Sympathy and Empathy: YOU at your Very Best.
Whenever you utilize sympathy and empathy in your life, you’re sharing the very best of what you can offer both yourself and others. It’s important to know the DIFFERENCE between the two, the “WHY” when you choose to use them, and the “HOW” to utilize them for their maximum effectiveness for both you and people you share them with. Used appropriately, they can both be part of the foundational building blocks of relationship development and character building. That’s why it’s important for all of us to manage the role they play in our life over the passage of time.
It appears that we’re never given a thorough education on sympathy and empathy, the difference between the two, and when and how to use them to help ourselves and others. Sympathy and empathy refer to different emotional responses.
Sympathy involves understanding and feeling compassion for someone else's situation. It's when you acknowledge someone else's hardships and express care or concern. For example, if a friend is going through a tough time, you might say, "I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm here for you." Personally, I feel like sympathy is similar to sitting next to someone holding their hand when words are hard to come by. That connection signals compassion and shows that you recognize that another person is experiencing pain, grief, or sorrow.
Empathy, on the other hand, goes a step further. It involves putting yourself in someone else's shoes and experiencing their emotions as if they were your own. It's about truly understanding and sharing the feelings of another person. For instance, if your friend is sad, empathy would mean you feel their sadness with them, not just recognize it. It’s also imaginatively entering into their feelings, many times fueled by an experience in your life that produced the same, or similar, feelings. Personally, I feel like empathy is similar to embracing someone with a gentle hug allowing the pain, grief, or sorrow to create a cocoon of compassionate understanding that surrounds both of you.
Sympathy is about feeling for someone, while empathy is about feeling with someone. Both are important in building strong, supportive relationships, but empathy often leads to a deeper connection because it involves a shared emotional experience. Different situations define the appropriateness of when to utilize sympathy or empathy based on personal space considerations, depth of relationship, cultural norms, locational considerations, and religious practices.
While there are many choices in expressing sympathy and empathy, let’s consider hugging as an example. Thinking about personal space, some people are huggers and some are not. YOUR way of expressing compassion and sorrow at a funeral may be with a hug of those grieving. THEY may prefer a simple expression of the words “I’m sorry for your loss.” The depth of your relationship can be a good guide in determining what to say and do while acknowledging your prior history with a particular individual and how they feel about their personal space.
Hugging is not an acceptable expression of caring in many cultures around the world. That’s good to know prior to making someone feel extremely uncomfortable. Location can also come into play considering a hug may be taboo according to company guidelines at your place of employment, but may be appropriate, and appreciated, outside of the workplace when someone is hurting or when they’ve recently experienced a loss. And lastly, when I read the book “12 Major World Religions,” it opened my eyes to a variety of views that should be respected when we offer someone either sympathy or empathy.
How will you know when you’ve mastered the gift of both sympathy and empathy? It’s when you notice someone hurting and you immediately want to console them without trying to solve whatever is troubling them. That’s hard because we’ve been trained in life to immediately seek a solution for whatever is causing the problem. Discover the problem, solve the problem, move on. We all want to “fix things” when fixing isn’t necessarily the right solution. Solving only makes US feel better. Most times all someone hurting really wants is for us to listen, just really listen. Listening can help them move forward on their own. Other times, a person who’s sad or hurting, just wants us to “be with them” respecting the power of silent presence.
When you’re able to quickly recognize someone in pain, experiencing grief, or extremely sad, THAT’S when you’ll have mastered the gift of sympathy and empathy that’s available to all of us. Then you can become a noticer of people who can greatly benefit from some sincere and compassionate sympathy or empathy. Frankly, in today’s world, you’re surrounded by people you can help and encourage through well-placed usage of both sympathy and empathy.
Face it, if you’re reading this article, YOU ARE SMART. Your ability to read opens every door of knowledge you choose to walk through. If you’re still not sure of the difference between sympathy and empathy, read this article again. When you do, come up with examples from your own life that will allow you to mentally anchor the WHEN, WHY, and HOW to utilize these two emotion-based gifts that belong in your life’s toolbox. It’s one of the quickest ways to have a positive impact on the world and on our society. It’s also one of the quickest ways to experience complete joy while helping others. And you know what else? YOU’RE WORTH IT! Hey…I Believe In YOU! GiddyUp!