Sympathy and empathy are different; sympathy is feeling sorry for someone, while empathy is feeling with them. Empathy involves understanding their feelings and putting oneself in their shoes. Empathy is important for those experiencing loss, and therapy groups provide a space for empathy.
Sympathy and empathy are separate terms with some very important distinctions. Sympathy and empathy are both acts of feeling, but with sympathy you feel for the person; you feel sorry for them or pity them, but you do not specifically understand what they are feeling. Sometimes we are left with no choice but to feel compassion because we really fail to understand someone else’s situation or situation. It takes imagination, work, or perhaps similar experience to arrive at empathy.
Empathy can best be described as a feeling with the person. Note the distinction between for and with. To some extent you are putting yourself in that person’s place, you have a good sense of what they are feeling and you understand their feelings about them to some extent. It may be impossible to be fully empathetic because each individual’s reactions, thoughts, and feelings to the tragedy will be unique. Yet the idea of empathy involves a much more active process. Instead of being sorry, you are sorry and have put on the mantle of someone else’s emotional reactions.
It’s easy enough to feel compassion for someone else’s hardships. We can surely pity others who have lost a loved one, experienced significant trauma, or faced terribly difficult times. Those of us who witnessed the terror of the 9/9 attacks could certainly sympathize, but could we empathize? In reality, many of us could, though few of us can claim to really know what it might be like to be involved in that attack or lose loved ones in it.
All Americans shared the common ground that America was being attacked. People with no relation to those affected by the attack were stunned, shocked, saddened, grieved. We weren’t just nice, and many arose to express empathy; if we didn’t know for sure, we could imagine how terribly difficult this was for the many directly affected. Newspapers around the world have also spoken to Americans, such as the French newspaper Le Monde ran the headline “We are all Americans”.
This is perhaps the best example of how empathy differs from sympathy. Sympathy expressed to a grieving person suggests that the person is alone in their grief. Empathy suggests that you are in it with them, can imagine what it is like to be in their shoes, and are together with them in emotional turmoil and loss. Even the best people in the world can have a hard time expressing true empathy. A person experiencing a significant loss may find it difficult to talk to their family because what is being expressed is condolence or pity, which may not be very helpful.
The need for true empathy gives rise to many groups of people who are meeting huge losses. There are numerous “therapy” groups for abused women, rape victims, parents who have lost children, people going through divorce, children with significant illnesses. In such groups, people often have the opportunity to talk to each other by experiencing things very directly.
In these contexts, the sufferer does not get the sympathy of others, but instead gets the empathy of others. There is often an implicit understanding as to why all people in such a group are in similar circumstances. Often, what a bereaved person really needs to hear is “I did too,” “I totally understand what you’re saying,” or “I had exactly the same thoughts” from someone else—all expressions of empathy. What they tend not to want to hear is “I’m so sorry for you,” an expression of sympathy that makes them feel alone and isolated in their grief.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
