How Much Can We Understand Others?
As I’ve stated previously, I’ve been going to group therapy for anxiety. In one session, a woman (Let’s call her Sylvia.) talked about her daughter abandoning her because she was “too much” for the daughter to handle. For some context, Sylvia has a chronic kidney condition, so she won’t be able to take most medications against anxiety or depression.
Anyway, Sylvia was talking about her daughter abandoning her ever since her husband died six years ago (as of this article’s publication). Sylvia’s daughter was practically the only person she had for support, but the daughter hasn’t been talking to her for the past few months.
Obviously, Sylvia got concerned and tried to contact her daughter one last time. That was when the daughter snapped and told her mother that she wanted nothing to do with her. This upset Sylvia, but that’s not the worst thing that happened. It was the last conversation they had together. When Sylvia told her daughter that she was attending group therapy, her daughter said that it “obviously wasn’t helping one bit.”
When Sylvia told us about this, she sobbed. It was unlike any other session we had as a group, and several of us went to comfort her. Then, some of the other people talked about how their family members tried to get them to “snap out of their anxiety.” Sylvia then told us that we were the only people that truly understood her.
That stuck with me. While the session was going on, I asked myself this question:
How much can we understand others?
During the session, I explained the difference between sympathy and empathy. For those who don’t know, sympathy is feeling bad for a person because the best you could do is imagine how bad the situation was for them. Empathy, on the other hand, is feeling bad for a person because you’ve also been through what that person had gone through.
So, when Sylvia told the rest of the group therapy people that we were the only people who truly understood her, she was expressing how much empathy we had for her situation and feelings.
However, I’m not quite sure if I’m completely able to feel true empathy. Have I ever told you that humans are inheritably selfish? Have I ever told you that I have autism? Well, about those two concepts…many people think that autistic people can’t feel empathy. I guess I can see where some people are coming from (judging by this article I posted here), but fear not! It turns out that empathy, much like autism, exists on a spectrum. It’s just that some autistic people have a harder time feeling cognitive empathy; they’re much more likely to feel affective empathy.
What’s the difference between cognitive empathy and affective empathy? Most people, including me (until recently) don’t even realize there are many forms of empathy or that it can exist on a spectrum. So, what gives?
In a nutshell, cognitive empathy is the ability to understand another person’s perspective, while affective empathy is the ability to feel another person’s emotions. To simplify what I’ve stated previously, autistic people can’t really understand another person’s perspective, but they can sure feel another person’s emotions.
I’ll give an example: During that same group therapy session, when Sylvia started crying while she was sharing her story, me and another person (Let’s call him Stan.) patted her on the back and hugged her. I told her that she didn’t deserve the treatment she was getting from her daughter, and Stan basically said the same thing.
Another girl in my group (Let’s call her Miranda.) basically felt the same distress Sylvia was feeling. For context, Miranda is also autistic like I am. So, what Miranda was feeling when hearing Sylvia’s story was affective empathy (much like many other autistic people). I, on the other hand, imagined the pain Sylvia went through when she went through that situation. Therefore, I was feeling cognitive empathy.
But why do some people feel cognitive empathy, while others feel affective empathy? I think it depends on many different factors. For example, I’m a writer (if that wasn’t obvious enough). I write from not just my perspective, but from other people’s perspectives, too. Plenty of writers do this. Maybe writing gives me the ability to put myself if someone else’s shoes and see how that person would feel in their situation.
Someone like Miranda, however, might feel affective empathy because she can feel Sylvia’s pain when she told that story about her daughter. She felt the same distress because she doesn’t want anyone else going through said distress. In other words, Miranda feels compassion towards Sylvia. Maybe Miranda doesn’t feel the exact same emotions as Sylvia, but the distress and compassion are still there.
She understands, and, in a way, I understand how Sylvia was feeling when she told us her story during group therapy. There are almost eight billion people on this planet, so it’s unnatural for us to assume that we’re all gonna feel the exact same pain as someone else. After all, we have psychopaths and sociopaths for a reason.
But what I am saying is that we’re able to understand each other on some level. Some people understand a person’s feelings more than others. Like I’ve said before, empathy exists on a spectrum. Whether we’ve gone through the same thing as Sylvia or not, we’re still able to see where she’s coming from and how she’s feeling. And I think that’s one of the most fascinating things about human beings.
