Feeling For vs. Feeling With: Unraveling the Difference Between Having Empathy and Being an Empath

We often use the words "empathy" and "empath" interchangeably in casual conversation. If someone is kind to a grieving friend, we call them empathetic. If someone gets overwhelmed in crowded places, they might call themselves an empath.

While they share a root word and a relationship to emotions, empathy and being an empath are fundamentally different experiences. One is a universal human trait that connects us; the other is a distinct neurobiological wiring that defines how a person moves through the world.

Understanding this difference is crucial, especially for those who have spent their lives feeling "too much" and wondering why standard advice on emotional boundaries never seems to work.

What is Empathy? (The Bridge)

Empathy is widely considered a cornerstone of emotional intelligence. Psychologists generally define it as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It’s what happens when your friend tells you they just got fired, and you feel a pang of sadness on their behalf.

Empathy is often broken down into two types:

1. Cognitive Empathy: The intellectual ability to see someone else's perspective—to "walk in their shoes" mentally.

2. Emotional Empathy: The ability to feel a vicarious emotional response to what someone else is experiencing.

Crucially, empathy has a boundary. You feel for the person, and you might even feel a degree of their sadness, but you generally retain the awareness that the emotion belongs to them, not you. You can step out of their shoes when the interaction is over.

Most importantly, empathy can be learned and cultivated. It is a skill we can grow into through practice, active listening, and conscious effort to broaden our perspectives.

What is an Empath? (The Sponge)

If empathy is walking in someone’s shoes, being an empath is accidentally putting on their skin.

An empath doesn’t just understand another person’s emotions or feel sadness for them. An empath literally absorbs the energy and emotions of the people—and sometimes the environments—around them. It is an involuntary, often overwhelming experience.

For an empath, there is a highly porous boundary between self and other. They might walk into a room where two people have just been arguing and, without a word being spoken, feel a sudden rush of anxiety or anger in their own chest that they know doesn’t originate from them.

While someone with high empathy can choose to engage with someone's pain, an empath often has no choice; the data downloads automatically.

The Critical Distinction: Born vs. Grown

This brings us to the most vital difference. While empathy is a trait nearly everyone possesses to degrees and can strengthen over time, being an empath is not a learned behavior. You are born with it.

It is a constitutional, physiological state of being. You cannot take a course to become an empath, and true empaths cannot simply "turn it off."

This is where the lived experience of the empath often becomes painful, particularly in their formative years.

The "Too Sensitive" Childhood

Because empaths feel things with profound depth and are highly sensitive to their environments (lights, sounds, emotional undercurrents), their childhoods are often marked by confusion.

Before they have the vocabulary to understand what is happening to them, young empaths are frequently labeled by adults and peers who don't understand their reactions.

If you are an empath, these phrases will likely sting with familiarity:

• "You are being so dramatic."

• "Stop being so ridiculous; it’s not a big deal."

• "Why are you so sensitive all the time?"

• "You need to toughen up."

Many empaths grow up carrying deep shame because their genuine, involuntary reactions to the world—crying at a sad commercial, needing to leave a loud birthday party, feeling devastated by a friend's scolding—were laughed at or dismissed. They were told their reality was incorrect. This gaslighting often leads adult empaths to mistrust their own perceptions, believing they are fundamentally "broken" or emotionally unstable.

They weren't dramatic; their nervous systems were simply receiving ten times more input than the average child.

Backing It Up With Research: Sensory Processing Sensitivity

While the term "empath" is used more colloquially and spiritually, science has begun to validate the biological reality beneath it.

The closest scientific equivalent to the concept of an empath is what Dr. Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist and researcher, identified as the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).

Dr. Aron’s research, begun in the 1990s, identified that roughly 15-20% of the population possesses a distinct personality trait known as Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS).

SPS is not a disorder; it is an innate trait characterized by a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social, and emotional stimuli. Research using fMRI brain scans has shown that HSPs have greater brain activation in areas involved in attention, action planning, and, crucially, empathy and sensory integration.

When HSPs view photos of their partners or strangers showing emotion, their brains show more activation in the "mirror neuron" systems than non-HSPs. Mirror neurons are the parts of the brain that fire both when we act and when we observe someone else acting—they are the neurological basis for "feeling with" someone.

Dr. Aron’s research validates that for a significant segment of the population, high sensitivity and deep emotional processing are hardwired into their neurobiology from birth. They aren't "being dramatic"; their brains are physically processing more data.

Moving Forward with Validation

Empathy is a beautiful skill that the world needs more of. We should all strive to cultivate it.

But recognizing the reality of the empath—the person born with a porous nervous system—is equally important. If you are an empath, understand that your depth of feeling is not a flaw you need to "toughen up" out of existence. It is your wiring.

The goal for an empath isn't to stop feeling; it's to learn to manage the influx of data, to recognize which emotions are truly yours, and to honor your need for rest in a world that is often too loud and feels too much.

References & Further Reading

• Acevedo, B. P., Aron, E. N., Aron, A., Sangster, M. D., Collins, N., & Brown, L. L. (2014). The highly sensitive brain: an fMRI study of sensory processing sensitivity and response to others' emotions. Brain and Behavior, 4(4), 580–594.

• Key Finding: This study used functional MRI scans to show that individuals with high Sensory Processing Sensitivity display greater brain activation in the areas associated with empathy (the insula) and the mirror neuron system when viewing emotional facial expressions.

• Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (1997). Sensory-processing sensitivity and its relation to introversion and emotionality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(2), 345–368.

• Key Finding: This is the seminal research paper that established "Sensory Processing Sensitivity" as a distinct, innate personality trait found in approximately 20% of the population, distinct from introversion.

• Goleman, D. (2006). Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. Bantam Books.

• Key Finding: Provides extensive background on the distinction between cognitive empathy (understanding) and emotional empathy (feeling), and the neural mechanisms of "low-road" (automatic) vs. "high-road" (conscious) emotional processing.

©Lisa King, LPC