NightTalk withGushwell Brooks

Empathy is a crucial component of effective communication, humanitarianism and spiritual development.

It is defined as a skill of being able to accurately perceive and express the understanding of another person's frame of reference that is separate from your own.

RELATED: Understanding compassion fatigue

However, what is the downside to empathy?

Eusebius McKaiser chats to clinical psychologist Jeanie Cave about the downside of empathy.

Empathy needs to be balanced with boundaries and it needs to be balanced with appropriate responsibility.

— Jeanie Cave, Clinical psychologist

She says empathy is an important variable that is needed in the world.

It is incredibly important that empathy be protected or else it can be exploited. Empathy is not an emotion, it is a perceptual experience where you can accurately perceive the internal frame of reference of another person.

— Jeanie Cave, Clinical psychologist

She says empathy is a cognitive experience that can lead to emotional experience.

If you are highly sensitive, that can be a sign that you are a highly empathic person. It is not that empaths feel more deeply, it is that empaths perceive more widely.

— Jeanie Cave, Clinical psychologist

Listen below to the full conversation on the downside of empathy: