When a person experiences empathy for someone in need or distress, they usually experience not just warm and sympathetic feelings, but also distress, sadness and sometimes anger. The current trend is to separate out these various elements, either to find the “real” empathy or to differentiate the individual effects each emotion has on motivation (usually to help). But is it not plausible that co-experienced emotions have a reciprocal effect on one another? If so, to understand such mixed emotional episodes, we cannot do with simply understanding one element. In this paper, I argue in favor of a holistic approach to empathy where not only the empathic element, but also the experiential and motivational aspects are understood in terms of affect. In other words, what makes the emotion blend empathic is the addition of care, but neither the experience, nor the motivation can be understood in the absence of the co-occurring emotions sadness and distress.