Empathy, Sympathy & Compassion
While “empathy,” “sympathy,” and “compassion” are three words that many
use interchangeably, they are not synonymous with one another. Let’s take a
closer look at how to differentiate them.
While these words are close cousins, they are not synonymous with one
another. Sympathy means you can understand what the person is
feeling. Empathy means that you feel what a person is feeling. Compassion is
the willingness to relieve the suffering of another.
Let’s unpack this more to understand the difference between compassion,
sympathy, and empathy.
Sympathy
To feel sympathy, it means you are able to understand what the person is
feeling. With sympathy, one can understand or imagine why someone is
either going through a hard time or why someone might be feeling happy or
sad. For example, although you might not feel the same grief, you can
understand why someone might be grieving if their close friend passes away.
Empathy
Empathy is viscerally feeling what another feels. Thanks to
what researchers have deemed “mirror neurons,” empathy may arise
automatically when you witness someone in pain. For example, if you saw
me slam a car door on my fingers, you might feel pain in your fingers as
well. That feeling means your mirror neurons have kicked in.
You may not always automatically feel how another is feeling, and that’s
when you need to rely on your imagination. You have most likely heard the
phrase, “Put yourself in someone else’s shoes.” That’s the other route to
being an empathetic person.
For example, perhaps you saw me slam my fingers in a car door, but you
didn’t automatically feel that pain. Instead, you can empathize by imagining
what it might be like to have your fingers slammed in a door, and that may
allow you to feel my pain. Or, it can be as simple as noticing someone’s facial
expressions and then feeling those same emotions yourself.
By the way, empathy isn’t just for unpleasant feelings. You can feel empathy
when you see someone happy, too. Isn’t it great when someone walks in the
room smiling, and that makes you smile?
Empathy vs. Sympathy
It’s not easy to differentiate sympathy and empathy. The main difference
between sympathy and empathy is understanding a feeling versus actually
experiencing another’s feelings. For example, if someone’s father has passed
away, you may not be able to viscerally feel that person’s pain. However,
you can employ your cognitive skills and emotional intelligence to
understand that your friend is sad. It makes sense, then, to send a sympathy
card. You are not feeling that person’s pain, but you want them to know you
are aware of their suffering. Typically, people can sympathize much easier
than they can empathize.
Compassion
Compassion takes empathy and sympathy a step further. When you are
compassionate, you feel the pain of another (i.e., empathy) or you recognize
that the person is in pain (i.e., sympathy), and then you do your best to
alleviate the person’s suffering from that situation.
At its Latin roots, compassion means “to suffer with.” When you’re
compassionate, you’re not running away from suffering, you’re not feeling
overwhelmed by suffering, and you’re not pretending the suffering doesn’t
exist. When you are practicing compassion, you can stay present with
suffering. Showing compassion can help gain perspective or a new point of
view because it puts you in someone else's shoes and makes you put time and
thought into alleviating someone's suffering.
Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., is the Dalai Lama’s principal English translator and
author of the course Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT). Jinpa posits
that compassion is a four-step process:
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•
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Awareness of suffering.
Sympathetic concern related to being emotionally moved by suffering.
Wish to see the relief of that suffering.
Responsiveness or readiness to help relieve that suffering.
Because of the above four steps, participants of CCT first learn about
and practice mindfulness. This type of connection with the human mind
makes sense because you aren’t able to notice other people's suffering unless
you are in the present moment.
As a teacher of CCT, I often field questions about compassion. My students
ask if certain acts are considered compassionate, because they believe their
small acts aren’t “enough.” I ask them to consider how, oftentimes, the
smallest act of compassion can have the biggest impact.
For example, has anyone ever truly listened to you as you share a problem?
This person listened without trying to fix your problem, and this person
wasn’t relating it back to his/her own life or emotions. He/she listened
without judgment.
The simple act of listening with your full presence can be one of the most
compassionate acts you can offer. Unfortunately, compassionate listening has
become increasingly rare as technology and busy lives may pull our
attention away from each other.
Empathy vs Compassion
An important distinction between feeling empathy and compassion is how
they can affect your overall well-being. If you are frequently feeling the pain
of another, you may experience a great deal of burnout. This is a common
problem for caregivers and health care providers, and it’s been labeled
“empathy fatigue.”
Compassion, however, is a renewable resource. When you have the ability to
feel empathy for the other person but then extend a hand to alleviate
someone’s pain, you are less likely to burn out.
Research indicates that compassion and empathy employ different regions of
the brain and that compassion can combat empathetic distress.
Don’t take it from me, though. The Dalai Lama famously said in the
book The Art of Happiness, “If you want others to be happy, practice
compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
https://chopra.com/articles/whats-the-difference-betweenempathy-sympathy-and-compassion