To think a lot of people are really bad at empathising with others situations?

[jennymanara]

I know so many people, and see it on here as well, who are really bad at understanding or empathising with others situations if they have no personal experience of it. I think there are lots of people who even when they have it explained to them what that person is experiencing, seem incapable of understanding it.
So AIBU to think a lot of people, maybe even most, have very poor empathy skills?

Sometimes it's the people you least expect who (try to) understand / empathise / support the most, and those that you'd expect to be there & 'get it' (or at least try to) (friends and family) who are the absolute worst.

OP, I think you are confusing compassion with empathy.

No I understand the difference between compassion and empathy.

Agreed, not nearly enough emphasis on EI.

It's one of the areas, along with resilience & tenacity, that I'm obsessed with teaching my DC about. Really crucial life skills that IME mean more for a successful work life and relationships than any academic qualification.

I think empathy and the need some people have to show it overrated- I'd rather have been feel compassionate. Empathy is feeling what they feel- having never lost a child, or been in a DV situation I can't pretend to know what that feels like- but I can show compassion to those who are or have been- and I'd rather do that than try to be empathetic- empathy I don't think is as helpful to others- your interjecting yourself in their situation- when you may have no real understanding of what that means and no real frame of reference for it

I can empathise with people who have made bad decisions, we are all only human. I don't think - oh tough luck you made your own choices.

This isn’t really a good example of empathy though. This is sympathy.

Empathy would be identifying with the person who made the bad decisions and how they feel and think about it. It is entirely possible that that person might indeed think “oh tough luck, I made my own choice and I now have to live with it”. In which case you are not actually being empathetic.

They didn't have to have experienced a parent dying, they just had to actually properly listen to what she was telling them and understand what those emotions might feel like.

Yes, you don’t need to have been through a similar situation as someone to be able to empathise with them. Far from it. Empathising is making an effort to try and put yourself in someone’s shoes and imagine how it might feel for them, not how it did or might feel for you. Two people can have both lost their parent for example and with the perspective of ‘you can’t empathise if you haven’t been through it’ believe they’re the best individuals to empathise with one another. When in reality something like losing a parent can be a wildly different experience for one person than another. I’m thinking of how when I lost my own mother i was devastated because I loved her and we were so close, and I’d had time to watch her slowly decline and suffer and it hurt me to see her suffer. A friend lost her father and was practically jumping for joy as he was an awful man she couldn’t stand and who had caused so much pain, she had complex emotions later about feeling pleased someone had died and having never been able to have a ‘good father’, but her experience of losing a parent was so wildly different to mine the only thing we had in common was that a parent had died. You’re not automatically better able to empathise with one another just because a similar event has happened, it’s more complex than that, and in fact sometimes people who aren’t caught up in their own painful memories and experiences about a vaguely similar situation can be the ones to empathise best as they are thinking solely about the other person and not trying to draw links and compare with their own experience.

Not everyone is wonderful at being able to empathise, I think it’s partly innate and partly skill that can be learned. It’s crawling into a hole with someone who’s stuck to offer support and listen to them and genuinely try understand what it’s like for them to be in the hole rather than standing outside of the hole imagining how you’d feel if you were in there.

People often get empathy and sympathy mixed up and believe you can’t truly empathise without the same experience happening to you but it’s simply not true (and as I said above, it’s impossible to have had the same experience as someone else). Everyone goes through things differently.

If you couldn’t properly empathise without having been through something yourself you’d have no such thing as people who are therapists for a living, every doctor would have to have had all illnesses themselves, marriage counsellors would have had to have had both a secure successful long running relationship and come through a horrific divorce, etc.

Of course ultimately, the person you’re trying to empathise with is the judge of whether you’re able to do it or not. Not the person trying to empathise.

Empathy is not about feeling what someone else feels. It is about being able to put yourself in their shoes and understand things from their point of view. That can include why they made that bad decision.

The definition of empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

The sharing part is difficult if you haven't had the same or similar experience to the person you are talking to. You can imagine how they might feel but you can't know for sure. Neither can you fully share their feelings, because they aren't your feelings.

I agree that compassion is far more important than empathy.

That’s a good example about another’s parent dying. It’s not ‘OMG I am so sorry, I can’t imagine what it’s like. If I lost one of my parents is would be devastated. I don’t know how you are managing?’

It’s more like:

I can not begin to imagine how you are feeling, as I haven’t experienced it, but I can imagine it’s far worse than I think. Okay you have the three children to look after at the moment, and I know you have two deadlines in work, and you have to arrange the funeral. Have you contacted work or would you like me too, so that’s one thing less? Can I help with the children this week? I’m guessing you can’t see the wood for the trees at the moment.

Okay probably not the best worded! But the first is giving the sympathy but little empathy. Where the second, is actually seeing what the person is dealing with, and trying to see what they have to do, and supporting them with that you can, to make it a little easier.

Empathy is not about feeling what someone else feels.

The very definition of empathy is sharing another’s feelings.

I thinks some people are just naturally empathetic. I had a serious illness three years ago which resulted in a panic attacks in certain situations. I told a few people, some got it others just didn't. The one who stood out for me was my friend who's daughter suffers with depression, she could fully understand her daughter's situation (though no reason, doesn't need to be) but just couldn't understand mine.

Same with doctors/nurses, some were very understanding, some just didn't have a clue.

@EmeraldRubyShark Thank you I think you have explained far better than me, what I was trying to say. And I totally agree everyone's experiences are different.
I also agree that so many people think about how they would feel if it happened to them, rather than listening to how that person actually feels.

Although what I do think people are awful at, especially online, is understanding that people can behave very differently to their usual characters. I recall myself and DH being under extreme stress and doing things in desperation that not only made us look totally thick but also rude- shouting at people who were just doing their jobs, asking for impossible things to happen because we could see no other option, etc. Awful behaviour. We weren’t ourselves at all. If I described some of it on MN we’d be totally roasted, no understanding whatsoever - and that’s a lack of emotional intelligence

@diditagain No you don't have to actually feel someone's depth of fear, pain or confusion to have some insight into how they are feeling. A relative of mine was murdered. I don't think to truly empathise with that you need to actually feel what I felt, and I think that would actually be impossible.

It is about being able to put yourself in their shoes and understand things from their point of view. That can include why they made that bad decision.

This is a more psychological form of empathy. You are nevertheless still sharing the cognitive workings of another.

@passthecherrycoke I agree.

Well, you can explain something as best as possible but of course no one can truly understand until they go through it.

I disagree @youjust. It has been explained up above why that is not the case.

I agree with youcan. You can never truly know how they might have felt until you've been through the same experience. You can try and empathise but you may struggle.

We all react differently to different life events. Even if you try and empathise when you've had the same experience you can still do it wrong or say something that upsets people.

Many years ago at university, during a discussion on empathy. He said nearly everyone mixes up empathy and sympathy. Most people claim to be empathic because it shows they have good emotional intelligence and they are a nice person, etc. However, you can only empathise if you have been through the same situation or are having the same struggles yourself and even then you cannot truly empathise as there will be differences in the situation/impact it has on the individual. He then said most people are actually sympathetic - which there is nothing wrong with and actually to some degree is kinder but seems to viewed as colder. He gave the example that his parents had died, he said many of us couldn't emphasise as our parents were alive but we could sympathise as we could imagine the pain we would feel, but it isn't the same as the pain we would feel when it actually happened. He said for some reason empathy has become a more superior quality to have when actually it could be condescending to person in the awful position, and he felt true sympathy was a much better quality to display - this is summary of a 2 hour discussion but hopefully you get the idea!

This was 20 years ago (times like this I realise I'm getting old!) and it has always stuck with me. It has definitely changed my language when discussing problems with friends or family.

No one can empathise with everything. In some cases it wouldn't even be a desirable skill. I wouldn't, for example, want to spend even a nanosecond inside the head of a predator, or an abuser, or serial killer or anyone who got their kicks from hurting vulnerable people and children. It's an exercise that would be of benefit to no one, if it were even possible in the first place. And in some cases, other people's angst makes others impatient: the reason being that we're all only human and have our own intolerances to certain things.

The real issue is those people who 'lack an empathy gene', as Susan Forward puts it, and who empathise with nothing and no one. I'm sure we have all met one at some time, and can probably agree, if we've had to negotiate family dramas etc at the hands of one, that there is something badly wrong with such people. They really do have the capacity to make others' lives miserable.

IMO there is a very wide spectrum, though, between empath and sociopath.

Great post @MarielVanArkleStinks

What is find is worse, is when sometimes people just make up wires stuff almost to protect themselves from being empathic. For example, my mum said she thought I was 'taking drugs' when I was actually in hospital with a health problem. Maybe it was easier for her, to do that and to blame me (as she has done in the past) and that is easier, than to feel the pain of my distress...who knows. In that case it would be easier for them to just not do anything. It is very painful, first not having that support form someone you would think would be empathic (a mother) as well. Sometimes, maybe, not having empathy and making up things instead could be like a psychological defines mechanism, in order to protect the person. I think it is bit like dissociation perhaps. Not sure.

I think if you have emotional intelligence, you can understand someone elses point of view. And you can listen to what they are actually saying. Call it what you like, but I think those qualities are rare