Career Paths For Empaths In The Working World
Empathy is the ability to feel another person's emotions or deeply understand what someone is going through. It often accompanies compassion and care. A person with high levels of empathy is often called an empath. Empaths are individuals who can be highly aware of the emotions of the people around them. If not managed, they might feel they take in the emotions of everyone around them, including strangers.
Empaths might feel sensitive to cruel jokes, the suffering of others, and conflicts on a daily basis. They may also wish to change the minds of others, make a difference in the world, or help people feel better. In some cases, these desires and urges can make empaths feel overwhelmed or experience distressing symptoms, such as fear, stress, or depression.
Empaths might experience more empathy, compassion, or sympathy than others. Finding a career that works for an empath can feel challenging. However, some careers may work well for someone who feels many emotions daily.
Empathy could have positive and negative sides
Having a high level of empathy can feel meaningful and challenging. Empaths might feel that they cannot "turn off" their empathy. These situations may cause stress.
Potential careers for empaths
Below are a few potential careers for those who identify as empaths.
Psychologist
A psychologist is a professional that can diagnose and treat mental health conditions and symptoms. They might also identify and work with behavioral issues. As there are many myths about mental health in society, empaths may thrive in a career where they can help others and teach about emotions in a professional field.
Empaths might care about humanity, understand others, and try to put themselves in others' shoes. An empath is also known as a highly sensitive person because they can sense what the other individual is going through on a strong emotional level. They may feel empowered and happy when they can help or relate to others. These qualities may be beneficial for a therapist who works with sensitive individuals.
Social worker
Social workers often work in sensitive settings, such as humanities, non-profits, and outreach programs. These professionals may work with survivors of abuse, children, minorities, immigrants, refugees, or developing countries. As traumatic situations can be challenging for those involved, having a professional who feels empathetic and cares about the job can make a difference for those experiencing need.
Teacher
Empaths may be skilled teachers because they often understand their students' emotions. They may want to see their students succeed academically and emotionally. They might understand if there are emotional or behavioral challenges in the classroom.
Those working with young children as a teacher often study childhood development and psychology. Professors might have a Ph.D. in psychology or education. Teachers can impact the lives of their students in many ways, and an empathetic teacher might be remembered for a long time.
Non-profit worker
Non-profit organizations may work toward a specific cause, whether mental health, animal rights, education, environmental rights, or other humanitarian issues. Empaths may gravitate toward situations, companies, and organizations where they can help others, and many non-profit workers also have a degree in psychology or social work.
Artist
Art is often connected to emotions and has proven benefits for mental health. Partaking in art might mean creating a piece that expresses how you feel or see the world. It could also help others by giving them something to relate to or smile about.
Creative people might experience high levels of empathy. Their intense emotions could help them create vibrant, unique art that others are drawn to.
Guidance or career counselor
If you don't want to be a teacher but enjoy working in an educational setting, being a guidance counselor or a career counselor might fit. You may work with people but won't be as responsible for direct care as a therapist or teacher. Your compassion might allow you to consider detailed responses when supporting students through their studies or goals. Students may feel nervous or afraid about their future. As a guidance counselor, you may offer support and understanding.
Nurse or doctor
Studies show that empathy is essential in medical fields. If you have ever had a doctor that dismissed your symptoms, treated you as a number, or didn't listen to you, you may understand how it can feel challenging to meet with someone who doesn't take the time to practice empathy.
Doctors and nurses can be empathetic by being open to their patients' experiences. They might work hard to offer responses and support to those they meet. Although these fields can be difficult, time-consuming, and stressful, some empaths may choose to pursue them to make a difference in the care patients receive.
Entrepreneur
As an empath, you may feel driven to start your own business or organization, such as a non-profit or life coach. Being your own boss can allow you to make your own rules, set boundaries, and run your business ethically.
Empaths can work anywhere
You can work anywhere that you feel passionate about. List your strengths and limitations and consider taking a career placement test to learn more about what fits your personality.
Online counseling may help empaths
If you are an empath, you might experience difficulty setting boundaries with others because of your drive to help them. In these cases, learning about boundaries and healthy relationships in counseling might serve you. A therapist can provide coping mechanisms and help you practice self-care.
Being an empath may feel overwhelming, scary, or confusing at times. You might find that you feel the best meeting with a therapist from afar. Online therapy allows individuals to get care from any location with an internet connection using a personal device. Additionally, online counseling has been proven as effective as in-person therapy for treating common mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.
If you are an empath or an empathetic person looking for counseling online, consider signing up for a platform like BetterHelp, which allows you to connect with a counselor within 48 hours of signing up.
Takeaway
What jobs require high empathy?
Many jobs may benefit from high empathy. Someone who helps other people understand themselves better, such as a therapist or career coach, will often be well-served by an ability to intuit other people’s emotions. High empathy can also help in careers involving assisting people with difficult feelings, anticipating their needs, or establishing a quick rapport.
We listed several possible high-empathy jobs in the body of the article, but other examples include:
- Mediator
- Negotiator
- Human resources professional
- Marketer
- Designer
- Writer
- Anthropologist
- Librarian
- Veterinarian
- Caregiver or hospice worker
- Clergy member
A person with high empathy considering a particular career path may want to ask: “Is this a position where being in tune with someone else’s feelings would be an advantage?” Many empaths excel at exactly these types of roles.
hat are highly empathetic people?
In general, a highly empathetic person is someone who has a strong capacity for thinking and feeling from the perspective of someone else. The personality trait most people call empathy may have multiple dimensions, including:
- Cognitive empathy — the ability to accurately identify the feelings and desires of others
- Affective empathy — the tendency to share the emotions of others
- Prosocial concern — a desire for the well-being of others
Research suggests these components of empathy usually occur together, though not always. For example, a manipulative person might have high social cognition skills but low emotional resonance and prosocial concern. However, many empaths exhibit all three traits strongly.
Are empaths highly intelligent?
Some evidence suggests that high levels of empathy and prosocial behavior may be correlated with overall intelligence. In other words, on average, empathetic people might be more likely to be highly intelligent.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that every empath is highly intelligent. There may be a great deal of individual variation.
Some developmental studies also suggest that IQ could be more strongly linked with cognitive empathy — what many people call emotional intelligence — than emotional empathy. A person who’s described as an empath due to their strong tendency to take on the feelings of others might not necessarily have high levels of cognitive or emotional intelligence.
Is having empathy a talent?
Empathy can be considered a useful talent or skill in many scenarios. For example, studies from the medical profession that empathy is correlated with better health outcomes for patients. A more empathetic physician, registered nurse, or other care professional may be better at things like:
- Assessing pain and distress
- Eliciting trust from patients
- Gauging the effectiveness of treatment
- Building a positive rapport with patients
- Communicating with other members of a care team
While some people may see empathy as an innate talent that’s part of a person’s basic personality, there’s evidence that it can be improved through training and education. A 2015 review of the scientific literature concluded that caregivers can learn to improve their empathetic skills. Some employee wellness initiatives may even promote training in compassion and empathy as a way to improve mental well-being.
What jobs should highly sensitive people do?
Although empathy can be a useful trait in many people-centered professions, it may also come with a high degree of sensitivity to the pain of others. Many empaths tend to feel the emotions of others strongly. This may increase the risk of “compassion fatigue” and burnout in certain emotionally draining jobs, such as:
- Medical careers
- Mental health services
- Home or hospice care
- Social work
- Jobs in the criminal justice system
- Veterinary services
Not all empathetic individuals are necessarily at equal risk for burnout in these fields. But those who are highly sensitive to emotional distress in other people might be happier in jobs involving less day-to-day interaction with suffering people.
Some good jobs for empaths that are compatible with high emotional sensitivity could include:
- Administrative roles such as management or human resources
- Career counseling or other positions offering guidance to non-distressed people
- Working as an artist, writer, or other creative professional
- Marketing, design, and other fields emphasizing cognitive over affective empathy
Are empaths rare?
Levels of empathy as a personality trait can vary widely throughout the population. Having high empathy is not necessarily rare.
However, some people use the term “empath” to mean someone with an extremely high degree of empathy that leads them to vividly feel the interior states of the people around them. Some people doubt this phenomenon is real, and even if it is, it’s likely to be quite rare.
Some evidence suggests that empaths of this type may exist. Researchers have identified a rare condition called “mirror-touch synaesthesia”, in which a person feels physical sensations in response to seeing someone else touched. A 2018 study reported that this condition is linked to higher-than-typical levels of affective empathy and skill at reading facial expressions. This type of synaesthesia seems to be fairly rare, found in less than 3% of the population.
Why is my empathy so strong?
The factors that drive a person’s level of empathy are not completely understood. This trait might partly be due to life experiences. Helpful and compassionate parenting styles, for example, may help children develop higher levels of empathy.
Other influences on empathy may be genetic. A 2016 study suggested that about 28% of cognitive empathy and 52-57% of affective empathy could be due to inherited traits.
Some research suggests that high empathy may be related to high sensory sensitivity. Perceiving sensations more strongly might increase your ability to notice the subtle cues that signal emotion in others. It might also lead to a higher sensitivity to the bodily sensations provoked by your own emotions.
How rare are empathetic people?
Most people likely have at least some degree of empathy for others. Serious deficits in empathy are associated with mental illnesses such as antisocial personality disorder. This condition is believed to be quite rare, affecting between 0.6% and 3.6% of the population. And even people with this type of condition may not be completely lacking in empathy.
The prevalence of extremely high empathy can be more difficult to estimate, since these people may be much less likely to commit crimes and come to the attention of researchers. That said, research suggests that most personality traits follow a statistically normal distribution, meaning that extreme values at the high and low end are about equally common. This suggests that unusually empathetic people may be about as rare as unusually non-empathic people.
What personality types are most empaths?
A major cross-cultural study of empathy concluded that it seems to be significantly correlated with two of the “Big Five” personality traits. The strongest correlation is with agreeableness, a measurement of a person’s tendency toward things like trust, friendliness, affection, and prosocial behavior. This suggests that empaths tend to have a positive disposition toward other people.
The other major correlation was with conscientiousness. This trait is linked with things like orderliness, organization, patience, and self-discipline. Empathetic people may be highly motivated to make others happy, which could prompt the kind of diligent behavior associated with high conscientiousness.
What is the highest form of an empath?
There may not be a single life path best suited to all empaths. One high-empathy person might be best suited to practice as a physician, while another could be put off by the emotional strain of caring for suffering people and performing medical procedures. There are empathetic individuals leading thriving lives as career coaches, graphic designers, massage therapists, and countless other roles. People in every field may be able to benefit from the perspective of an empath.
A strongly empathetic person may need to consider their own needs as well as their talents when choosing a profession. Empathy alone may not ensure a fulfilling and successful career in fields like medicine or social work. Emotional resilience can be just as important.
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