The True Nature of an Empath, Empathic vs. Empaths

Empaths are known to be empathic, but does being empathic means you are a natural empath? While it is a clear trait of an empath, an empath’s empathy goes far beyond what most are capable of. Being empathic allows us to form meaningful connections with those around us, but for an empath, this can actually make it more challenging for them to want to be surrounded by people as you will learn.

Empathic vs. Empaths 

There are many things that are not clearly understood about empaths. One of which is the level of empathy they have. While all individuals, for the most part, have some concept of empathy, an empath’s empathy is significantly magnified. Empathy is a person’s ability to relate or understand the emotions of others. This is a key characteristic that allows us to make connections and understand social cues. The level of empathy of a person tends to reflect their understanding of their own emotions. Empathy can be broken down into three different types.

 1. Cognitive empathy.

 This type of empathy refers to one’s ability to understand what others are feeling and possibly thinking. This empathy is vital when you are in a leadership role. While cognitive empathy is what allows us to understand others more clearly, it does not involve understanding our own emotions and feelings. With cognitive empathy, knowing your own feelings and understanding others’emotions are kept separate.

2. Emotional empathy.

 Emotional empathy goes beyond understanding or relating to other people’s emotions. This often includes being able to feel what others are feeling. Although you may be able to feel in the same way as others do, it doesn’t always mean you understand why they feel that way.

3. Compassionate empathy. 

With compassionate empathy, others’emotions affect us on a deeper level, resulting in some form of action being taken. With this type of empathy, you can easily understand what another person is feeling, and you feel this emotion with them. Through this understanding and shared feeling, you immediately want to provide some type of relief or comfort to help them through the situation. While all three types of empathy are ways by which someone can be empathic, most individuals strive to reach the level of compassionate empathy.

This empathy is a balance between cognitive and emotional empathy. You not only understand the feelings of others but also want to do more to help the other person. Most often, however, we tend to show different types of empathy on a situation-to-situation basis. When you simply need to understand another person better, like when entering negotiations with someone, we need to utilize a higher level of cognitive empathy.

When it comes to interacting with those we deeply care about, we tend to exhibit a higher level of emotional empathy. Being empathic and being an empath may seem like the same, but there are some key differences. An empathic person is someone who is aware of other people’s emotions or feelings. They are able to read body language and facial cues, which help them understand what another person is feeling.

Being able to identify these key characteristics helps them know the best way to approach each person. An empath understands these same emotional cues, but they understand other people’s emotions on a much deeper level. While an empathic person simply understands and identifies another person’s emotions, empaths do not just understand but take on those feelings. Empaths understand emotions in a way many individuals could not even begin to comprehend, and they tend to have a much higher level of emotional empathy.