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.
For myself, other people’s anger makes me really uncomfortable, and I avoid it as much as possible, in part specifically because if I don’t, I end up sharing in it, but without a reason or a target. It’s really unpleasant because in a sense, it’s not real.
Real anger - my own anger - feels complete. Not that it’s pleasant or anything - it’s still anger. But in a way, it’s a sort of relief to feel it, since it at least makes sense. I have a reason for it and a target for it, so it fits. Empathetic anger is weird and unsettling, since it’s just there, but it’s not a complete, sensible thing.
And you’re right about targeted emotions, at least in my experience, and while anger is a good example, it’s not the worst.
Grief is awful, because it’s such a horrible, desolate feeling, and just that much worse when it doesn’t even really mean anything.
Jealousy is another bad one - in fact, thinking about it, I’m tempted to say it’s the worst of them all, because it’s so unpleasant, and in multiple ways, and it’s so entirely pointless without an actual reason or target (it’s arguably fairly pointless even with both).
On a somewhat different note, just because I’m thinking about the trials and tribulations of affective empathy - embarrassment is weirdly bad. Partly it’s that it’s unpleasant, but more it’s that it’s such a common aspect of other people’s enjoyment - there’s a great deal of comedy that hinges on laughing at other people’s embarrassment, and it’s all completely lost on me, because I’m stuck just feeling pointlessly vicariously embarrassed.
Broadly, the way I have to deal with all of it is to try to avoid situations in which I’m going to be subjected to other people’s unpleasant emotions, and if I find myself in one, to try to shut myself off from whatever they’re feeling. I’m okay up to a point, but I can feel it coming if I’m getting to the point that it’s going to suck me in, and pretty much all I can do then is resign myself to it or throw up a barricade and just shut it out. Which sort of ironically makes me come across as aloof - as if I’m insensitive rather than overly sensitive. That gnaws at me, but there really isn’t much I can do about it, since I already have enough to deal with with my own emotions, and just don’t have the fortitude to deal with everyone else’s as well.
Are you me? You said it much better than I could.
For me personally I don’t have much control over my empathy. Sure I can look at someone and glean their emotional state based on conscious guessing, but my “affective empathy” as you put it, is more my brain subconsciously picking up on their emotional state and then sharing it.
For most emotions, including anger, it’s not targeted. Not until I actively participate in the emotion. It’s also not something that applies to everyone and every situation, with my own personal emotions easily overriding the empathetic emotions.
Of course, everyone experiences empathy their own way.
I will feel the person’s anger more and more strongly as the distance between us decreases. The person doesn’t need to outwardly show any sign of anger for me to feel it - they can appear perfectly calm but if they are angry, I’ll feel it.
When I interact with people, I don’t try to put myself in their shoes. I’ve known for many years that I can sense other people’s strong emotions, so I mostly focus my awareness on how I’m feeling and use that as a sense. If how I’m feeling changes spontaneously (not caused by my mental focus, thoughts, or reaction) when I’m interacting with someone, I’ll know that I’m sensing something from the other person.
My experience of other people’s anger is different from when I feel angry. I experience other people’s anger as a very uncomfortable sensation my abdomen and solar plexus. It’s similar to when I feel angry but I’m more detached and I’m observing the uncomfortable sensation, which is mostly localized to my solar plexus. When I’m angry, my thoughts and emotions are fully engaged, my anger has a direction, and I feel it fully in my body. Like, “I’m experiencing anger vs I’m angry.”
When I experience someone else’s anger, it’s not directed at the object of their anger - it’s just a sensation.
So if someone is angry at me, I don’t feel angry at myself - I just feel their anger being directed at me
The way I believe it works is through resonance. Have a look at this video that illustrates it with wine glasses: https://youtu.be/lTl0badhh8Y
People are like wine glasses that vibrate how they are feeling and if someone is capable of resonating with them, they begin to feel it too.
If my baseline feeling is far from anger (I’m feeling a strong positive emotion), I’ll feel other people’s negative emotions less, or not at all.
It strikes me that I went on at great length but didn’t directly answer your main question.
Targeted emotions felt via affective empathy (at least for me and presumably for others) aee generally either directed at the same target as they are for the source or untargeted. Though sometimes, they can end up being directed at the wrong target.
I think the way it generally works is that if I both feel affective empathy and experience cognitive empathy, then the emotion ends up aimed at the same target, since the cognitive empathy provides a framework for it. For instance, I feel someone else’s anger and understand who they’re angry at and why and agree that it’s justified, so I end up angry at that target too.
And yes - if I’m the target and I grasp the idea behind it, so experience cognitive empathy, then I do become my own target.
If I don’t have the context for cognitive empathy though, the emotion is just sort of there. I’m just aware that being in this place or around these people or whatever is putting me on edge. I don’t quite feel the full sense of the emotion then, presumably because it needs context and a target to fully manifest. Instead, I feel a vaguer, less directed form of it - like being around angry people without really focusing on it, so not getting cognitive empathy, just leaves me feeling unaccountably stressed and cranky. Or being around sad people makes me feel unaccountably melancholy.
And along with that, one thing it definitely does is prime me to find something to direct it at. It’s not just that I feel unaccountably cranky or melancholy or whatever, but that I’m likely going to (over)react to the first thing that happens that provides something like justification for the full-blown emotion. Like once it starts, it has to find a way to fully manifest.
I agree wholeheartedly with all you have said. It is especially frustrating when someone else’s emotions prime me to feel that emotion overwhelmingly when the next slightly justifiable situation occurs.
For example, I had a friend who was going through the end of a terrible marriage and we talked about it a lot. She would leave, and then the next thing that came out of someone else’s mouth would often make me snap at them, which would confuse them. I would feel justified in my anger at the time because it felt so real, but later realize it was just carry over from my conversation with my friend.
Luckily, she is divorced now and doing great.
