It rained and rained and rained some more. It rained so much I was running three dehumidifiers in the house and our wood floors were still buckling. The concrete under my floors was wet, not standing water wet, but damp. The dehumidifiers couldn’t keep up and I was beginning to lose it. No, actually I lost it. On my knees, I was crouched over the buckled wood plank and I was crying – just crying and complaining. I was tired, I was frustrated and I was having a full fledged break down over the situation.

My husband Jason was standing there – trying to figure out what to do, how to help, and I yelled at him. I told him to back off, just let me be, let me sit in my misery. He was at a loss. He just stared at me in full amazement. This was 1 week short of our ten year anniversary and probably the first time he’d ever seen me just cry over “nothing.”

You see, I am just not a very emotional person. When you lose your cool, I become calmer. When you cry I simply don’t. I have never been a very emotional person.

As we came out of COVID, I noticed people seemed angrier and more emotional. The greater emotional displays were talked about by bosses, employees, referees, etc. We spoke with our staff in our small businesses about how customers were so quick to be rude and how we could better respond with empathy, not attitude. Yet when a professional CEO-level woman lashed out at me in a public meeting with intense uninvoked venom, I was shocked. It seemed so extreme for the situation.

Her outburst offered one more opportunity to offer grace, a chance to bite my tongue and hold my tone. Since this was a fellow female peer, I kinda dismissed the outburst and excused her behavior. I blamed it on the stress of her job, COVID-induced emotions and just a bad day.

Other people in the room, however, seemed much more phased by this display of momentary lack of professionalism. They expressed to me their shock, their feelings that her very rude and hurtful outburst was not acceptable. They pointed out that she was clearly no longer a “Rachael fan.” #dangwhathappened

After a few gentle nudges from me and her peers, she agreed to my request for a meeting to discuss the moment, to determine the root cause of the uncharacteristic behavior. What she said to me (or at me really) was pretty gut wrenching. She said she was mad at me and felt that since I had no empathy for others (in her opinion) she no longer trusted, nor liked me. She felt completely justified in dressing me down publicly.

As I shared, I am not an overly emotional person, but I am not unempathetic, nor would my husband or close friends agree with the assessment. However, taking her words to heart I began to research and study empathy. Because trust me, those words did not fall on deaf ears. I was hurt, in a very personal way.

In my research, I learned there are three types of empathy. With the help of my sounding board of friends, I determine my lack of emotionally empathy, is offset by my VERY cognitively empathetic and somewhat compassionately empathetic tendencies.

Here is what I learned about each of three main types of empathy:

• Emotional empathy: This is the ability to feel the emotions of another person. It involves experiencing the same emotions as the other person, such as sadness, happiness, or anger.
• Cognitive empathy: This is the ability to understand and share in the feelings of another person. It involves being able to put yourself in their shoes and see the world from their perspective.
• Compassionate empathy: This is the combination of cognitive and emotional empathy. It involves both understanding and feeling the emotions of another person, and being motivated to help them.

If this makes you curious to learn more, you may check out “A Slight Change of Plans” podcast titled, ” How to Build Empathy and Avoid Burnout.” I found it to be a great podcast on the topic.

Scientists once believed our capacity for empathy remained more or less fixed throughout our lives. But research by Jamil Zaki, a psychology professor at Stanford, finds that empathy is actually a skill we can cultivate.

And cultivating empathy has ebbs and flows in my life based on my ongoing experiences. Empathy has allowed me to connect with others and build strong relationships. It can also completely drain me.

You see when I was in youth ministry, my empathy for the youth drained my soul. I would absorb their hurts, their pains, their trials and tribulations and I experienced burnout and deep sadness. Then in my officiating careeer I learned how to be cognitively empathetic. I would seek to understand WHY the coach was so mad, WHY the player was frustrated, but I could understand and share their feelings without actually feeling them myself and absorbing them.

What I learned from this woman’s evaluation of my empathy, was that she had such limited understanding of me, such little cognitive empathy of me, that she assumed my lack of emotional empathy around the board room table, or the girls group meant I was not empathetic at all. That was not and is not true.

The girlfriends who know me know I am deeply empathetic. They rely on me to hear them, to be open to their experiences and feelings, to be kind and compassionate. They know they can call me day or night, happy or sad and I will hear them – truly hear them.

There are many ways to express and develop empathy. In the podcast I referenced above, Jamil explains that people often are NOT good at all three types, and that empathy is so much more than the emotional empathy.

So you still may not see me cry when you cry or pretend like I “feel” what you feel. But I promise to listen. I promise to use my empathic traits of seeking to understand, of listening and maybe even trying to solve the problem.

And to the lady that made me cry by being mean to me, who told me I was unempathetic, I believe you were transferring your own characteristics to me. You see yourself as someone who has to work to be empathetic. You have probably been told you are not empathetic. And so, when you lashed out at me, I hope you get a chance to study and better understand empathy.