We talk a lot about needing more empathy. It sounds relatively easy—until you’re sitting across from someone whose version of what happened is completely different from yours.
Your spouse says that you act like you don’t care while you’re thinking, “Are you kidding? I’ve been trying my hardest.”
Or your teenager insists a boundary is completely unfair. Or your friend makes a decision that you strongly discouraged them to make. Now, they want you to support them when it didn’t work out.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
These situations are where empathy gets tricky, and much more difficult.
When we believe someone has misunderstood us, overreacted, made a poor choice, or gotten the facts wrong, our natural impulse is often to correct, defend, explain, or establish what really happened.
Or when your partner expresses anger about something you did or didn't do, can you stay empathetic? Often, we're judging the other person's intense emotion that's challenging to deal with.
But here’s the problem: judging the validity of a person’s experience interferes with our ability to understand and empathize with it.
Empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s feelings and perspective from their frame of reference while remaining grounded in our own.
That last part matters.
Empathy does not require us to adopt another person’s beliefs, conclusions, or interpretation of events. It doesn’t require us to approve of their behavior. Nor does it require us to abandon what we know and feel ourselves.
So, what does empathy mean when we don’t agree?
We need to separate three things that frequently get bundled together when empathizing:
Understanding: I can understand how this experience looks and feels from where you’re standing.
Agreement: I share your interpretation, opinion, or conclusion.
Approval: I believe your choice or behavior is acceptable.
Empathy requires understanding, but it doesn’t require agreement or approval.
I can understand why you felt hurt without agreeing that I intended to hurt you. I can understand your anger without believing everything you did while angry was appropriate. I can understand how you reached a conclusion and still reach a different one myself.
That distinction gives us room to empathize even when two people see the same situation very differently.
And thank goodness because we are unique human beings who rarely see eye-to-eye on everything.
Related reading: “The Three Kinds of Empathy: Cognitive, Emotional, and Compassionate.”
Think about how effortless empathy can feel when someone reacts exactly as you would.
“Of course, you were upset!”
“I would have felt the same way.”
“No wonder you’re angry!”
Shared experiences can help us connect quickly and deeply.
But it can also create the illusion that empathy simply means recognizing ourselves in someone else. The greater stretch comes when their response is nothing like ours would have been. You might even be thinking:
“That wouldn’t bother me in the least!”
“Why would you take it so personal?”
“I would never make that choice.”
When thoughts begin popping up like those above, we usually don’t feel like empathizing. And we can’t rely on similarity to do the work for us.
Research on perspective-taking has long distinguished between imagining how WE would feel in another person’s circumstances and trying to imagine how the situation might feel from THEIR perspective. The difference sounds subtle, but it changes where we place our attention.
One keeps us anchored primarily in ourselves. The other asks us to be curious about someone who may be quite different from ourselves.
Our similarities make identification easier; our differences ask more of our empathy.
Recommended reading: “How to Show Empathy Without Saying Sorry.”
Why is it sometimes so difficult to understand someone when we disagree?
Because disagreement can quickly become a threat to something we care about, such as our intentions, competence, fairness, or our sense of being a good person.
Imagine your partner saying, “I felt like you didn’t care about me at all this week.”
What are you most likely thinking?
You’re remembering how much you did: you rearranged your schedule to handle extra responsibilities, you checked in with them throughout the week, you gave affection and made an effort to listen intently. AND you were exhausted, too.
Before your partner finishes speaking, your brain has already been assembling evidence and making a rebuttal:
Now, you aren’t listening to understand, you’re preparing how to show them they’re wrong!
Psychological research on confirmation bias and motivated reasoning helps explain why humans tend to notice and favor information that supports what we already believe—particularly when something personally important feels at stake.
This propensity doesn’t make us uncaring people. It makes empathy more difficult precisely when we need it most—when we disagree. The internal question quietly shifts from: “What is this experience like for you?” to: “Is your version correct?”
Those are two very different conversations and result in dramatically different interactions.
We’ve all heard the advice to put yourself in someone else’s shoes—a cliché that has limitations.
We bring ourselves with us to every interaction.
If I ask, “How would I feel if that happened to me?” I’m still interpreting the experience through my own experience and value system. I may conclude, “Well, that wouldn’t bother me.” because I’m still imagining me in your circumstances.
A more useful empathy question is: “How might this experience feel to them?” The shoes aren’t enough. We have to consider the unique person wearing them: their history, expectations, values, and what this particular experience means to THEM.
We can’t ever REALLY know another person’s inner world or reality.
And that changes empathy from imagining ourselves in someone else’s situation to trying to understand theirs. Empathy asks us to stay curious about another person’s experience without requiring their experience to match our own.
Related reading: "What Is Empathy? And Why Is It Important?"
Empathy means staying understanding and present even when we may be having a completely difference opinion and experience. We’re there to understand their experience, not prove ours.
The real test is:
Sometimes empathy is simply allowing another person’s experience to have the spotlight for a moment.
Not because ours doesn’t matter, but because right now, we’re listening to THEIRS.
Related reading: "Why Empathy Is Essential to Learn and How to Be Empathetic."
When your nervous system is activated and the person you love is saying something you believe is completely unfair, knowing what empathy is and being able to empathize are two very different things.
You can understand intellectually that empathy doesn’t require agreement and still find yourself defending your intentions, correcting the facts, shutting down, or trying desperately to make the other person understand your side first.
Knowing is not the same as being able to do.
Empathy is an emotional intelligence skill. And like other skills, developing the ability to access it when you need it in real-life experiences takes learning and practice.
That’s where deeper skill development begins.
The Heartmanity Community is a dedicated space where women who want to do more than just read or listen to podcasts about healthier relationships and emotional intelligence can support one another.
It’s a place for deeper learning, real-life application, practice, reflection, guidance, and support alongside other women who are growing too. Because knowing “I want to respond differently” and being able to do it when an old reaction kicks in are two very different things.
Inside the Community, we go where a blog article can’t—beyond an intellectual understanding of emotional and relational skills—to developing the ability to live them more consistently in your life.
If you’re ready to strengthen the emotional and relational skills that enable you to stay connected to yourself and the people who matter most to you—even when relationships get messy—I’d love to welcome you into the Heartmanity Community.
Be one of the first and get on our waiting list for our upcoming launch! Email mightysupport@heartmanity.com and write WAITLIST in the subject line.