Is There Such a Thing as Self-Empathy? (2024)

What is empathy?

Empathy is the ability to share and understand the feelings of others, which, by definition, involves others! We can’t mirror ourselves; we can’t step out of our own life experiences to walk in our own shoes. In spite of this impossibility, we do hear about the idea of “self-empathy” and are even encouraged to practice it. I welcome the advice for us to be more introspective about our own feelings and motivations, but let’s be clear: That is not empathy.

I am not writing about this to be contrary or argumentative. I have been thinking about this because I worry that it is one more way for us to misunderstand what it means to engage in empathy. And one of my goals in researching and writing about empathy has been to clarify what we know through research and how we can then implement what we know in meaningful ways.

Empathy is a shared act.

Sharing feelings and understanding others is what connects us as human beings. The noted biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal, based on his study of interactions among primates and humans, describes empathy as the “glue that holds communities together.”¹ Empathy is the skill we develop to help us be in sync with others so we can live socially. Through empathy, we contribute to the important tasks of coordinating daily life activities with others and care for those in need. Empathy is a shared activity.

I am not discounting the ideas that are reflected in trying to apply empathy to oneself. But such efforts are solo engagements. These efforts involve self-reflection and introspection, which are very important. These are skills we can use to understand our own motivations and how we might come across to others. While such introspection is helpful to increase our self-awareness, empathy connects us to others.

Definitions of empathy vary.

Empathy is complicated and often defined in varying ways. The psychology scholar C. Daniel Batson, after decades of researching empathy, pulled together the numerous conceptualizations of empathy and identified eight ways that empathy has been defined by researchers.² While some of the definitions veer off to describe sympathy or compassion, and some articulate only a part of empathy, Batson concludes that these various definitions share the view that empathy is a process through which “one person can come to know the internal state of another” (p.11) and, with that knowledge, can be motivated to respond to others with care. Thus, empathy contributes to our shared social well-being.

How is “self-empathy” viewed?

Taking a philosophical perspective, Nancy Sherman identifies self-empathy in the context of serving as a way for soldiers who experience the moral injuries of war to heal.³ She views it as a form of “self-friendship” with taking enough emotional distance to develop a fairer assessment of how one might have behaved and survived the moral injuries that can occur in the experience of war, which involves shame or guilt. This is a vital insight that deserves our attention. And I think that empathy has a role in healing from moral injury.

In fact, what Sherman describes includes two of the key components of interpersonal empathy: self-other awareness and emotion regulation. Self-other awareness describes the ability to share the emotions of others but differentiate between our emotions and theirs, and emotion regulation is the ability to find balance and not let our emotions overwhelm us. Using these two components of interpersonal empathy might help us view past experiences from a different light and address the impact of shame and guilt from moral injury. While valuable and important, I would not classify this as empathy.

Why does this matter?

I do not mean this as academic posturing (my definition is better than your definition...). I am writing about clarity in understanding what is and is not empathy because I do not want to dilute the importance of empathy. When we promote empathy, we are promoting engagement with others.

Another key component of empathy is perspective-taking, what we typically refer to as walking in the shoes of others. This is what makes empathy a tool for social understanding. It does not have us turn inward and be the sole judge of our interactions and behaviors.

Empathy practiced to its full extent (that is, engaging in all the components) actually takes us out of our own head. It is by definition social because it must involve others. We have other ways to turn inward (self-reflection, introspection, meditation, mindfulness), and I encourage people to engage in that kind of personal assessment. But I worry that we do not have enough push to go outside ourselves and consider others deeply. Empathy does that; it takes us outside ourselves. My goal is to help people build empathy, and we do that by creating ways that we can engage with others to create deep and meaningful social connections.

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