Is Empathy Inborn Or Can We Learn It?

Empathy___”Your pain in my heart”.

When my son was 8 years old, we had moved into a new housing development. There was fast construction everywhere and many small kids of the labourers were running about while their mothers were busy building the housing project.

My son noticed that these kids had no shoes as they played in the dirt. He ran indoors and brought out a brand-new pair I had just bought him, and proudly gifted them his shoes. Feeling really thrilled about doing this he came excitedly to tell me to see how well the shoes were fitting a little boy!

So, is empathy inborn, or can we learn it?

I think the capacity for empathy is an innate human trait and like every other trait we all have varied amounts according to the situation and relationships. Though, as we grow, some of us may have dampened this innate ability because of the many trials and tribulations that life puts us through.

There is a subtle but important difference between sympathy and empathy.

Sympathy is what we feel when a friend loses a parent or a loved one. We naturally feel sympathy for her and we may send a card or make an equally warm gesture. But for the most part we get on with our lives.

Empathy, on the other hand, is when we take more time...time to remember how we felt when we suffered a similar loss...we recognise the pain and realise that she must deal with it in her own way.

Empathy has been described as “your pain in my heart”.

Teaching empathy has become a big focus among progressive schools. These studies suggest that perhaps kindness doesn’t need to be taught anew as much as supported more continuously from an early age. Children’s empathy seems inborn, a gift that is ours as a society to lose depending on how we react to our early life experiences.

Empathy has also been called ‘vicarious introspection’, commonly described as the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes. Though it’s important to make sure that you’re assessing how they would feel in their shoes not how you would feel in their shoes! Most often, the problem is, despite the fact that we yearn for others to try fitting into our shoes, are we ready to do the same for them?

To me, empathy is the bedrock of intimacy and closeness. In its absence relationships remain emotionally shallow defined largely by mutual interests or shared activities. Without empathy we are clueless about people’s inner selves even though we may be working with them every day.

There’s another significant value that empathy generates and that is that it puts the brakes on when we are behaving badly and become aware of the pain we are causing. When there are no brakes and an excess of self-interest you can end up with burnt relationships.

The biggest value for me in becoming aware of the expression of empathy, is that it makes us easier to relate to, friendlier....it makes us more human.


So, the next time you realize that the relationship you have with a friend is not what you want, take the time to show some empathy. It might be just what she needs. One day it’ll be what you need too!