Somatic Empathy is Not About Being 'Nice'

Somatic empathy is not about being nice; nor is it something only ‘empaths’ experience. It is an ancient intelligence that enables us to understand and therefore predict the intentions of others.

This is important because as soon as people hear me talk about ‘empathy’ they assume I am talking about sympathy or compassion—certainly some kind of nice response to others. But empathy as understanding through sharing another’s condition can be utilised by people for nefarious purposes. It can also be used by predators to feel into their prey in order to ‘read’ which individual is most vulnerable.

Although sharing someone’s condition will often lead to compassion and / or sympathy, not necessarily.

Empathy expert, Brene Brown, explains the difference between empathy and sympathy by pointing out that with sympathy we feel for someone else whereas with empathy we feel with them. Sympathy requires a separation between self and other that is not present during empathy.

Herein lies a clue to what somatic empathy is and why it happens. It comes down to how our perceptual systems discerns self from other—and how our brain uses this nebulous distinction to ‘read’ others with sophisticated accuracy.

In my book ANOTHER SELF I explain how social neuroscientists think we simulate other selves in our own body in order to experience them and thereby better understand them—and that this was the way we understood each other before the evolution of language.