This paper aims to show how a phenomenological theory of empathy can be used to achieve a close interpersonal relationship that serves to support shared decision making and recovery from mental health problems. This framework can also be seen as a way to maintain a professional distance in such relationships. This can be learned through training, and that can increase the possibility of developing a deeper interpersonal understanding that will be of value to recovery-oriented practice. A close relationship can be built and maintained with a clear point of departure in the client’s personal world with all its individual presuppositions and possibilities. This does not mean that professionals cannot or should not share their own experiences or express sympathy and compassion. On the contrary, it is important to build reciprocal relationships, a form of balance that can be seen as a “professional friendship”, or a relationship that is constituted by both closeness and distance at the same time (Berggren & Gunnarsson, 2010). This view of empathy should thus be seen as a tool to build relationships with a clear focus on the client’s needs, resources, and possibilities. This makes possible a choice to share those of one’s own emotions and thoughts that are connected to the other’s experience, which can thus enrich the experience and the meaning in that experience without stealing any focus from the other’s first-person experience or the professional relationship. Phenomenological empathy thus fulfills two functions within the framework of this paper: 1. Interpersonal understanding from a second-person perspective 2. A means to build a close relationship that at the same time preserves emotional distance. Against this background, phenomenological empathy can be seen as a tool that can be used to follow the other’s expression of meaning from his or her first-person perspective, while at the same time protecting the professional from emotional contagion or any confusion about the ownership of the experience. A phenomenologically grounded theory of empathy thus constitutes one way of working to build a professional relationship that is personal but not private – a relationship that takes its point of departure in the personal world of the other while maintaining a professional role. Within an empathic attitude we are able to follow expressions of meaning as they are presented by the other and thus appear to us in the empathic encounter – face to face. 

ConclusionFollow the other’s meaning expressions horizons for meaning. Through an empathic attitude, we can also follow the personal world that constitutes the context for meaning. Possibility for individualized methods for support that are grounded in interpersonal understanding with the point of departure where the client is. The empathic attitude can also serve as a means to bridge some of the risks that can come from working within close interpersonal relationships.