But you don’t know how I feel…

“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.” -J.K. Rowling

A key component of what we do at my organization is emotional intelligence. So of course, questions come up about empathy, a component of EQ. During a recent presentation, someone asked How can you empathize with someone if you haven’t been through that particular situation?

Can you understand how someone is feeling if you haven’t experienced it? I say that yes, as human beings, we come wired for that ability. But not everyone will use it. If someone can empathize, the reason is not because they have been through it, but because they developed the ability to identify with and understand the others’ situation, feelings, and/or motives.
Here’s why I think that. There are many theories about emotions, but basically you have a classification system, and then you have a level of intensity or valence within that. The image below is an example of a classification system:

Take any state on that picture, and within that exists a continuum of low to high. Everyone experiences general highs and lows in mood and everyone experiences some level of anxiety at some point, for example. There is considerable variation in the intensity of emotions. As with most things, there are variations within individuals (i.e., one day I’m sad, the next day I’m happy), between individuals (i.e., Ellen is more relaxed than Paul), and between groups (i.e., Americans are more stressed than Europeans).

Sometimes that intensity is extreme, as in anxiety disorders or mood disorders. Those extremes are due to a dysregulation of the control mechanism in the brain that manages these states of being. But.. if you have ever been anxious or sad, you have tasted a small aspect of what others feel like. The difference is that the intensity is on a different level. But it comes from the same place, the same biological mechanism.

Each event will affect everyone differently anyway, so there’s no logic in saying because you haven’t been through it, you don’t get it. Would it bother you if someone stole a pen off your desk? How much would it bother you if you failed an exam? How would it personally affect you if your neighbor’s dog died? Some overreact, some underreact. That reaction is the result of the sum of their past experiences.

When negative events have happened to me, I intellectualized it and said, it’s no big deal, everyone goes through this eventually, right? My experience is not extraordinary. But it is. Everyone’s experience is unique by the very nature of human beings. Dynamic situation, different personalities, different past experiences, different factors.

So I say yes, we can understand what someone else is feeling. But there is nothing special about going through the experience that gives you that ability. Even when two people are affected by the same exact experience they can’t know for sure how it is affecting someone else… but they do have a better ability to understand.