How to Develop Empathy in Relationships

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsHow Empathy Helps RelationshipsPrioritize ListeningShare Their FeelingsMake Yourself VulnerableOffer Your HelpEmpathy-Building Strategies

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

How Empathy Helps Relationships

Prioritize Listening

Share Their Feelings

Make Yourself Vulnerable

Offer Your Help

Empathy-Building Strategies

Empathyis a powerful force that helps maintain social order and cooperation, which is what makes it such a powerful force in relationships. It is the mechanism that allows people to understand and relate to others.

Empathy is a necessary precursor to intimacy,trust, and belonging. It is also the feeling that makes it difficult to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others.

At a GlanceEmpathy is vital for the health and longevity of relationships. Without it, we can’t build the understanding we need to forge close, supportive connections.

At a Glance

Empathy is vital for the health and longevity of relationships. Without it, we can’t build the understanding we need to forge close, supportive connections.

Benefits of Empathy in Relationships

Empathy can even affect therapy. Research has shown that empathy can lead to strongertherapeutic relationshipsassociated with better treatment outcomes.

Interestingly, research shows that happier people tend to be less aware of negative emotions in others despite rating themselves as more empathic.However, it is essential to practice empathy, regardless of mood to create greater happiness for ourselves and others.

Practicing the key components of empathy can help you better understand and interact with people in your life.

Press Play for Advice on Empathy

Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take to become a more empathetic person and strengthen yourinterpersonal relationships. Evidence suggests that you can learn to become more empathetic, but you need to practice these skills regularly to maintain your progress.

Some strategies that can help include the following:

Prioritize Listening to Build Greater Empathy

Before you can connect with what someone else is feeling, you have to recognize what that feeling is.Listening is crucial—but not always easy.

When a good friend calls you and needs to vent about how stressful work has been or how tough things have been since their recent breakup, the emotion in their voice usually gets your attention pretty quickly. It gets more complicated when conversations happen amidst distractions and with less apparent emotional weight.

Empathy begins when you set the intention of listening for emotion. Make an effort to notice the signals people are giving that can indicate what they are feeling.

Your ownemotionscan pose a significant barrier when noticing what others are feeling. When you are having a conversation and are looking only at your feelings and how you can communicate them, you might not be leaving enough attention available to take in what’s going on at the other end. Making an effort to actively listen can help strengthen your emotional understanding and empathy.

How to Practice Active Listening

Once you recognize emotion in another person, empathy puts you squarely in that person’s shoes. Empathy is not feeling whatyouwould feel in that situation; it is stepping beside yourself and adopting their emotions for a few moments.

Mirror neurons are responsible for getting your heart racing when you admire athletes running through a stadium at your favorite sporting event or making you recoil in pain when watching unfortunate blunders in a funny viral video.

When people become immersed in someone else’sgrief, sadness, or irritation, this empathy helps them stand next to them and console them with greater understanding. It also sends a message that they are willing to take on a painful emotion so that others don’t have to go it alone.

Build Empathy By Making Yourself Vulnerable

Empathic connections are a two-way street. Allowing yourself to fully take in another person’s emotion can enhance your relationships, and allowing yourself to be vulnerable to others can amplify such connections.

When you share experiences of your own challenging emotions, like guilt, anxiety, andshame, you create opportunities for others to empathize with you.

Being vulnerablestrengthens your own empathy in two ways. First, feeling the value of empathy when it’s reflected back to you can deepen your commitment to being empathic for others. You also gain more comfort navigating tough emotions in conversations with others.

Empathy Compels Help and Action

If empathy rests at sharing innegative emotion, happiness can suffer. When people feel deep sadness for the victims of a natural disaster, they get closer to putting themselves in other people’s shoes.

Feeling someone else’s pain can enhance asense of belonging. It also helps people to feel understood. However, this alone doesn’t fully maximize the opportunity to improve well-being.

The key advantage of knowing what another person is going through is that you can better identify what other people need. Because empathy means that you are adopting the emotion but not the tough situation that gave rise to it, you are usually in a more empowered place to help.

For empathy to be most effective and maximize well-being, it is important to feel both the pain of another and also know that you are in a position todo something about it.

Effective empathy allowed participants to feel the pain of the shock enough that they wanted to help but not so much that they were reluctant to take it on themselves.

More Empathy-Building Strategies

Remember that empathy is a skill you can build with time and practice. By paying attention, listening, and taking steps to help, you can foster stronger,healthier relationships.

Keep in Mind

Empathy not only allows you to understand others—it can also give you the motivation you need to make a difference. Whether that means consoling a friend, buying a small gift for someone who needs it, or donating to causes helping natural disaster victims, empathy becomes effective when you use it as motivation to do something about the problem.

When you see someone else going through a hard time, be sure to listen and share, but also clearly identify what you can do to help. The follow-through on empathy means initiating positive change for others. The beautiful thing about empathy is that when others begin to flourish, it improves your own life as well.

How to Be More Empathetic

7 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Decety J, Bartal IB, Uzefovsky F, Knafo-Noam A.Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2016;371(1686):20150077. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0077Moudatsou M, Stavropoulou A, Philalithis A, Koukouli S.The role of empathy in health and social care professionals.Healthcare (Basel). 2020;8(1):26. doi:10.3390/healthcare8010026B J, Kesavadev J, Shrivastava A, Saboo B, Makkar BM.Evolving scope of clinical empathy in the current era of medical practice.Cureus. 2023;15(6):e40041. doi:10.7759/cureus.40041Devlin HC, Zaki J, Ong DC, Gruber J.Not as good as you think? Trait positive emotion is associated with increased self-reported empathy but decreased empathic performance.PLoS ONE. 2014;9(10):e110470. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0110470Kataoka H, Iwase T, Ogawa H, et al.Can communication skills training improve empathy? A six-year longitudinal study of medical students in Japan.Medical Teacher. 2019;41(2):195-200. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2018.1460657Jeon H, Lee SH.From neurons to social beings: Short review of the mirror neuron system research and its socio-psychological and psychiatric implications.Clin Psychopharmacol Neurosci. 2018;16(1):18-31. doi:10.9758/cpn.2018.16.1.18Batson CD, Duncan BD, Ackerman P, Buckley T, Birch K.Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation?.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.1981;40(2):290–302. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.40.2.290

7 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Decety J, Bartal IB, Uzefovsky F, Knafo-Noam A.Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2016;371(1686):20150077. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0077Moudatsou M, Stavropoulou A, Philalithis A, Koukouli S.The role of empathy in health and social care professionals.Healthcare (Basel). 2020;8(1):26. doi:10.3390/healthcare8010026B J, Kesavadev J, Shrivastava A, Saboo B, Makkar BM.Evolving scope of clinical empathy in the current era of medical practice.Cureus. 2023;15(6):e40041. doi:10.7759/cureus.40041Devlin HC, Zaki J, Ong DC, Gruber J.Not as good as you think? Trait positive emotion is associated with increased self-reported empathy but decreased empathic performance.PLoS ONE. 2014;9(10):e110470. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0110470Kataoka H, Iwase T, Ogawa H, et al.Can communication skills training improve empathy? A six-year longitudinal study of medical students in Japan.Medical Teacher. 2019;41(2):195-200. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2018.1460657Jeon H, Lee SH.From neurons to social beings: Short review of the mirror neuron system research and its socio-psychological and psychiatric implications.Clin Psychopharmacol Neurosci. 2018;16(1):18-31. doi:10.9758/cpn.2018.16.1.18Batson CD, Duncan BD, Ackerman P, Buckley T, Birch K.Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation?.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.1981;40(2):290–302. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.40.2.290

Decety J, Bartal IB, Uzefovsky F, Knafo-Noam A.Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2016;371(1686):20150077. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0077Moudatsou M, Stavropoulou A, Philalithis A, Koukouli S.The role of empathy in health and social care professionals.Healthcare (Basel). 2020;8(1):26. doi:10.3390/healthcare8010026B J, Kesavadev J, Shrivastava A, Saboo B, Makkar BM.Evolving scope of clinical empathy in the current era of medical practice.Cureus. 2023;15(6):e40041. doi:10.7759/cureus.40041Devlin HC, Zaki J, Ong DC, Gruber J.Not as good as you think? Trait positive emotion is associated with increased self-reported empathy but decreased empathic performance.PLoS ONE. 2014;9(10):e110470. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0110470Kataoka H, Iwase T, Ogawa H, et al.Can communication skills training improve empathy? A six-year longitudinal study of medical students in Japan.Medical Teacher. 2019;41(2):195-200. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2018.1460657Jeon H, Lee SH.From neurons to social beings: Short review of the mirror neuron system research and its socio-psychological and psychiatric implications.Clin Psychopharmacol Neurosci. 2018;16(1):18-31. doi:10.9758/cpn.2018.16.1.18Batson CD, Duncan BD, Ackerman P, Buckley T, Birch K.Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation?.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.1981;40(2):290–302. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.40.2.290

Moudatsou M, Stavropoulou A, Philalithis A, Koukouli S.The role of empathy in health and social care professionals.Healthcare (Basel). 2020;8(1):26. doi:10.3390/healthcare8010026

B J, Kesavadev J, Shrivastava A, Saboo B, Makkar BM.Evolving scope of clinical empathy in the current era of medical practice.Cureus. 2023;15(6):e40041. doi:10.7759/cureus.40041

Devlin HC, Zaki J, Ong DC, Gruber J.Not as good as you think? Trait positive emotion is associated with increased self-reported empathy but decreased empathic performance.PLoS ONE. 2014;9(10):e110470. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0110470

Kataoka H, Iwase T, Ogawa H, et al.Can communication skills training improve empathy? A six-year longitudinal study of medical students in Japan.Medical Teacher. 2019;41(2):195-200. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2018.1460657

Jeon H, Lee SH.From neurons to social beings: Short review of the mirror neuron system research and its socio-psychological and psychiatric implications.Clin Psychopharmacol Neurosci. 2018;16(1):18-31. doi:10.9758/cpn.2018.16.1.18

Batson CD, Duncan BD, Ackerman P, Buckley T, Birch K.Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation?.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.1981;40(2):290–302. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.40.2.290

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At a Glance#

Benefits of Empathy in Relationships#

Press Play for Advice on Empathy#

Prioritize Listening to Build Greater Empathy#

Empathy Requires Sharing Their Feelings#

Build Empathy By Making Yourself Vulnerable#

Empathy Compels Help and Action#

More Empathy-Building Strategies#

Keep in Mind#