Empathy vs Sympathy

You will now watch a YouTube video by Brené Brown on Empathy vs Sympathy.

Empathy and Sympathy

The terms empathy and sympathy are often confused, and with good reason. Both words refer to the relationship a person has with the feelings and experiences of another. Both sympathy and empathy have roots in the Greek term páthosmeaning “suffering, feeling.” The prefix sym – means “with, together with” and the prefix em – means “within, in.”

The word sympathy is most commonly used to describe the way we share someone else’s feelings, especially feelings of sorrow or trouble. Hence, greeting cards given to mourning families are called sympathy cards. When you sympathize with someone, you have concern for that person, but you don’t necessarily feel their feelings. For instance, if your feelings toward someone who is experiencing hardship are limited to sympathy, then you might have a sense of regret for that person’s difficulty but are not feeling their feelings as if they are your own. 

Empathy can be defined as a person’s ability to recognize and share the emotions of another person. The sentiment behind empathy is often presented in the familiar idiom to put (oneself) in another’s shoes. It involves, first, seeing someone else’s situation from his perspective, and, second, sharing his emotions, including, if any, his distress. You have empathy for a person when you can imagine how they might feel based on what you know about that person, despite not having those feelings explicitly communicated.

Compassion

The word compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum, meaning “to suffer with.”

Compassion refers to the desire to promote others’ well-being or alleviate their suffering.

The heart of compassion is acceptance. The better we are at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become.