“Feel Sorry For” vs. “Empathy”
“You’re just saying that because you feel sorry for me.”
“You just [action] because you feel sorry for me.”
“She [did good thing] because she felt sorry for me.”
I’ve heard several variations of this phrase.
Today, I want to share what I think “feel sorry for” means and its close relationship to empathy, sympathy and pity, which share roots.
Do you share the emotions of another?
When someone said to me recently, “You just feel sorry for me,” I answered, “No, I empathize. I don’t feel sorry for you.”
There’s a difference:
Empathy is a person’s ability to recognize and share the emotions of another. When you’re empathetic, you can connect to the pain of another. You might have had the same or similar experience as the other person, or you might have experienced the same emotions in response to a completely unrelated type of situation. They’re experiencing the aftermath of one kind of disappointment, you’ve experienced disappointment in another way.
