Emotional empathy

Earlier in this module, it was noted that emotional empathy (i.e., affective empathy or emotional contagion) was one of two types of empathy nurses may express.  Since empathy is a social emotion, it maintains close connections to our internal emotions and body states (Eslinger et al., 2021).

Emotional empathy is best described as being sensitive to a shift in your own emotions based on the emotional states perceived in other people.  This transference of emotional states may result in a ‘shared’ emotion (Herzog, 2016).  According to Herzog (2016), emotion sharing in the context of a therapeutic relationship is either active or passive:

  • Active emotion sharing: The nurse shares an emotional experience with the patient.  The ability to sense the patient’s emotions is, in this case, predicated by past emotions and experiences within the nurse’s own life.
  • Passive emotion sharing: Reciprocal cues (a.k.a. back-and-forth communication) bridge the gap in understanding each other, building a co-created experience (intersubjectivity) as a consequence observational learning.
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