This study defines Acting with Empathy as the core theoretical axis describing how social work interns integrate bearing—the internal, receptive capacity to experience and accept intense service-related emotions—with acting—the external, strategic effort to regulate these emotions and engage in professional self-care. Through this dual process, interns develop six self-care pathways: emotional boundary building, physical–mental adjustment, cognitive reconstruction, professional identity formation, external support, and structural reflection. These pathways evolve across three developmental stages—challenge, adjustment, and transformation—constituting a developmental rhythm of coping and growth. The model reveals how emotional tension is transformed into reflective learning, thereby enriching theoretical understandings of emotional labor and highlighting the pedagogical significance of cultivating emotional competence and institutional responsiveness for sustainable social work education.