i’ve found it useful to distinguish between three kinds of empathy: head empathy, heart empathy, and gut empathy
head empathy is using your reasoning and theory of mind to work out what’s happening for someone else. U bring up everything U know about them and think about it and reflect on it and put yourself in their shoes that way
heart empathy is feeling for them, emotionally. imagining how U would feel in their shoes. letting yourself feel sad or happy or afraid with, alongside them.
gut empathy is using your awareness and your body to put yourself in theirs. there’s this move of mirroring their body with yours, letting in the sense perceptions of their nervous system into yours, a kind of somatic theory of mind.
all three skills are useful, but they’re different. they help U empathize or connect to someone in different ways. they show U different aspects of what it’s like to be someone else