Empathy vs Sympathy

By: Kristen Sohlman, MACP, RP

​A quality that makes a human, a human, is the ability to feel empathy.  

Empathy is the ability to be able to understand another person’s emotional experience as if they were experiencing it themselves. While no one can truly walk in another person’s shoes and experience things in the same exact way, the ability to empathize allows one to consider another person’s emotional experience, to invest in their relationship with that person, and to learn more about the person and their experiences. 

Empathy fuels connections between people (Brown, 2016).
  
Sympathy is the ability to take part in someone’s feelings, for example, feeling bad about someone else’s circumstances. Sympathy occurs when one’s values and beliefs align with the values and beliefs of the other person.  For example, you may feel sad for a friend who lost a family member because you were sad when you lost a family member in your own life.  When values and beliefs do not align there is no sympathy or understanding.  For example, you do not feel sad for a friend who lost a family member because they were a jerk to you the last time you talked.  As such, sympathy may drive disconnection between people when their values and beliefs do not align, which has been the case with many wars, conflicts, and ended relationships (Brown, 2016).

Feeling for somebody is not the same as feeling with somebody (Brown, 2016).  To go through is not the same as to go through with.  Sometimes you might feel that someone cannot know how you feel because they have not had similar experiences.  This fuels disconnection.  Personally, knowing is not empathy. You do not need personal experience to care about someone or to empathize with someone. 

“You can’t know what it is like, because you didn’t go through it” - Empathy versus Sympathy

The risk of seeking out only people with the same experience, values, and beliefs as you, is that everyone is unique and everyone has their own set of values and beliefs and experiences.  As such, you may find yourself feeling alone, lonely, and disconnected.  Even if one person experiences something similar to you, they will experience it in their own way.  By seeking out sympathy versus empathy, you may be missing out in making meaningful connections and relationships.  Seeking out people who only experience, value, and believe the same things as you can be conformity, lacking in diversity, and sets up a stance of them versus us.  Seeking out a connection, through empathy, brings people together with different values, beliefs, and experiences, challenges group think and the dominant discourse, supports diversity, and sets up a stance of acceptance.

Barriers to empathy can include mental health, feelings of hurt, feelings of pain, anger, etc.  For example, it is really hard to empathize with someone when they have hurt your feelings in some way.  By addressing your own feelings of hurt, you may be able to get to a place of empathy, to forgive, to heal, to let go of hurt, and to understand relationships differently than you did before.  It is important to remember that showing empathy is not saying that someone is right and another is wrong or that someone ought to change, it is making a decision to learn more and to seek understanding.  As such, empathy is a healthy coping mechanism and can be helpful for anger management, stress management, and building healthy connections and relationships, as well as healthy boundaries.
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So, instead of writing someone off as being unable to understand, invest in the relationship, ask if they can empathize with what you have experienced, and try your best to openly share your experience with that person so that they can better understand.  

Resources:
Brown, B. (2016, April 1). Brene Brown on empathy vs sympathy [Vide file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZBTYViDPl