Empathy is emotionally understanding what people around you feel—the ability to position yourself in others' mental state. Empathics reflect emotions from surroundings, feeling sad when they are sad, grieving with them, and feeling stressed when they are. Mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that respond equally when we perform an action and when we witness someone else perform the same action, Essentially, they respond to actions that we observe in others. The fascinating part is that mirror neurons fire in the same way when we actually recreate that action ourselves. Being able to experience empathy has many benefits including:

- Building good social connections with others: Understanding what others feel allows you to respond appropriately in social situations.

- Empathizing with your surroundings teaches you to regulate your own emotions: emotional regulation allows you to manage negative feelings such as anxiety without feeling overwhelmed. 

- Empathy prompts helping behaviors: feeling empathy for others helps create helpful behaviors.

- Becoming Creative: absorbing so much from your environment, provides you with a creative outlet to express these emotions.

People with empathy have the tendency to be really good listeners, easily understand what others feel, be overwhelmed by tragic events, deeply care about other people, and be drained in social situations.

There are three types of empathy:

- Affective empathy: is the ability to understand another person’s emotions and respond appropriately. This means you know and understand another’s problem on an intellectual level without taking on their emotions as your own. It allows you to respond to another person’s emotions in terms of logic more than feelings.

- Somatic empathy: Having a physical reaction as a response to what someone else experiences. For example, when you see someone feeling embarrassed you might start to blush or have an upset stomach.

- Cognitive empathy: This is being able to understand another person’s mental state and what they might be thinking in response to their situation. “With this kind of empathy we not only understand a person’s predicament and feel with them but are spontaneously moved to help, if needed.” – Daniel Goleman

There are two main factors that contribute to the ability to experience empathy: genetics and socialism. Parents pass down genes that contribute to overall personality, including the propensity toward empathy, and compassion. Furthermore, people are also socialized by their parents, peers, communities, and society. How people treat others, as well as how they feel about others, is often a reflection of the beliefs and values that were instilled at a very young age.