Empathy is often described as the ability to understand or share another person's feelings. But that simple definition leaves out something important: empathy does not always happen in the same way. Sometimes you understand what another person is feeling without feeling it yourself. Sometimes their emotion seems to move through you. Sometimes your body reacts…

Empathy is the ability to understand what another person may be feeling or experiencing and, in some cases, to feel an emotional response to that experience yourself. It allows us to step outside of our own perspective for a moment and recognize that someone else's inner world may look very different from our own. But…