What Kind of Empath Are You?

A Self-Scoring Guide to the Four Types of Empathy

The word empathy is thrown around a lot these days. It shows up in therapy rooms, HR trainings, Instagram bios, and TED Talks. And yet, for how often we invoke it, we rarely pause to ask, what kind of empathy are we even talking about?

Most people, when they say someone is empathic, are referring to what psychologists call affective empathy: the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. Think crying during someone else’s heartbreak, wincing when a friend gets bad news, feeling that gut-pull when a stranger’s in pain. This is the most visible form of empathy and arguably the most socially celebrated.

However, empathy is not a single thing; it is not even a single system in the body. Empathy is a multi-layered capacity that can manifest emotionally, mentally, physically, or even spiritually, depending on the person. And the truth is, not everyone feels empathy the same way. Some feel it in their bones. Some see it more than feel it. Others sense it in subtle, intuitive waves that transcend logic altogether.

I’ve spent years studying this, across clinical, spiritual, and interpersonal domains, and have come to recognize four core types of empathy that show up again and again:

• Affective Empathy – emotional resonance with others

• Cognitive Empathy – perspective-taking and psychological understanding

• Somatic Empathy – bodily attunement to others’ physical or energetic states

• Spiritual Empathy – intuitive connection to the essence, soul, or larger whole

This new guide is a self-assessment designed to help you discern which type (or types) of empathy are most dominant in you. You might find you resonate with one very clearly, or you may notice strong capacities in two or three. A rare few, what I’d call “true empaths,” will score high across the board. And some people, whether due to trauma, neurotype, conditioning, or spiritual design, may find that they score lower in one area but higher in another.

None of this is a value judgment.

This guide is not about proving that you’re “more empathic” than someone else. It’s about recognizing how you feel others, how your system reads and resonates with the world, and where your strengths (or blind spots) may lie. It’s a self-awareness tool, not a badge or a test of worth.

Inside the Download:

• A four-part self-scoring quiz to identify your dominant empathy type(s)

• In-depth descriptions of each empathy type

• Clear instructions for honest, grounded self-assessment

• A compassionate closing reflection to help you integrate what you discover

This tool also serves as a companion piece to the "Levels of Empathy" download, which explores how empathy functions across development; this one looks at the types of empathy you express most.

You can download the complete 16-page PDF below.

👇🏼