Apathy is a word that gets thrown around a lot in politics, particularly when trying to explain the cruelty of someone’s actions, but the term itself might be inaccurate.
Empathy is considered to be what makes or breaks communication, but how often do people mask their true feelings towards someone in order to protect the emotions of all involved? Would that be considered empathy or apathy? The term is too vague.
There are currently many theories as to why people developed empathy in the first place, most of which are about improving communication skills. A leading theory suggests it exists to help children and their mothers bond, which is especially compelling considering the skill to empathize forms when people are toddlers. A person’s upbringing shapes their perception, and parents are the first people who an individual feels a connection to. If that is disrupted, so is the development of empathy.
Empathy itself is the mirroring of others’ emotions in order to better understand them and therefore improve ability to communicate. According to one study, “while both environmental and genetic influences shape a person’s ability to empathize, we tend to have the same level of empathy throughout our lives, with no age-related decline.”
Apathy is simply the inability to understand another person’s emotions for any number of reasons. So is the problem apathy or a lack of communication? There are certain things people cannot change about themselves, such as empathy levels, but that does not mean that they have no control over their own lives. Every person has a choice in how they act and react, and clear communication is a necessity to resolving conflicts.
There are three different types of empathy: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate.
Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand others’ feelings and thoughts via nonverbal communication. Things like theater and acting exaggerate facial expressions to convey emotion, but in daily life it is most used to signify tone or clarify information being spoken without having to directly say it.
Emotional, or affective, empathy is the ability to feel with other people. When people typically use the word empathy, this is the type they are referring to. Contrary to popular belief, someone can still be highly empathetic while having low emotional empathy if other types of empathy are used instead.
Compassionate, or behavioral, empathy is wanting to do something to help someone, which requires an understanding of the struggles someone is going through. Just because someone experiences emotional empathy and feels what the person is going through, it is important to keep in mind that that is only a mirrored copy of the original from what information is available and does not mean the full situation is understood.
Because people each have distinct genetics and upbringings, each person will also have their own combination of these three types of empathy that they use to communicate. It is extremely unlikely for someone to be lacking in all three categories, and even if they are, people are not restricted to only the traits about themselves that they cannot control. Apathy doesn’t truly exist.
Applying this to what are currently classified as mental illnesses, treatments become more realistic for people if they are adjusted to fit individual strengths and weaknesses. Although everyone can work to be better at almost everything, people do tend to have natural strengths and weaknesses that should be prioritized.
For borderline personality disorder, low cognitive empathy and extremely high emotional empathy are typical. For autism, cognitive empathy tends to be low as cognitive empathy changes according to social constructs, which is hard to follow when your brain works outside of that range. For narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, low emotional empathy and high cognitive empathy are common. All of these are not controllable by the person; however the person does have a choice on how to live with it.
In any case, disorder or not, empathy types balance each other out. If one is too low, another one becomes very high to balance out, such as how when someone becomes blind they might find they can suddenly hear very well. People adapt. A moderate level of each type of empathy is not as typical as is often suggested.
Communication is difficult and is something that, for the most part, everyone has to figure out for themselves because we all have different ways of processing. Further complicating the matter, communication tends to change over generations. Redefining empathy, however, allows for more room for understanding and openness to different communication styles.
When noticing your own judgement of another person, it is important to acknowledge that communication is the responsibility of all parties involved. If someone is doing something you perceive to be “bad,” they may not realize that that is your perception. If, however, you do clearly communicate your perception and the person continues the action, it is no longer your responsibility and you should instead do your best to move on. Control what you can, and accept what you cannot.
The only person who can change you is yourself. The only people who can change other people are themselves. Attempting to force change onto someone who isn’t ready for it is in almost all cases harmful, but we can always provide support nonetheless and that will improve willingness to change.
Everyone experiences empathy differently and it is typically best not to judge someone who doesn’t experience it in the same way as you do. Most people can’t read minds, so external communication of any form is a necessary solution to the supposed problem of apathy.
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