Fall 2025 SOWK 530 Week 12 - Additive Empathetic Responding

Slide 1
A presentation slide with a yellow oval displays the text 'Additive Empathetic Responding.' Below, it reads: 'Jacob Campbell, Ph.D. LICSW at Heritage University, Fall 2025 Week 12 SOWK 530.'

Fall 2025 SOWK 530 Week 12 - Additive Empathetic Responding

title: Fall 2025 SOWK 530 Week 12 - Additive Empathetic Responding date: 2025-11-11 00:16:50 location: Heritage University tags:

  • Heritage University
  • MSW Program
  • SOWK 530 presentation_video: > “” description: >
Slide 2
Slide displays text under 'Agenda' and 'Learning Objectives.' Agenda: 'Week 12 expectations,' 'Additive empathy and interpretation.' Objectives: 'Identify and apply additive empathy components.' Bold text reads 'Plan for Week 12.'

Plan for Week 12

Agenda

  • Week 12 expectations
  • Additive empathy and interpretation

Learning Objective

Identify and apply the components of additive empathy and interpretive responses in client interactions.

Slide 3
Slide detailing 'Week 12 Activities' features a list of tasks, including reading Chapter 17, participating in forums, creating handouts, and practicing confrontation skills using Reddit.

Week 12 Activities

What You Should Be Doing This Week

  • Read and do a quiz for chapter 17
  • Six Replies Across any of the Forums
    • Chapter 17 Discussion
    • Develop a Handout or Information Sheet About Content in the Chapter
    • Exploring the Meaning and Use of Confrontation in Practice
    • Practice Effective Assertive Confrontation
    • Using Reddit to Practice Surface and Additive Empathetic Responses
Slide 4
Boxes labeled 'Emotional Empathy' and 'Cognitive Empathy' describe empathy types. Emotional Empathy is the feeling and understanding of clients' emotions. Cognitive Empathy translates these feelings into words.

Types of Empathy

We can think about both cognitive and emotional empathy.

“Empathy has been defined as perceiving, understanding, experiencing, and responding to the emotional state of another person (Barker, 2003, p. 141).” (Hepworth, 2023, p. 513). Decety and Jackson (2004) describe two basic types of empathy.

Emotional empathy, specifically at the cognitive level, includes expressed feeling and an understanding that infers or reflects clients’ emotions. In addition, your cognitive empathy translates those feelings into words that ultimately help clients take problem-solving action.

  • Emotional Empathy - as the ability to be affected by a client’s emotions
  • Cognitive Empathy - is the translation of such feelings into words
Slide 5
A diagram showing 'Components of Empathy' with three parts: Affective Sharing, Self-Awareness, and Mental Flexibility, illustrating empathic responding. Text includes aspects like recognition and skills in receptivity.

Components of Empathy

There are three basic components of empathy laid out by the Hepworth text.

  • Affective Sharing: Person sharing something to respond to
  • Self-Awareness: so that the social worker recognizes himself or herself as different from the person with whom he or she has empathy
  • Mental Flexibility: requiring skills in both turning on receptivity and turning it off. Such skills are essential for regulating compassion fatigue by enabling the social worker to distance themselves from the client’s experience (Adams, Boscarinao, & Figley, 2006; Harr & Moore, 2011).

(Hepworth, et al. 2017)

Slide 6
Two simple human figures stand on blocks labeled 'What the client knows about themselves' and 'Additive Empathic Responses & Interpretation.' Dotted arcs connect them, labeled 'Simple Reflection' and 'Going Beyond.' Text explains interpretation helps broaden clients' perspectives (Hepworth, et al. 2023).

Additive Empathic Responses & Interpretation

“Additive empathic responses go somewhat beyond what clients have expressed and, therefore, require some degree of inference by social workers. Thus, these responses are moderately interpretive— that is, they interpret forces operating to produce feelings, cognitions, reactions, and behavioral patterns” (Hepworth, p. 513). Cormier, Nurius, and Osborn (2009) describe that

Interpretation is intended to help clients view their problems from a different perspective, thereby creating new possibilities for remedial courses of action

  • Lead to Interpretation: Such additive empathic responses lead us to interpretation
  • The identification of patterns, goals, and wishes that clients imply but do not directly state. Insight through interpretation is the foremost therapeutic principle basic to psychoanalysis and closely related therapies.

(Hepworth, et al. 2023)

Slide 7
Slide displays text discussing 'Pitfalls of Additive Empathy' with lists on moderate versus deep interpretations. Green background with a simple tree graphics at the bottom, resembling a forest scene.

Pitfalls of Additive Empathy

If you never played Pitfall on the Atari (or have no idea what that is, there might be a problem… )

“moderate interpretations (those that reflect feelings that lie at the margin of the client’s experiences) facilitate self-exploration and self-awareness, whereas deep interpretations engender opposition” (Hepworth, p. 514)

We need to remember that we want to make interpretive statements that are closer to the clients own understanding a self image.

  • Use additive empathy sparingly until a sound working relationship has evolved
  • Employ these responses only when clients are engaged in self-exploration or have shown that they are ready to do so
  • Pitch these responses to the edge of clients’ self-awareness and avoid attempting to foster awareness that is remote from clients’ current awareness or experiences
  • Avoid making several additive empathic responses in succession
  • Phrase interpretive responses in tentative terms
  • To determine the accuracy of an interpretive response, carefully note clients’ reactions after offering the interpretation
  • If the client responds negatively to an interpretative response, acknowledge your probable error, respond empathically to the client’s reaction, and continue your discussion of the topic under consideration
  • When providing an interpretation to a client who is culturally different from the social worker, recognize that the client may not readily understand the message the way it was intended

(Hepworth, et al. 2023)

Slide 8
**Slide:** Title reads 'Ways of Using Additive Empathy.' A bullet point for 'Deeper feelings' introduces a pink box listing five ways to identify and clarify feelings, with a citation '(Hepworth, et al. 2023).'

Ways of Using Additive Empathy (1 of 2)

The following are some ways that we should consider using additive empathy.

  • Deeper feelings
    • To identify feelings that are only implied or hinted at in clients’ verbal messages
    • To identify feelings that underlie surface emotions
  • To clarify the nature of feelings clients express only vaguely
  • To identify feelings manifested only nonverbally
  • Challenging beliefs stated as facts

Previous textbook * To add intensity to feelings clients have minimized

Slide 9
The slide lists ways of using additive empathy, emphasizing deeper feelings, underlying meanings, wants, hidden purposes, challenging beliefs, and unrealized strengths. It is part of a presentation. (Hepworth, et al. 2023)

Ways of Using Additive Empathy (2 of 2)

  • Underlying meanings of feelings, thoughts, and behavior (all behavior is communication)
  • Wants and goals (helping develop and understand)
  • Hidden purposes of behavior (often self-protective)
  • Challenge beliefs stated as facts
  • Unrealized strengths and potentialities

(Hepworth, et al. 2023)