As I understand it there’s two main kinds of empathy: cognitive and affective.
Cognitive empathy is the ability to perceive and understand the emotional states of others, and affective empathy is actually sharing those emotions yourself.
I do the former, but the latter doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Like, if I see someone being sad, it’s possible that I’ll be sad or angry that they’re in that situation, but those will be my feelings about what’s going on, not theirs.
But for those of you who inherently feel-what-you-see, how does this work with, say, anger?
If you see someone being terribly angry, do you feel angry yourself? If so, who do you feel angry at? If you see a fight going on, do you hate both participants?
If someone is angry at you, are you also angry at you?
I guess this applies to any targeted emotion, but anger is a good example.
Emotions we feel don’t have to make sense to us. There are some situations where someone else’s anger will make me feel angry even if I don’t understand what’s causing it. If I like the person then I may be angry with them, and if I dislike the person then I may be angry at them, but me understanding the reason is not required.