Empathy/Sympathy

Spud424

A friend runs EMT training for a county here in PA and shared this image on his FB…and it got me thinking about empathy and sympathy.

Since joining the cuddle community nearly a year ago I have learned so much about my own feelings and how to communicate them. I never explored these topics too much because I was afraid of what I would learn about myself..let alone opening my feelings up to be shared with others.

So what are your feelings about the concept of empathy and/or sympathy?

SunsetSnuggles

Oi, some of the canned phrases on the right make my blood boil. The other side is much healthier and honest. Thanks for sharing!

~ Sunset Snuggles

@Spud424
I appreciate you posting that chart. Practicing empathy is preferred.

achetocuddle

@SunsetSnuggles What you said. Those phrases on the right kill my soul even when uttered by the nicest well-meaning people.
Try having some chemotherapy (the kind that affects your brain) and having people hand you that crap. I stayed away from some people during chemo cause I knew they would inadvertently make it harder.

pmvines

Sympathy often implies feeling sorry for someone, or pity. It is disempowering and does little to build the person up. Empathy tries to put you in their shoes and helps you to have a better understanding of their experience. It humanizes struggle through equalization. Empathy is always better .

DaringSprinter

Huh.

I thought empathy (literally "in-feeling" or "feeling into") meant experiencing another's feelings as though they were your own, while sympathy ("feeling with") meant remaining separate from what the other person is feeling and having your own similar feelings alongside.

So if someone cuts their finger chopping veggies and you feel like your own finger's been cut, that's empathy—and if you feel concern for them, that's sympathy.

That's how I've always used the words. This is... different. I would've thought "be strong" would be said by someone experiencing empathy—feeling your emotions so keenly that they just want them to stop—while "cry as much as you need" might be said by someone who isn't literally feeling your pain, but sympathizing: thinking about what it must be like, considering what you must need.

This is definitely different!

BlueIris

And it's comments like that that get @pmvines all the cuddles!!

achetocuddle

@BlueIris D*mn Skippy

JohnfromVienna

I think you're right DaringSprinter. There's a great book by Paul Bloom called, "Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion." Oddly, I was just thinking about this earlier today with the examples of an EMT and an ER doctor. When you're having an emergency, do you want the ER doctor to feel what you feel? The same fear you feel? The same panic? Do they need to to save you? or do you want them to be compassionate towards you while working to fix you? How would you feel if your ER doctor started crying while working on you? Empathy is great for personal relationships, not so much for EMTs or ER doctors. And they'd burn out of those jobs mighty fast. Separately, it is argued that empathy is dangerous when it comes to public policy. It causes us to focus on a particular person or group and ignore everything or everyone else.

pmvines

@JohnfromVienna @DaringSprinter they call that maintaining a clinical distance. As a social worker I have to do that. Especially when I was doing therapy,
and also while I was doing home hospice, where I've often been with people as their loved ones are actively dying and have been present before, during, and post death on multiple occasions. There is such thing as over empathizing, over identification, which is actually not a good thing . A therapist who over empathizes with a client cannot effectively treat them due to over identifying and being too emotionally immeshed . Maintaining distance and clinical boundaries is necessary , but that does not negate the need for or ability to empathize.

DaringSprinter

@JohnfromVienna: I've read that book, too (and liked it).

I know the definitions of words change over time, but I'd never seen these two flipped like that before. I hope this isn't where the language is going—I'd have a real tough time keeping up.

CuddleDuncan

I don't understand this graphic at all. There are twelve statements on it, few if any of which could be considered empathetic. Some could be construed as sympathetic, mostly on the left side. And a couple of them are just stupid. What am I missing? What is the breaking chain supposed to represent?

@Spud424 I share your experience. I've learnt a lot about feeling and expressing emotions from the cuddle world.

I always understood statements like "I can't imagine" as NOT empathetic because if you're being empathic you ARE imagining what it must be like in their shoes. And none of the statements on the right sound like feeling sorry for someone, they just sound trite.

TheFunCartel

@Moxytocin I concur. “I can’t imagine…” is usually just honesty and is better than feigned empathy, because if you have never experienced something you really don’t know how you would feel. Growing up in a career military family you use that around war veterans because if you have never been in war you don’t know—and people are affected in vastly different ways.

For example, horror or action sequences in movies produce responses by armchair warriors who say “I would just do ….” No you really don’t know what you would do because you are fortunate enough to have never been in a high pressure do or die situation on a daily basis. And I can’t imagine what war is like or the horrors you can’t unsee. But I can understand that you must feel intense trauma from it. That honesty is not empathy, that is making yourself a safe place for them to talk about it or not as they choose.

achetocuddle

@Moxytocin I agree.