What Empathy Really Means in Counselling (Beyond 'I Understand')

Learn what empathy really means in counselling from a person-centred perspective. Guidance for CPCAB Level 2 students on Carl Rogers' core conditions.

In our previous post about communicating empathy, we explored how to demonstrate empathic understanding. Now let's explore what empathy actually means."

If you're training at CPCAB Level 2, you probably arrived believing you're empathic. You care about people. You're a good listener. You feel for others.

But empathy in counselling means something very different from what most students expect.

It's not saying "I understand" or "I know how you feel." It's not relating everything back to your own experience. It's not sympathy, agreement, or being nice.

Let's explore what students get wrong about empathy, what Carl Rogers meant by empathic understanding, and how you develop this core attitude throughout your training.

What Students Get Wrong About Empathy

The Belief You're Already Empathic

There's often a strong belief that empathy is something you have in abundance. That it's neutral and available to all. The way it's presented is as if somehow it's without obstacle, without things in the way. A constant flow.

"I'm really empathic." "I'm a very empathic person." "I'm too empathic sometimes."

But what this might be saying is there's a mistake in understanding what empathy actually is.

You're perceiving someone's emotions through your own experience. Your perception of their experience, not necessarily genuine empathy. With best intentions, you believe when you arrive on the course that you're doing that. But it's not what you're offering.

Phrases That Give Away the Misunderstanding

These phrases don't display empathy:

• "I'm really sorry to hear that."

• "That sounds awful for you."

• "I know how you feel."

• "I totally understand where you're coming from."

Whilst maybe best intentions lie behind them, what comes across is quite different.

There's often an urge to think what the person is saying is familiar or similar to your own experience. That impulse to empathy through "Oh, me too. I've had that same experience."

That's not empathy.

As we've discussed in previous posts about your own material and how that gets in the way, you have to refer back to that. Your own stuff blocks empathy.

Empathy Is Not Sympathy

Sometimes empathy is mistaken for sympathy. Sympathy is disconnection through witnessing an experience someone else is going through.

A phrase such as "Oh, that sounds really awful for you. Should we go and have a coffee? Or go and do something else?"

There's distancing and disconnection in that. Sympathy is recognising the situation but not really attending to it. More about offering some sort of solution maybe, or changing the subject.

As if somehow a discomfort in others is a little bit too much discomfort for ourselves.

Empathy Is Not Agreement

To empathise is distinctly different from agreement. Agreement is: I fully agree with what that person's saying, how they're saying it, and the opinions that lie behind it.

Someone says something you disagree with, but you still empathise with how they got there or how they feel about it. There's a distinctive difference.

At Level 2, there's a challenge figuring those two points out. Someone might be choosing to act in a way that isn't in line with how you've done things, would do things, or maybe even on principle is very different from yourself.

Students feel shut down thinking: "Well, I can't offer empathy because I can't agree with it."

That's a misunderstanding of empathy.

Empathy is reaching out, listening to the experience of the other, connecting with a part of yourself that understands some parts of that, and coming back with either some observation, reflection, or simply an attitude of acknowledgement.

Empathy Is Not Always Verbal

Sometimes empathy is not a verbal communication but a manner of being. A way of being, to quote Carl Rogers.

Something you develop on these courses is that attitude, that empathy flows through rather than needs to be necessarily explained or identified.

Empathy is not so much a performance but a way of connecting with your own experiencing that you then offer the other person.

It doesn't have to be verbal. A head nod in a particular pace, in a particular way, often indicates all that's necessary to feel that person's been heard and understood.

"I Feel Your Pain" Is Not Empathic

Saying "I feel your pain" is separate. It's making an assumption of what the pain is and making an association between that and your own experience of pain.

It's not really getting closer to the individual's feeling and what they're going through, how they're experiencing it.

Empathy is not always being nice or being supportive or agreement or head nodding all the time. It's more than that.

It's not taking the positive and focussing on that, cheerleading the helpee. It's far more centred in your own experiencing, and that person maybe sensing what that is, feeling what you haven't communicated so they actually connect with it.

Empathy Is Not Compassion

There are differences between compassion and empathy, particularly regarding how you feel about understanding another's experience. You're compassionate about it. But that's not the same as empathy.

Empathy is where you dig into your own emotions, your own experiencing, retrieve it, and then return it in some communication form that shows your understanding and appreciation of what the person is going through.

Why "I Understand" Shuts People Down

You have to be mindful of saying "I understand what you mean entirely."

You just shut the person down. It interferes with them explaining in detail what they're going through.

"I understand" means in some ways: you don't have to explain anymore. I get it.

That doesn't open up the conversation. That doesn't help the person express themselves further. It closes it down because now they feel they haven't been heard, not fully anyway.

Watch out for the words "I understand." They close down conversations.

What Empathy Actually Is (Carl Rogers)

I don't believe I have the phrases to coin this appropriately. I'll give you my interpretation of how I see it. This is continually learning to understand.

My Definition

Empathy is connecting with the other's experiencing in a way that offers you insight to them, and about them, in effect through their own eyes. It allows you to step into their shoes of what they are experiencing.

You offer the signals and communication that correspond with that, whether verbal or non-verbal.

Empathy is being offered by the helper stepping into those shoes, experiencing what they notice, and then returning it in some form to the other as a demonstration of understanding and connection with that deep level experiencing they're going through.

Carl Rogers' Core Conditions

Carl Rogers identified this as one of the six necessary and sufficient conditions for change. Alongside the ones offered by the helper are unconditional positive regard and congruence.

These three offerings from the helper nurture the conditions in which change is promoted for the helpee.

Entering Their Frame of Reference

From a theoretical term, you enter into that person's frame of reference. You enter into their world as if it were your own.

Without losing that bit of yourself within it. Without losing the "as if."

You don't lose yourself within it. You're within it and still retain a sense of yourself.

Connecting with the individual's experiencing through their eyes, you work hard to remove your own frame of reference, to really pay attention to the individual's.

As covered in the post about putting your own material to one side, it's very much about recognising that you have a frame. How do you reduce that frame in order to be closer connected to the individual's frame, prepared to understand it?

Do they feel heard and supported? Even if they don't know, even if they can't touch the experience, they are not alone with it. They have someone alongside.

That very much is empathy. Someone who's willing to be with them in that space at the same time. Without judgement.

With acceptance, with respect and appreciation for the helpee.

Suspending Your Frame of Reference

Suspending your frame of reference means literally putting your stuff to one side to better understand the individual's.

In so many ways, this is not a skill or technique to apply, though there are bits inside that you consider to help frame it.

Everything is an attitude, a desire to put yourself to one side in order to connect with the other's experiencing.

As simple as that may sound, it is incredibly challenging to put yourself to one side when you don't want to enter someone's frame because maybe it feels distressing to you.

You have to work through years of training to move that to one side, address it in personal therapy or supervision, in order to connect with the individual and be there with them in their aloneness. But not alone at the same time.

Receiving, Perceiving, Noticing

Receiving and perceiving and noticing your own signals are an indication of you experiencing empathy with the other. You use that as information to offer your understanding and empathy back to the helpee.

Connecting with those parts of yourself you're experiencing, then offering it back. It may be accurate or inaccurate, but something you're providing for the helpee to see if it actually matches their experiencing.

When you get as close as you can to connecting with their experiencing rather than interpretation of it, not looking to intellectualise what they're going through but connect deeper, empathically understanding what they're going through.

You Don't Need the Same Experience

This is not about having experienced the same things they have at all. You connect empathically with an individual and understand without having experienced it.

You will at some point be able to connect with whatever they're going through.

Whilst the situation, the events presented by the helpee may be unique to them, when you take the layers away and look beneath the surface further and further, you come back to some less complicated feelings and emotions.

Pain. Hurt. Loneliness. Hunger. Helplessness. Abandonment, maybe.

These, in some way, you all connect with at some parts of yourself. You're utilising that information to help you understand and conceive of the other person and bridge those connections.

You have to touch a part of yourself in order to connect with the other.

Empathy Alongside Unconditional Positive Regard

Empathy, alongside unconditional positive regard (that respect of the individual that requires no conditions, that requires the helpee not to be another version of themselves, that they simply be authentic to who they are in whatever form that may be) builds upon empathy.

You're offering it in a way that says: no matter who you are, I prize you, I respect you. I empathise with what you're going through.

These bond together to create the conditions in which another will feel heard.

In so doing, in so addressing that and bringing it forward with your conditions of being a version of yourself as helper, you establish greater congruence within yourself. This level of congruence of who you are becomes a tacit invitation to the other to consider that maybe they too deserve fewer conditions around their lives.

That they be congruent with themselves, authentic and real to whoever they are, not the version they feel they needed to have been.

These parts of theory, you cover at deeper levels on Level 3 and beyond. But sufficient to say on Level 2, you get a touch, a sense of these conditions which support therapeutic change.

Empathy vs Sympathy

As Brené Brown talks about, empathy creates connection. Sympathy promotes disconnection.

Sympathy is separation from the other. Empathy is inclusion of and within the other.

How Students Develop Empathic Understanding

First Step: Deal With Your Own Stuff

Go to the other post about how you have to deal with your stuff to not get in the way. The beginning is to notice your own issues, histories, relationships, personality that impact the helping relationship.

That post really covers how you need to begin to pay attention to your own experiencing in order to set it to one side.

Having read that, come back to this and consider: this is a lot harder than you may expect.

You've been conditioned to be in a particular way. Conditioned to believe you're empathic. Actually, it's not that you're not, but you have to recognise you're bringing a lot more of yourself (your interpretation, your personality, your versions, your judgements) into conversations.

You have to work through each of those layers to notice them, attend to them by putting them to one side, deal with them in your own self-reflections or personal therapy.

Your Own Self Gets in the Way

Your own self hugely gets in the way of empathy, particularly if you feel judgemental about the individual. Unable to really connect with them. Unable to respect them. Unable to therefore want to empathise with them.

This gets in the way of what Rogers spoke about. The therapist shifts. The therapy doesn't change.

You have to be mindful that you filter what you're hearing through your own experiences. "Oh, I totally understand. Oh, I've done that myself. I've been there just like you. When I went through this..."

All filtered, all rinsed through your own perception. That's not what you're looking for as helping practitioners.

You have to recognise you're doing that. That's fine. That's okay. That's why you're on Level 2, beginning your journey of working how you move that, how you remove those own experiences, how you put the filter to one side. Recognising it's not helpful, therapeutic, or useful for the other.

Reflection and Paraphrasing Demonstrate Empathy

Empathy in terms of demonstration, outside of those non-verbal attitudes, is capitalised most when you use the active listening skills of reflection and paraphrasing.

If you consider that to be heard and understood is to have your experience returned, showing listening and showing empathy without imposition of your own frame, your own experiences, what purer way is there to offer empathy than to return it?

That says: I've listened. I heard. I appreciate. I'm not going to interfere with my own experiences, my own thoughts, my prejudices, my judgements, and certainly not my agreement.

I connect on that level there.

Reflection Is a Mirror

As a helper, imagine you're standing in front of a mirror next to your helpee. They're combing their hair. You reflect back: "You're combing your hair."

It simply notices what's happening in the moment. It illustrates you're paying attention. You're not imposing.

Paraphrasing Captures Meaning

Paraphrasing is a version of that, but now adding in your reinterpretation of the meaning of the thing the helpee is saying.

Example: The helpee says, "I've got so many demands on my time. I've got work deadlines coming in. I have a range of family events to plan for. I need to see my friends on a regular basis as well as keep fit."

A paraphrase that could capture that from the helper to the helpee is: "Time sounds really strangled" or "It sounds like you have a lot of demands and expectations placed on you."

You're capturing all those things, capturing the essence of all those phrases, offering another way with few words but capturing the intention and the sound of it. This offers empathic understanding.

The Power of Silence

A purer way of less imposition sits with silence, as we explored in our post about why silence feels uncomfortable.

Think about how empathy is: I am not going to interrupt you. I'm not going to get in the way of this. I simply listen and hold space while you reflect and think. I am not going to interfere, interrupt, or in any way impress upon you my needs, but simply hold silence alongside you.

That feels empathic. That feels collaborative. That feels unhurried. That feels congruent to the experience the other's going through.

You get a sense of all the things that nurture and support empathy and offering empathic understanding.

What Gets in the Way

Judgements. Assumptions. The deletions and distortions you often use in what you hear. How you filter it through what you want to hear, filter it through your own experience.

Judgement, lack of respect of the other, disagreement with what they're doing: all block empathy because you have no desire to connect any further with that person. You feel they're not aligned to you.

All that judgement comes through. That's understandable. Yet you still work with it actively to diminish it, put it to one side, deal with it at a separate time.

Rather than going to judgement, you recognise you may be doing that. You move it to one side. You actually pay greater attention because you've worked through the obstacle you're experiencing that blocks empathy. Then you reapply it and connect at a deeper level, uninterrupted by judgement, deletions, or assumptions.

Understanding vs Fixing

Fixing comes from the perception that someone is broken. Rogers believed, and you uphold, that someone's not broken. They're just trying to find ways to express their experience.

That shifts the paradigm hugely.

Already with those words, you break apart from the idea that someone is broken and therefore needs fixing, that they're wrong and need to be turned right. You recognise someone is simply trying to adapt to their experiencing and express it.

Now you become curious. Now you become interested. Now you drop that judgement and look to replace it with: tell me more about that. Empathise to get closer to what they're going through.

Understanding and empathy is a route for curiosity to thrive. Fixing shifts the power to the helper fixing the issue or that there's something broken. That's not analogous to what you offer as helpers or counsellors.

How to Communicate Without "I Understand"

Go back to the three basics: silence, reflection, paraphrasing.

Alongside the attitudes. What would it be like to really offer someone full non-judgement? What would it be like to really prize what they do, no matter how that displays itself, no matter how they're expressing their experiencing?

That emanates from someone. That is perceived by the other. It doesn't require any words around it. It's non-verbal.

The Ongoing Journey

This is where you start at Level 2: a gentle exploration of what empathy is and what it isn't, and how you might begin to express that in a variety of ways covered in this post.

It remains an ongoing journey because empathy is blocked by many different things.

You reduce that empathy because as practitioners you're tired, or you don't align with the person's viewpoints, or something else is going on in your world that distracts you, or you're ill maybe. Burnout too.

You have to be mindful of all those things getting in the way.

Whilst you go through training through Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, you pay attention to all those elements. That's part of the journey because the journey of self-inquiry never ends. It continues post-qualification.

That's why empathy is a core attitude throughout the person-centred approach you offer at Level 2 and Level 3, diving even deeper on diploma Level 4 courses where the exploration of person-centred and Rogerian thinking takes it to a whole new level.

It's something to practise, something to learn from. That's why feedback within skill sessions on the course is so important. Recognising when you're confronted by challenges and how you might manage those.

Ready to Progress Your Training?

If you're navigating CPCAB Level 2 and learning to suspend your own frame of reference, connect with the helpee's experiencing through their eyes, and recognise that empathy is an attitude rather than a technique, you're developing the core conditions that underpin person-centred work.

When you're ready to progress to CPCAB Level 3, where you'll explore empathy alongside unconditional positive regard and congruence in greater depth, we'd love to support your journey. Our approach values the Rogerian understanding that people aren't broken, they're simply trying to express their experience, and that empathy creates the conditions in which change becomes possible.

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About The School of Counselling

The School of Counselling is a CPCAB-approved training centre and BACP member organisation, specialising in person-centred counselling training. We support students through their journey from Level 2 helper skills through to qualified practice, with experienced tutors who understand that empathy is not a skill to perform but an attitude to embody. We're committed to helping you develop the core conditions that Carl Rogers identified as necessary and sufficient for therapeutic change.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between empathy and sympathy?

Empathy creates connection. Sympathy promotes disconnection. Sympathy is separation from the other, offering solutions or changing the subject because their discomfort is too much for you. Empathy is inclusion of and within the other, stepping into their shoes, experiencing what they notice, and returning it as demonstration of understanding. Sympathy says "that sounds awful, let's get coffee." Empathy says "I'm here with you in this, you're not alone."

Why is saying "I understand" problematic in counselling?

It shuts the person down. It interferes with them explaining in detail what they're going through. "I understand" means you don't have to explain anymore, I get it. That doesn't open up the conversation or help them express themselves further. It closes it down because they feel they haven't been fully heard. Watch out for "I understand" because it closes conversations rather than deepening them.

Do I need to have experienced the same thing to be empathic?

No. You connect empathically with someone and understand without having experienced it. Whilst the situation may be unique to them, when you take the layers away and look beneath the surface, you come back to less complicated feelings: pain, hurt, loneliness, helplessness, abandonment. These you all connect with at some part of yourself. You use that information to understand and bridge connections. You touch a part of yourself to connect with the other.

How do reflection and paraphrasing demonstrate empathy?

They return the person's experience without imposing your own frame, experiences, thoughts, prejudices, or judgements. Reflection mirrors what's happening: "You're combing your hair." Paraphrasing captures the meaning: "Time sounds really strangled." Both say: I've listened, I heard, I appreciate. What purer way is there to offer empathy than to return it? They show you're paying attention without interfering with your own stuff.

Why is empathy so much harder than students expect?

You've been conditioned to believe you're empathic, but you're bringing a lot more of yourself (your interpretation, personality, judgements) into conversations. You filter everything through your own experiences. Your own self hugely gets in the way, particularly if you feel judgemental or unable to respect them. You have to work through years of training to move that to one side, address it in personal therapy or supervision, to connect with the individual and be there with them. It's an ongoing journey of self-inquiry that never ends.