Sympathy vs. empathy

Sympathy and empathy are two terms that relate to our interactions with the emotions of others, but they have distinct meanings and implications.

Sympathy

Sympathy refers to the ability to understand someone else's emotions from our own perspective. It involves feelings of concern or compassion resulting from an awareness of the suffering or sorrow of another. When you sympathize with someone, you may feel pity or sorry for them, but you do not necessarily understand or feel their emotions as your own. Sympathy can sometimes lead to giving unsolicited advice or passing judgment because it maintains a certain emotional distance from the other person's experience.

• Feeling sorry for someone experiencing hardship or misfortune.
• Involves a sense of pity or compassion.
• Focuses on the sufferer's situation rather than their emotions.

Empathy

Empathy, on the other hand, involves feeling what someone else feels and understanding their emotions from their perspective. It requires putting your own feelings aside and focusing on the other person. Empathy allows you to connect with others without judgment, regardless of your own experiences. It involves a deeper level of emotional engagement, where you vicariously experience another person's feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. Empathy can help build stronger relationships, improve communication skills, and foster cooperation. It is also associated with reducing discrimination and unethical behavior in service settings.

• Putting yourself in someone else's shoes and understanding their feelings from their perspective.
• Involves an emotional connection and the ability to share their feelings.

Overall

In essence, empathy is about share someone‘s suffering, while sympathy is about acknowledge someone‘s suffering. Empathy requires a more active emotional involvement, whereas sympathy maintains a more observational stance towards the other person's situation.

Both empathy and sympathy are important for relationship-building and mental wellness, but empathy is often seen as a more profound connection because it involves sharing the emotional experience of another person, rather than just acknowledging it.