The Importance of Empathy in Social Work

Written Original for the publisher Wiley’s client: https://www.socialworkdegrees.org/

The primary role of a social worker is to help others, which is why empathy is important for social workers. Without it, they cannot do their jobs!

Empathy is a complex multi-dimensional emotion that occurs naturally in both humans and animals. 

Humans are especially unique in their relationship with empathy because they can hone it to practical effect, by diminishing their sympathy through sound judgment to become compassionate. 

Being empathetic toward family and friends is one thing –it isn’t exactly a virtue, so much as a given. Being empathetic towards strangers, on the other hand, is completely different, as it comes much less naturally. The key to efficient social work is empathy towards strangers. 

In other words, empathy is central to social work.

But what exactly is empathy? Is empathy different from sympathy or compassion? What is the relationship between empathy and becoming a social worker? And finally, how can one become an empathetic individual capable of succeeding at social work?

What is Empathy? 

“Empathy” is a word we use colloquially to refer to our caring for others. However, empathy is a word that –especially in the context of social work– has a variety of important and somewhat dissimilar definitions, which are rather easy to conflate with one another. 

At the most basic level, empathy is the human ability to understand the mental states of other human beings. 

In this sense, if you cannot understand when another person is happy or sad, you lack empathy. This characterizes very few people in the human population, such as sociopaths.

At another level, empathy can consist of the desire to know why another person is in a particular mental state, such that it has brought about empathy in one’s own mind. T

For example, suppose one sees a loved one crying. In that case, a potential empathetic response to that, in this sense, might be to consider inquiring into the emotional causes of their distress hopeful to help resolve it. 

Empathy for humans, in this sense, is an extraordinarily deep and salient aspect of our everyday lives. 

That we care for one another and want to understand the minds of those we love is essential to humanity, such that without it, there would be no conceivable notion of human life. 

Compassion is Necessary for Social Work 

The type of empathy that is required for social work, however, must be cultivated –known as “compassion,” the distinction between empathy and compassion is highly noted in the history of both Western and Eastern philosophy.

Empathy involves what is often called “sympathy,” which is defined as feeling the feelings of others with them. 

Compassion is quite the opposite of sympathy. Compassion involves all of the attributes of empathy except for feeling the emotions of others. 

Instead of such feeling, a greater understanding of others can be derived by applying one’s reasoning faculties toward one’s efforts in understanding others. 

There will be clients whose emotional states are so drastic that to feel them in parallel with your client would be akin to relinquishing one’s ability to be a clinician.

Given that, critical judgment needs to be exercised by social workers regarding how much one becomes emotionally involved with their client’s problems. 

In all cases, however, becoming too emotionally involved is deeply inappropriate and counter-productive to the goal of helping others. 

Compassion is what makes empathy useful. When the ability to regulate our emotions, in general, is hindered, our lives become tumultuous because our emotions are what is in control, not our faculty of sound judgment. 

Being a social worker requires that one is capable of deeply understanding their clients without succumbing to the emotional states of their clients –or being so emotionally attached to their clients as to get personally involved with their case. 

In other words, the importance of empathy in social work is that you do not let empathy get the best of you but instead take it by the horns and utilize it for the greater good of your clients and your community. 

In other words, while it is important to be empathetic, it is also important to be judicious with ones sympathy in social work, as it is a double-edged sword of understanding and self-inflicted suffering. 

The Benefits and Importance of Empathy in Social Work 

Why is empathy important for social work? Its prerogative is part of social work’s job description.

When it comes to being judicious with one’s sympathy, what this doesn’t mean is to dispose oneself of all empathy. It simply means one has to learn how to understand others without letting it inflict too much emotional damage on oneself as a practitioner. 

Empathy is indispensable to conducting social work, as without the ability to understand another person, how are social workers supposed to help them? 

Lacking empathy in social work leads to insufficient care because clients necessarily have their needs and concerns overlooked through negligent treatment decisions that are unhelpful and even counterproductive. 

Part of being judicial with one’s sympathy also involves when one should be emotional during practice, as there are instances in which emotionality could be beneficial to a patient’s experience. 

Hence, striking the right balance of empathy –and not merely being baseline empathetic is crucial for success in social work, as helpful advice and genuine connection cannot be found in a client one knows nothing about. 

In short, the benefit of empathy in social work is that without it, one cannot indeed be a social worker. Hence, the importance of empathy in social work is impossible to overstate –it is a sufficient condition for the job, without which clinicians cannot successfully perform their duties. 

Lacking empathy will result in mismanaged treatment prescriptions that can potentially harm clients and communities. If one is to be a social worker, one’s care for others must be intense and genuinely so. 

How to Practice Empathy to be a Compassionate Social Worker

The empathy that comes naturally to most people is not something that needs to be practiced. However, compassion –the type of empathy most well-suited to social work– needs to be honed and requires active participation in practice from clinicians to perfect. 

In other words, while for most, it is relatively straightforward how to understand the mental states of others, it is not clear for most how to do so without negatively affecting one’s own mental states or those of other people. 

Compassion has to be taught to social workers, as without formally learning it, social workers are in a field that is primed for emotional volatility and, therefore, burnout. To avoid burnout in social workers, practicing compassion is essential. 

The precursor to becoming compassionate, however, is empathy, and some of us do need to actively learn about the type of empathy that comes naturally to most people because some people simply lack this natural aptitude. 

In the case of compassion, what this amounts to is making a conscious effort to look critically at your own emotions as they relate to clinical settings and to exercise judgment on what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate.

By contrast, if you struggle with empathy in general – if you struggle to understand the mental states of others in any meaningful sense– making an active effort to think about what others are going through each day will be indispensable to developing a keener sense of empathy. 

Another strategy is to put oneself in a context with unfamiliar people –that is, others with dissimilar socio-cultural backgrounds. 

In doing so, attempt to focus on the similarities between yourself and them. 

It is more challenging to understand the differences we have between ourselves and others, so looking for similarities is an excellent way to ease oneself into more significant empathetic challenges like compassion. 

Developing a genuine interest in the ongoings of others and then actively going out to understand them is necessary to develop enough empathy to successfully operate under the conditions social work demands of its clinicians. 

Lacking empathy does not immediately render an individual sociopathic. 

Many individuals who lack empathy only possess this deficit on account of causes and conditions that are utterly out of their control, such as a lack of access to educational resources and enduring abuse or negligence during childhood. 

For most that lack empathy to any notable degree and are interested in becoming a social worker, not all hope is lost, as it is more accurate to say that an empathetic core resides somewhere inside such folks that need to be worked up through the surface. 

Training for empathy in this lattermost respect, however, should probably be done under the supervision of a clinician, as the root of such pathology is quite likely clinical. 

The take-home point, therefore, is that if you are currently not someone who regards yourself as “highly empathetic,” that does not mean you are barred from becoming a social worker. 

By that token, however, if you are already highly empathetic, that is absolutely advantageous to those interested in becoming a social worker. 

What this does mean for those with less empathy, though, is that becoming a social worker is going to take a lot of emotional labor –moreso than if your task is simply to develop compassion, as opposed to empathy followed by compassion.