AIBU to post the difference between empathy and sympathy?

[Boomerwang]

As taken from dictionary.com

sym·pa·thy [sim-puh-thee] Show IPA
noun, plural sym·pa·thies.
1.
harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another.
2.
the harmony of feeling naturally existing between persons of like tastes or opinion or of congenial dispositions.
3.
the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, especially in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.

em·pa·thy [em-puh-thee] Show IPA
noun
1.
the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
2.
the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.

So basically, sympathy is for when you haven't experienced it yourself, and empathy is when you have.

Flame away, I just find it a bit... irksome.

I don't see why it needs to be relegated to pedants corner. It is not simple semantics - it is a deeper question. Is sympathy useful?

I would agree that often sympathy is actually empathy, but as the clip shows, it fuels disconnection. It is essentially patronising and alienating. You don't have to actually have experienced something to be empathic.

Even with a dictionary definition I'm none the wiser.

But it depends if you are feeling abstractly sorry in a detached way. I am training to be a psychotherapist and the feeling is that it is an unhelpful feeling to communicate to someone who is suffering.

It is also often linked to problem solving - again, in the clip it demonstrates the "at least..." thing beautifully. Please do watch the link if you haven't as it can describe it so much more eloquently than I can

Then you probably are empathising rather than sympathising infinity... Practical advice is often counter productive when someone is in pain.

Partridge I love that link.

When people show empathy it feels good bits a relief, it's a feeling of being accepted and how you are feeling being seen as the truth for you. It is powerful stuff. You don't have to feel their feelings too. In fact it is about accepting their feelings and having a bit of distance yourself

Sympathy is not useful and just distances you from the other person.

Well look at that, there's now a discussion about it. People are going to be learning things. Awesome!

Yes, I cut and pasted from the dictionary because I don't know the definitions of the words or anything, but I do know when to use each one.

Is there really a forum for pedants? Who goes there? Are there really people sitting there poking holes in each other's posts? How sad!

But, but, but... boomers, your interpretation was wrong!

Pedants corner is just full of people talking about words: their meaning, their grammatical place etc.

Just like your OP.

Oh, the irony!

I know. Sympathy to me is pat pat doe eyes oh dear poor you and normally I wish I could help but I can't or I can but I'm not going to

But imo there's a big flaw with the idea of empathy anyway. Although it is about putting yourself in someone else's shoes and imagining how they feel, you do not and cannot know how someone else feels, or even accurately imagine how they feel. The only way that you can know someone's exact feelings is if they tell you what they are. All you can do is to know or imagine how YOU would feel and apply that to them.

Well. They aren't you. They may not share your way of looking at things. What is terrible to you might be manageable to them and vice versa. So the very best that you can accurately say about empathy is it is about thinking of yourself in a situation and imagining how you would feel and deciding that because that is how you would feel, it is also what that person is feeling, or because a particular feeling makes sense to you in a given situation, it is the right, normal or usual feeling.

I suppose to truly understand how someone is feeling, you must first know and understand their personality type, core values and emotional state and try to guess how they might feel about something, whether or not it is how you would feel about it.

for example, I don't give a shit about stuff. There are people who get really attached to stuff. If I was to imagine how I feel and match a feeling to, say, the loss of some trinket or other, I would say oh, they don't care about it, it's only stuff. That would be me thinking about how I would feel in that situation.

But I say well, they clearly care about it very much. I don't understand WHY they do, but I recognise THAT they do because I understand that that matters to many people and I can recognise the signs of upset when I see them, even if the reason for that upset makes no personal sense to me.

Maybe that is empathy. I don't know.

I think it is Hecate. It is about the ability to go to a dark place with someone, hold their hand, listen. In the clip, the bear says, "I really don't know what to say right now, but I am just really glad you told me..." - so not offering advice or minimising. It is about connecting with someone - the issue is kind of irrelevant.

Sympathy is about detaching. If something had happened to me that brought feelings of disgust and shame, I would want someone non-judgemental to listen, hold my hand metaphorically and maybe literally and to connect with me. Sympathy would feel scary and judgemental in that context... Someone pitying me would not be what I would want.

I guess it is a hard concept, but I have read enough mumsnet to know that when the chips are down lots of people on here are really brilliant at it .

Taken direction from Dictionary.com

"What is the difference between empathy and sympathy?

Both empathy and sympathy are feelings concerning other people. Sympathy is literally 'feeling with' - compassion for or commiseration with another person. Empathy, by contrast, is literally 'feeling into' - the ability to project one's personality into another person and more fully understand that person. Sympathy derives from Latin and Greek words meaning 'having a fellow feeling'. The term empathy originated in psychology (translation of a German term, c. 1903) and has now come to mean the ability to imagine or project oneself into another person's position and experience all the sensations involved in that position. You feel empathy when you've "been there", and sympathy when you haven't. Examples: We felt sympathy for the team members who tried hard but were not appreciated. / We felt empathy for children with asthma because their parents won't remove pets from the household."

So yeah, my muddled OP wasn't exactly right, but it's more or less the same thing - empathy when you've been involved yourself, sympathy when you haven't. Or, empathy is a really sympathetic sympathy where you actually have feelings for someone or something rather than just a head tilt.