Sensitivity and Somatic Empathy
Before the evolution of language, we understood others by feeling with them, sharing their emotional, physiological and mental states. Through shared embodied experience we could predict how those around us were going to behave — a strategy that enhanced our chances of survival. Modern humans retain this skill, and ‘highly sensitive’ individuals rely on this means of social perception more than most.
Empathy as an ancient intelligence
The most important facet of intelligence — biologically speaking — is to be able to ‘read’ others. If you can’t discern good from bad intentions, you won’t last long.
Unconscious comprehension sits within the remit of empathy — a sophisticated concept with a variety of definitions. At its core, empathy is understanding and sharing the feelings of others. It involves both thinking and feeling. Although sympathy is a close ally, it is different. With sympathy we feel for another person as a separate individual whereas with empathy we feel with them.
Although cognitive and somatic empathy merge during our everyday lives (as they do with sympathy) they have completely different neurological pathways because they evolved at different times in our species’ past. Neuroscientists find that the neurological architecture on which somatic empathy is based to be much more ancient than that on which cognitive empathy is based.
A similar timeline emerges during our own development. When we are young, we understand others by feeling with them. We have a poor ability to separate self from other but as we get more discerning and can then rely more on cognitive empathy. Even as adults though somatic empathy still happens, and it still precedes any mental considerations about others. In a rapid chain of a few hundred microseconds, we feel then think. This is known as the Body First model of social perception.
Due to its ancient origins, somatic empathy — feeling with others — is not solely a human trait. It is how birds and mammals ‘read’ each other, and how they predict what we are likely to do next. It requires no complex theory of mind. As a strategy for comprehension, somatic empathy is simple and efficient. How better to understand another individual than to temporarily become them, to not just walk in their shoes but get under their skin — take them on as another self?
Researchers of social perception find that we humans unconsciously assess others almost instantaneously by taking on their emotions, physiological conditions, even their thought patterns. We feel with others and thereby understand any potential threat or opportunity immediately intuitively without need for complex thought.
Individual Variation
Individuals vary in how much they rely on thinking or feeling to comprehend others. A small proportion of people (about 2%) do not experience much somatic empathy, they don’t share others’ experiences. They can work how someone might behave using their intellect (thinking), but they can’t share how someone else feels. In contrast, people with strong somatic empathy are easily overwhelmed by other people’s ‘stuff’. They cannot watch a film or go to large gathering for fear of having too many embodied responses [It is important to note that thoughts and emotions have embodied components; mind and body are not separate]. Until recently, those who feel everything they see or hear happening to someone else — were ‘diagnosed’ as having a neurological disorder called Mirror Touch Synaesthesia. Now, it is acknowledged that this condition is merely one end of a spectrum, that our reliance on somatic empathy varies between us from one extreme to another.
If you get overwhelmed by other people’s emotions or physical conditions, or you seem to know what others are intending to do without knowing how you do so, you are likely someone who experiences strong somatic empathy. This is not an abnormality, merely a trait that has been subsumed by society’s reliance on intellectual thought.
In tests, about a third of the public are aware of experiencing somatic empathy. When looking at a photograph of an athlete breaking his leg, they feel pain in their own leg. Tests also show that sharing emotional experience is almost a universal aspect of social perception in humans and other animal species. Our heart rates and breathing match, the electrical charge across our skin coordinates between us and our brains link up in a manner described as ‘brain coupling’. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly taking on other selves.
How does somatic empathy happen?
By understanding how somatic empathy works we can manage any problems we have with somatic empathy. How do I prevent myself from being harmed by other people’s conditions? How do I know what is mine and what is someone else’s? How do I avoid being overwhelmed by too much unconscious information, say, on entering a room full of people?
The mechanisms of somatic empathy are therefore important but, unfortunately, they are also incredibly complex which is why it took me four years to write a book explaining how it works. Putting it simply, we perceive what is going on outside of us by making a simulation inside and feeling—experiencing — that 3D embodied simulation of what the other person is like. When we meet others, our body automatically simulates what we perceive about them so that we can assess them experientially.
“We do not merely perceive objects and hold thoughts in our minds: all our perceptions and thought processes are felt,” neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, author of ‘Self Comes to Mind’.
If you are troubled by picking up others’ conditions, you could be someone who relies more on this ancient intelligence. Once essential for survival it seems now to be a little too ‘sensitive’ for our information-rich world. It can be helpful to reframe your experience of somatic empathy — from being a victim of how others feel to being an efficient 3D simulator.
This blog is based on my new book, ‘Another Self: How Your body Helps You Understand Others’ ISBN 9781–80049–280–6.
