Empathy can be broken into three different types: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate empathy.
Cognitive empathy refers to the practice of knowing and understanding how others might feel. What makes this complex is that the dark triads — those with narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy, can use this skill without regard for others without actually being empathetic.
Emotional empathy relates to the ability for one to physically feel and relate to the emotions experienced by others. Some challenges in this area range from psychological exhaustion and group polarization to projected intentions.
It’s extremely common to psychologically get exhausted when you’re trying very hard to understand another person. Frankly, you’re not doing yourself or the person any good, so just snap out of it.
Group polarization occurs when you begin to take an increased stance or a changed perspective on a subject, particularly because you’ve grown to emotionally relate to the topic or those that are involved.
Projecting intentions literally means suggesting your intentions to someone and forcing them to behave or think in a certain way. We might think that we’re giving them a service by justifying the way they feel, but oftentimes simply letting them explain their feelings is much healthier than trying to project feelings.
The last type of empathy is compassionate empathy, which is understanding one’s situation while also feeling the need to help. This can be tricky, as we all need a filter on our ability to help and prioritize ourselves.
We all choose to be compassionate, as it genuinely makes us feel better. However, you must keep your own hero mentality from getting out of control: focus on yourself before you’re ready to help others.
At its best, fear protects us from potential danger. At its worst, fear creates anxiety, hurts our health, and impacts our happiness. But we often deal with fear by avoiding it, ignoring it rather than addressing it.