Empathy is a multifaceted concept that's most commonly described as the capacity to relate to or share the emotions experienced by another. Before someone can demonstrate compassion or sympathy, a certain degree of empathy must first be experienced.
Many people will consider empathy to be an essential part of humanity, and you'll almost certainly have heard discussions about people who appear to lack this trait. They are seen as cold and uncaring.
But, is it possible for someone to have too much empathy? What would that mean for a person's quality of life?
What are the differences between empathy and sympathy?
Empathy can refer to the ability to correctly identify how someone else must be feeling (cognitive empathy) or to feel what they are feeling — which would be affective empathy. Sympathy would be a state of mind of caring for the other person's wellbeing in the context of their current emotions and situation, whereas compassion would extend that concept to include a willingness to help. These concepts are closely related, but not one and the same.
What are the different types of empathy a person can experience?
Medical researchers have identified two different types of empathy [1, 2]:
- Affective empathy: Affective empathy refers to the sensations, emotions, and feelings we get when we respond to the emotions of another. This type of empathy can include mirroring what that person is feeling or feeling stressed out when we detect another person’s anxiety or pain. Another way to describe this would be "catching" someone's emotions.
- Cognitive empathy: Cognitive empathy is sometimes referred to as “perspective taking” or the ability to "place yourself in someone else's shoes", which means we have the ability to understand and relate to other people’s emotions.
What pathways in the brain are associated with empathy?
When a person perceives another individual is in pain or suffering, the neural pain circuits in the brain are affected. At the first response when viewing someone in pain, the brain begins the process of resonance and it spurs the empathetic response. Empathy activates the inferior parietal lobule and interior frontal gyrus. [3]
In order to experience empathy for someone else, a person must understand the context of the other individual’s experience, while still being able to keep it separate from their own. Self-other discrimination is the ability to know the difference between the source of the stimuli as originating from the self or from someone else. Self-other discrimination involves the following areas of the brain; inferior parietal cortex, extrastriate body area, ventral premotor cortex, the temporoparietal junction and posterior superior temporal sulcus. [4]
What is hyper empathy?
People with a high level of empathy often wind up helping others at the expense of their own needs, which can lead to a pattern of withdrawing when they are hurt or emotionally wounded. Many research studies suggest a person’s capacity for empathy comes from a specific set of neurons, labeled mirror neurons. [3]
With hyper empathy sometimes a person will even have a physical reaction to another’s distress or pain.
Both hyper empathy and an empathy deficit can cause personal and social challenges.
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How is hyper empathy clinically defined?
Hyper empathy is not clearly defined in clinical terms.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association offers information about the diagnostic criteria clinicians use to diagnose mental health disorders. According to the DSM, hyper empathy could be classified as a Personality Disorder NOS or not otherwise specified. This diagnosis may be given when someone has features of one or more personality disorders, but not to the point where that disorder could be diagnosed. "NOS" is a type of "catch-all" that allows people who defy currently available clinical criteria to still receive a diagnosis — and therewith, potentially the help they need.
According to the DSM, the particular category for this type of mental health disorder includes [5]:
- The presence of more than one specific personality disorder which does not meet the full criteria for any one personality disorder, but together causes clinically significant distress.
- This diagnosis can also be used when a medical clinician determines that a specific personality disorder in the classification fits.
How Is Hyper Empathy Syndrome Diagnosed?
The DSM criterion for the diagnosis of hyper empathy syndrome requires the following criteria being met [5]:
- Significant impairment in self-identity and interpersonal abilities.
- One or more of the pathological personality traits in the following areas; antagonism, detachment, negative affectivity, disinhibition, compulsivity and psychoticism.
- There will be impairments in personality functioning and the person’s personality traits are not understood as normal for the developmental stage or social-cultural environment being experienced.
- The impairments in a person’s personality function and personality traits must not be completely owing to substance abuse or a general health condition.
How rare is hyper empathy?
Hyper empathy remains new to the psychiatric world; there is very little definite information about the disorder.
The woman’s case was especially unique because removing part of the temporal lobe involves an area of the brain which recognizes emotions. After the surgery was performed, the woman’s seizures stopped, but she reported a new type of emotional arousal which has lasted for the past thirteen years.
The woman’s sense of empathy seems to transcend from her body, she feels physical effects along with emotions, when experiencing empathetic anger or sadness. She reported feeling these things when seeing people on television, meeting someone in person or reading about characters in a book. She also describes an ability to decode the emotions another person is having. The woman’s newly acquired ability to empathize with others on such a profound level has been confirmed by her family members and she ranks normal in psychological tests of empathy.
The woman’s case has been reported about all over the internet and it is the very first of its kind in the scientific literature which describes such a profound change after having parts of the frontal lobe removed. Any time a person has brain surgery for epilepsy it can result in pronounced changes, but usually, it manifests as depression or anxiety, hyper empathy is a totally new and before now, unheard of occurrence.
What did the scientific study find involving the woman with hyper empathy?
In studying the lady with hyper empathy, researchers studied the woman’s psychological health using a battery of standard tests. Her mental health appeared to be completely normal on all scales. Additionally, researchers also analyzed how the woman responded to a questionnaire which was aimed at measuring empathy. The woman was also asked to complete a test involving 36 pictures of people’s eyes; her scores were compared to a test panel of ten other women who served as control subjects. The woman scored above average on the empathy tests and significantly higher on the eye test than other women in the control group. [6]
READ Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD): Emotional Dysregulation
Prognosis
While hyper empathy is a relatively new scientific phenomenon, it is an area which more researchers are studying and exploring.
- Photo courtesy of jiunn kang too by Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/jk_too/4263992458
- Photo courtesy of Alex by Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/eflon/4638453675