s12909-024-05258-9. PMID: 38459474; PMCID: PMC10924382.

Abramson, Ashley (Nov. 2021). Cultivating Empathy: Psychologists’ research offers insight into why it’s so important to practice the “right” kind of empathy, and how to grow these skills. American Psychological Association, Vol. 52 No. 8, https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/11/feature-cultivating-empathy

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