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Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

This perfectly expresses the thoughts I wish to relay to you all.

The difference between Sympathy and Empathy is as follows.

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’re sorry for them or pity them, but you don’t specifically understand what they’re feeling. Sometimes we’re left with little choice but to feel sympathetic because we really can’t understand the plight or predicament of someone else. It takes imagination, work, or possibly a similar experience to get to empathy.

Empathy can best be described as feeling with the person. Notice the distinction between for and with. To an extent you are placing yourself in that person’s place, have a good sense of what they feel, and understand their feelings to a degree. It may be impossible to be fully empathetic because each individual's reactions, thoughts and feelings to tragedy are going to be unique. Yet the idea of empathy implies a much more active process. Instead of feeling sorry for, you’re sorry with and have clothed yourself in the mantle of someone else’s emotional reactions.

It is fairly easy to feel sympathetic to someone else’s difficulties. We can definitely pity others who have lost a loved one, undergone significant trauma, or faced terribly difficult times. Those of us who watched the terror of the 9/11 attacks could certainly sympathize, but could we empathize? Actually, many of us could, though few of us can lay claim to really knowing what it might be like to either be in that attack or lose loved ones in it.

All Americans shared in the common ground that America had been attacked. People with no relationship to any person affected by the attack were stunned, shocked, saddened, in grief. We were not just sympathetic, and many arose to express empathy; if we did not know with surety, we could imagine how horribly difficult this was for the many directly affected. Even newspapers around the world felt with Americans, as the French newspaper Le Monde featured the headline “We are All Americans.”

This is perhaps the best example of how empathy differs from sympathy. Sympathy expressed to a person in grief suggests that person is alone in their grief. Empathy suggests you’re in it with them, you can imagine what it is to be in their shoes, and you are together with them in emotional turmoil and loss. Even the best people in the world may have a hard time expressing true empathy. A person who suffers a significant loss may have a hard time talking to his/her family because what is being expressed is condolences or pity, which may not be very helpful.

The need for true empathy gives rise to many groups of people who are encountering huge losses. There are numerous “therapy” groups for battered women, rape victims, parents who have lost children, people undergoing divorce, children with significant illnesses. In such groups, people often have the opportunity to talk to others experiencing things in a very direct way.

In these settings, those suffering don’t get the sympathy of others, but instead get the empathy of others. There is often an implied understanding since all people in such a group are similarly circumstanced. Frequently, what a person in grief really needs to hear is “I’ve done that too," "I totally get what you’re saying," or "I had the exact 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.


http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-sympathy-and-empathy.htm

Website: http://whitewolf.maxforum.org/

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

You don't actually feel what they feel.


Emotionally yes, yes you do feel what they're feeling, or what you think you would feel in such a situation. Empathy literally means "in feeling" - you share in their emotional pain.

It's strange how anyone could say empathy doesn't exist. The mind boggles. :/

Empathy does exist Whitewolf, 6,000,000 people aren't lying to make themselves appear good in the eyes of others... Come on, look at what you're saying. :D

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

Toby
Emotionally yes, yes you do feel what they're feeling, or what you think you would feel in such a situation.


The part bolded is exactly right. You only feel what you think you would feel if you were in the other person's shoes, not what the other person actually feels. Whitewolf's article mentions this several times. I think it's accurate for the most part, with the exception of:

Sympathy expressed to a person in grief suggests that person is alone in their grief. Empathy suggests you’re in it with them...

Existentially speaking, we are alone in our grief. It can be no other way.

Empathy literally means "in feeling" - you share in their emotional pain.


Dictionary definitions, while useful, do not always accurately convey the reality of a thing.

It's strange how anyone could say empathy doesn't exist. The mind boggles. :/


I can't speak to what Whitewolf was or was not trying to say. I can however say that empathy does not exist in the way most people believe it does. You do not share someone else's feelings. You only imagine that you do. Empathy, defined as an act of the imagination, does exist. Empathy, defined as I can literally feel what you or anyone else feels, does not. All you have to do to see this is to remind yourself that you have a body and I have a body. They are separate from each other.

6,000,000 people aren't lying to make themselves appear good in the eyes of others...


You sure about that? And btw, facts are not decided by majority vote.

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

He's baiting you, Daniel.

Toby is playing games with you. Even a small minded person can load responses with argumentative crap. He screwed up his numbers and threw some trash in there.. just so someone would respond to him.

Anyone who speaks of having empathy and then goes out and tries to hack people and their online accounts and what not.. to satisfy some egotistical need to inflict damage on others.. is not empathetic towards the suffering they are attempting to inflict on others. A true empath would have no desire to hurt others as they themselves would also share in the painful experience. Meaning anyone claiming empathy would have to share a simular experience to yours to understand it and how it feels.


What it all comes down to, for me, is this.. You do not know my pain. You, who have never experienced such, cannot comprehend my suffering. You do NOT know how I feel. This is the mentality of a victim and it is solid to the truth. Because we know, inside, that we are alone. Do you know why victims talk to victims. Because it makes you feel a little better when you know the other person really does know what it feels like to suffer the way you have. That you have both been baptized by fire. That you are not alone...

I don't really expect any of you to ever know what it's like to have flashbacks. To see something or smell something or hear something that pushes you into a flashback where you get to experience all the pain of the past, as if it was happening for the first time.. again. It never gets old either. Being around other people makes it easier to withdrawl from but when you are alone and no one is there to help you.. lock on to reality.. you can just sit there for hours feeling nothing but terrible pain and vunerability. Terrible feelings drown me and then.. nothing. I feel pain and then I feel nothing.

Website: http://whitewolf.maxforum.org/

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

I would like to thank the contributors for specifying the subjects and making me, finally, understand something and to confirm my own observations about myself. This truly is a great website to learn about oneself. I kept pondering why then, are people so ready to kill oneanother and realized the reason why soldiers and veterans are so messed up. They cannot accept their killing and pretending like it's not real or thinking the enemy as not human wont last, they break, like glass. I'm reminded of my grandfather who fought in the Fin vs Soviet war and he was always saying that whatever you do to another person under no circumstances should you ever take a life. They are gone and you will never be OK again. I've recently ralized that what he meant was that the realization coupled with sympathy for the family and friends of the one you killed mixed with guilt is oeverwhelming and that it comes sooner or later.

Slightly off-topic, how you do distinguish a feeling from a thought? I mean... if i think "wow sucks to be him" is it sympathy or merely thinking that it would not be very fun to be in that situation? Is there a difference? I don't feel sorry when i see pictures of children being shot in the face or someone who has lost an arm, my only reaction is "thats gotta suck". Is that sympathy or just intellectually thinking about it?

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

Hexi
I would like to thank the contributors for specifying the subjects and making me, finally, understand something and to confirm my own observations about myself. This truly is a great website to learn about oneself. I kept pondering why then, are people so ready to kill oneanother and realized the reason why soldiers and veterans are so messed up. They cannot accept their killing and pretending like it's not real or thinking the enemy as not human wont last, they break, like glass. I'm reminded of my grandfather who fought in the Fin vs Soviet war and he was always saying that whatever you do to another person under no circumstances should you ever take a life. They are gone and you will never be OK again. I've recently ralized that what he meant was that the realization coupled with sympathy for the family and friends of the one you killed mixed with guilt is oeverwhelming and that it comes sooner or later.

Slightly off-topic, how you do distinguish a feeling from a thought? I mean... if i think "wow sucks to be him" is it sympathy or merely thinking that it would not be very fun to be in that situation? Is there a difference? I don't feel sorry when i see pictures of children being shot in the face or someone who has lost an arm, my only reaction is "thats gotta suck". Is that sympathy or just intellectually thinking about it?


You are acknowledging reality, nothing more... nothing less.

My grandfather never suffered for all the killing of enemy soldiers they did. They slaughtered those Koreans and Vietnam. He didn't care. They took enemy nurses and drown them. Then tied them to the back of the boat and dragged their dead corpses along for the funny factor. Navy Seals before they were Navy Seals. When they were just the men with green faces who would come in your village and steal you or kill you. Only to torture you in ways that made everyone talk.

What bothered him.. was killing children. Men and women can die but children.. at least children should be sacred. But they weren't. That's what spawned his guilt. He knew what he was doing.. was wrong.. to his subconcious. He was going against everything he knew was right and his own mind punished him for it. I don't have such attachments to others.

But I'm glad this was constructive. It helped me out as well.

Website: http://whitewolf.maxforum.org/

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

Hexi
Slightly off-topic, how you do distinguish a feeling from a thought? I mean... if i think "wow sucks to be him" is it sympathy or merely thinking that it would not be very fun to be in that situation? Is there a difference? I don't feel sorry when i see pictures of children being shot in the face or someone who has lost an arm, my only reaction is "thats gotta suck". Is that sympathy or just intellectually thinking about it?


I have the same question too. White Wolf's article covered it in part. Sympathy, per the article, is "wow, that sucks dude." Empathy would be "wow, that sucks dude. I feel you." But as to what you are asking, I find myself saying things like "how awful for you!" and "OMG!" etc when people tell me their stories of woe. I mean real stories too, like a friend telling me last week that her 5 year old nephew was life flighted to a hospital for emergency surgery. She was on the verge of tears and she asked me to pray for him. (I'm pretending to be a Xtian. Don't ask.) I mouthed the words of concern, by instinct. But afterwards, I noticed that I felt nothing. I said the words though. This is a regular occurrence for me. Does saying the words alone count as sympathy?

Thanks for starting the thread WW, btw. Now I wonder if any normals will come on and give me some feedback here...

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

'Does saying the words alone count as sympathy?'

yes. the difference between saying the words and saying nothing (a warm hug is even better when the person is crying) is everything. not reacting at all is a very strong sign there's something off.

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

whitewolf
He's baiting you, Daniel.


No I am not.

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

So I ask you this. How can you assume to know how other people feel when you yourself have not been subject to their experiences or enviornments? If we are products of our raising.. then how can we ever truely know how a person of a different raising.. feels?


No, you detect their emotions and you share with them those feelings.

Also I'll pull the RAPE card. Can a man really know what it's like to be raped?


I don't understand...

You don't have to have experienced their experiences to have the ability to feel their emotions. That's why psychopaths cannot feel empathy, they detect another beings emotions but cannot experience any reciprocal emotion as they have never felt that emotion or been through there emotional suffering.

What really disturbs me is this society, in the US, is so used to lying to itself that people are actually arrogent enough to believe they can feel empathy for people they have never met. People lie to themselves about feelings. At least that is how it seems.


You are wrong. I can tell you with 100% certainty that empathy exists. And yes, I can feel empathy for people that I have never met.
It only seems that way to you because you have never felt such, so it wouldn't be a big stretch for you to assume that such emotions simply do not exist.

I am deepply offended when people, who have never experienced my suffering, try to tell me they understand how I feel. F you!


:)
I can't say that I have experienced exactly what you say you have, but I have felt the emotions that I would've felt if I was in the position that you say you were in.

It's us understanding the emotions others are feeling, rather than us understanding the situation in which they're in.

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

Toby, you're an a ss.

Re: Empathy Vs Sympathy (ranting)

as a particularly sensitive empath (based on my neurology) let me clarify once and for all.

i agree with daniel birdick that it's an act of imagination, and some have a stronger imagination based on having more sensitive responses to stimuli. those with a lower pain threshold are likely to possess a stronger, shall we say, sympathetic/empathic imagination. the imagination then feeds an emotion, perhaps turning sympathy into empathy. however you will never know exactly what the other's pain is like in the moment they are feeling it. that would be absurd.

and in certain situations, you can literally physically shudder when you see someone stub their toe for example. again, imagination feeding an emotion.

some empaths literally take on the feelings of others, like it's infectious. if i really love someone, i will take on their pain or happiness often more so than they feel it themselves. is that sick? lol. especially if, for some reason, i can't comfort them when they are sad, it's like the energy has no one where to go so stays in me.

i agree that there are posers, neither here nor there, who espouse a lot, but actually feel little. motives are everywhere, and manifest themselves in all manner of hypoctrical, self-decieving or downright calculating ways.

since i know i have excessive sensitivity to other people, i quite happily admit when i do not care, or no longer have the energy to care about a situation I can not help. irony of ironies, I am setting myself up for the possibility that someone will deem me heartless. it is often the ones who talk about caring, as opposed to actually caring, who you should watch out for. for those unskilled in emotions, they can get confused, and (like many socios do) resort to calling everyone insincere.

i am not perfect, I don't really apply my imagination to certain people's pain, like my mum for example, and there is obviously some reason for that that I do not understand. it was this that made me think I had something wrong with me.

shutting off empathy is a defence mechanism, when things go beyond what you can physically handle.

but yes, empathy exists to a degree, for you can't replicate exactly the other person's inner life. otherwise, imagine seeing a dead body then dropping dead yourself - that's complete empathy, and well, that's useless.