Answer:
In life, people will feel pain and cry, it’s just the way life works. Having someone there to understand and comfort someone else who is feeling those thing has such a large impact. When you are going through a rough time, having a friend or family who is able to put themselves in your shoes can make you feel validated and heard, like you aren’t alone in your suffering. This brings me to the topic of why empathy is so unbelievably important to have. Of course not everyone will be able to understand and actually be able to put themselves in your shoes but as humans we are able to hear someone's problems and comfort them regardless of experience, albeit not all are great with comforting others.
From what I know so far, there are three main kinds of empathy primarily that humans can have. The first of the three is cognitive empathy, which is a very great skill to have. Cognitive empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone’s shoes and see from their perspective. You don’t necessarily have to experience what they’ve been through or even experience similar emotions to have this type of empathy. A great example of this is when you go and comfort a friend who broke up with their partner, you don’t have to have experienced breaking up with someone before to feel empathy towards your friend and be able to comfort them through that. While cognitive empathy can be comforting to some people, a lot of people also want sympathy from you, which to have cognitive empathy, you won’t always feel sympathetic towards the person to feel empathy towards them. Basically, you don’t have to feel bad for them, but you can put yourself in their perspective.
The second of the three is emotional empathy which is where you feel the same emotion as the person you feel empathy for. This type of empathy specifically helps us relate and feel bad for someone when they are hurting. When you are at a funeral someone may be crying, which makes you cry as well because you can see that they are hurting and know why they are hurting no matter if you feel the same. This type of empathy can be both comforting and destructive because some people’s emotions can be amplified when someone else there is feeling the same, kind of similar to a “trigger”. It can also be overwhelming for both people, so being aware of this and having self control is very important.
The final empathy is compassionate empathy where you can understand, feel, and want to help someone else in pain. Compassionate empathy is where you actually try and do your best to help the person or try to resolve the issue, not necessarily meaning you have to cry with them or feel their pain to comfort them. This one specifically is the one where you take time to learn and understand what they are going through so then they can work through it. A good example is a therapist because they sit and listen to someone while trying to work through the person’s problems so they can get better.
While there are three main types of empathy, there are also two other ones called spiritual and somatic empathy. Spiritual empathy is the feeling to understand other worldly beings and spiritual things (pretty self explanatory) and somatic is to feel someone else’s pain in a physical way.
Empathy is so important to anyone and everyone, it’s what makes us able to understand and build connections with other people and also what makes us not robots. Not everyone will be able to understand other people but everyone still does their best to understand and that in itself can be powerful to anyone who feels bad in any way. Empathy helps us be human and helps us communicate with other people, otherwise everyone would feel isolated and feel like no one cares, causing more issues and possible even mental health problems. People should be grateful that this skill exists and that they can use it with others and people can use it with them, it’s truly amazing.