Sympathy vs Empathy
Yes, there is a transformative difference
Ahhh, the difference between Sympathy & Empathy is as dramatic as the difference between a puddle and the ocean. How can that be? They seem so closely related. Yes… and No… The assumptions made when we move into sympathy are quite different than when we’re in empathy. As a result, they change both the trajectory of our own experience — where we reside inside ourselves — as well as the field of energy shared and its impact on the one receiving our expression of caring.
What Is Sympathy?
In my experience, sympathy presumes that the object of our focus is worse off than ourselves. We feel bad for someone. We may think, for example, “Gosh that’s gotta be an awful experience.” We recognize the pain, but we stay out of our own pain by knowing we’re not the one suffering and so we stay on the safe shore of our own solid ground communicating to the person out in the water something along the lines of, “Yes. That looks precarious, painful, and frightening. You have my sympathies.” It’s a thoughtful expression that requires, however, little vulnerability communicating that we care.
What Is Empathy?
Empathy on the other hand has depth and resonance and allows for a much more profound experience for both the one extending this heart-to-heart healing balm as well as for the receiver who will tend to feel more fully met and honored.
The place of empathy is where a similar type of recognizable painful experience resonates within ourselves and so we feel compassion.
In empathy, we recognize and allow ourselves to be moved in a vulnerable way. We hold a healing and empowering space for the focus of our empathy by honoring the dignity of their own process. Rather than assuming that the focus of our empathy is momentarily or perhaps even permanently worse off than us, as we might with sympathy, we honor that they are simply having the dignity of their own life’s path and we allow ourselves to tap into our own similar or analogous experiences.
Rather than simply thinking about the context of another’s experience and feeling, for example, sorry for them or pity for them, we feel our own reference points and move into compassion. “Compassion” literally means to suffer together. It requires significantly more vulnerability as we actually welcome an opportunity to feel together with the one we’re caring for and this promotes a sense of connection, relationship, and even sacred communion. Where they may start out feeling alone in whatever loss they may be navigating, our moving into empathy sends a message that says in essence: “It’s alright. I see you. As a fellow traveler, I relate. We can navigate this tender territory. Even if it’s yours to traverse, I’m here with you as an honorable witness to this passage.”
Brené Brown has an eloquent way of describing sympathy which I’ll paraphrase along the lines of someone being in a pit, let’s say 10 feet deep. A friend showing sympathy comes to the edge of the pit looks in and says “Wow. Looks like it really sucks down there. I feel for ya. Sorry, you’re having such a hard time. You have my sympathies. Truly.”
In empathy, we find someone in a pit and we sit down and feel into how they may be feeling. While we don’t exactly climb into the pit with them, we metaphorically do climb into their experience by allowing ourselves to attune to our own reference points or similar territory. We listen not so much with the ears of our mind that might lead to contextualizing or negatively comparing and contrasting their circumstance to our own or some idealized way they’d like things to be.
Rather than that, we listen with the ears of our hearts. Listening from this place, there is no need to solve or figure or do anything. We know it from our own life experience and we’re able to meet them where they are without offering detours or exit strategies that might communicate that it’s not alright for the person to be exactly where they find themself. We meet them where they are and feel the resonance of their pain and are willing to be present with them in their process trusting the eventual organic progression and emerging return into their innate wellbeing.
The Gift of Empathy
The honorable natural gift that comes with empathy is the extension of holding a space that honors the dignity of another’s process trusting their essential wholeness and inner resourcefulness to navigate whatever passage they’re moving through without agenda or imposition of our own biases or impulse towards cheering up or adding to a pity party.
However well-intended, sympathy often contributes to a sense of separation for both the one offering and receiving sympathies. Empathy, requiring more vulnerability, fosters heart-to-heart relatedness, a bridge and sense of communion — — along with reinforcing trust in the process of life and the organic ways in which loss of various kinds naturally yields opportunities for greater depth, compassion, and capacity to hold steady with ourselves and each other.
Blessings, All ~ Gregory
Additional content exploring authentic living can be found at https://www.facebook.com/gregoryvahaniancoaching and more information about my Transformational Life Coaching practice can be found at www.gregoryvahanian.com
