The Empathy Effect: How Feeling More Leads to Caring More

Recently, I had a situation with my partner that highlighted the importance of compassion and empathy. She said something that hurt me, and when I tried to express my feelings, she couldn’t be vulnerable and apologetic. Instead, she got defensive, agitated, and distant, which only exacerbated my feeling that she didn’t care.

To process my feelings from that night and the following morning, I decided to give us some space. This morning, I decided to write about it to gain more clarity. This post is the product of that reflection.

This experience made me reflect on how essential empathy is for true compassion. To be empathetic is to feel what another is feeling. It’s impossible to truly be compassionate without first trying to feel another’s feelings. Only when you succeed in producing similar feelings within yourself can you then have compassion. Compassion arises in response to the pain of either reproducing or successfully feeling a feeling that might cause pain. From that compassion arises a desire to act—to resolve the pain—especially when you care about the person in pain and have the capacity to resolve it.

Artificial Intelligence and Compassion

Artificial intelligence cannot have compassion because it lacks the capacity to feel empathy. AI has no free agency and no subjective experience of feeling pain. Therefore, it is difficult for AI to ‘imagine’ or reproduce the pain one must feel and respond in a way that addresses that pain effectively.

Sociopathic Behavior and Empathy

Sociopathic behavior is similar in that it lacks the capacity to feel pain caused by its behavior. This insensitivity allows it to cause pain on a mass scale without feeling remorse, guilt, or sadness. This lack of feeling may have developed as a response to strong feelings during childhood, where one may have developed strategies for burying and repressing feelings or escaping through seeking other feelings.

Relationships and Self-Compassion

In a relationship, one must first stand in relationship to oneself, representing their own feelings. In a mutually beneficial and respectful relationship, both parties attempt to have compassion for each other. These feelings of empathy, whether simulated or sensed, create stronger bonds of respect and care. Each caring for the other’s feelings develops a sense of responsibility and moral choice based on this compass. Every action leads to greater awareness of how the other is feeling, and a corresponding care and concern. This care and concern builds trust, which builds an enduring relationship over time.

The Divide in Relationships

If one senses the other doesn’t care or lacks the capacity for basic empathy, or even the desire to simulate within themselves how the other must feel, a growing divide may form. Where one is not just isolating themselves from the ‘bad feelings’ but also from the relationship growing closer, as they simply will themselves not to feel and cast blame for any bad feelings on another person.

Responsibility and Compassion

A very important quality in all of this is that of responsibility. To be responsible for one’s own feelings is a given. We each are responsible to feel and respond to our own feelings. To take on responsibility for another is a choice, and that choice governs our behavior. While we are not responsible for another’s feelings, we are responsible for the behaviors that may cause or trigger feelings in another person that are unpleasant. In a caring and compassionate relationship, both parties tend to each other’s feelings with a sense of responsibility and stewardship. This builds trust over the long term and ensures the survival of the relationship.

The Challenge of Unwillingness

If any partner is unwilling to bear the burden of ‘going deeper’ in the relationship and ultimately feeling unpleasant feelings that their partner may be experiencing, especially if their behavior has somehow (directly or indirectly) influenced those feelings to come up, it may be problematic. An unwilling partner stays in their own ego, seeks to gratify themselves, often by being right or distracting themselves from feeling what the other might be going through. This creates a growing divide where ‘separation’ is inevitable. Not in the classic ‘break up’ or ‘separation’ mode, but more on a level of two souls divided. They may choose to accept these conditions and stay together and even look happy on the outside, but indeed a separation or divide between the feeling of two souls can arise and grow.

Building Bridges Through Feeling

It is only through the willing acceptance of feeling that two or more souls can truly go deeper. Only when it is established that your pain and suffering may also be my pain and suffering—and that even if you don’t have the solution, I might—then the whole begins to work with its parts. Mending and healing the division and building bridges for empathy and compassion rather than walls.

At the end of the day, it is feeling that heals. A willingness to feel, a wanting-ness to feel, an acceptance of feelings, an embracing of feelings, a care and consideration for feelings, a compassion and empathy for feelings. It is feelings that unite us all. Conversely, unwillingness, unwanting-ness, unacceptance, an intolerance of feelings, a lack of care and consideration for feelings, and a lack of compassion or empathy for feelings divide us.

Conclusion: Choosing Love and Compassion

One builds bridges and makes mending and healing possible. The other erects walls that can get taller and thicker and more impenetrable over time. All is a choice, and ultimately we have time as the measure of how long it takes before we accept the feelings we might love to hate or hate to love and simply choose to love our feelings—all of them. Love is the answer to acceptance.

Loving oneself first to maintain healthy boundaries and respect when they should not be crossed, and loving another when doing so creates a healthier and more positive unification, promoting the well-being of each other.