Empathic Responding:

Empathic responding is outward action or verbal expression to communicate understanding for another’s emotions. A form of cognitive empathy, empathic responding converts internal emotional states of feeling sympathy or care for someone’s hardship to taking steps to help. Typically, empathic responding involves meaningful communications (active listening, validating feelings, offering appropriate verbal responses). An example of empathic responding is, “It looks like you’re struggling right now, can I help?”