What is the Difference Between Empathy and Sympathy?
In a world filled with internet advice and quick solutions, the skills of empathetic listening are often underappreciated. This article explores the profound difference between being empathetic and sympathetic and highlights the importance of embracing someone’s emotional journey without rushing to fix it. You will also learn a set of techniques to practice building your own empathy skills and connect more deeply with others.
How are empathy and sympathy different?
Empathy describes sharing and deeply understanding another person’s feelings, experiencing their emotions as if they were your own. This requires connecting on an emotional level without judgment or bias. Empathy is more than identifying a person’s emotions and telling them, “Oh, that’s a bummer.” Empathy is feeling those emotions with that person. Empathy is not limited to comfortable emotions; it extends to uncomfortable ones as well. Being an empathetic listener means that we are willingly joining someone in moments of distress and choosing to remain there without trying to make that distress go away.
Sympathy involves acknowledging another’s emotions from an emotional distance. Being sympathetic is more disconnected and instead of the listener joining the speaker in their emotions, they try to help that person by offering advice, problem-solving, or attempting to find a silver lining. While often well-intended, a listener’s sympathetic responses like “well at least it’s not as bad as…,” or “maybe you could try…,” often come off as dismissive or chiding to the speaker. Sympathy creates a buffer between the speaker and listener, protecting the listener from experiencing the discomfort and complexity of the speaker’s emotional experience. This buffer prevents the listener from doing what the speaker needs, which is to see what they see and to feel what they feel.
Why is empathy so challenging?
Feeling someone’s emotions as your own can be challenging and uncomfortable. When others are upset, it becomes more difficult for us to remain calm. When you witness a person in an elevated emotional state, your brain’s limbic system activates the fight or flight response. This stress response makes you more vulnerable to take a defensive (i.e., fight) or avoidant (i.e., flight) position in response.
How the listener copes with this stress response can strongly influence cycles of conflict. For example, your partner communicates that they feel upset about how much of the household tasks they shoulder and in response, you become defensive and start blaming your partner for being critical of your existing efforts. You could alternatively take an avoidant position by minimizing the issue or attempting to change the topic of discussion. This cycle builds resentment and distancing in relationships. By identifying our role in these cycles, we can address the areas we need to strengthen to cultivate more empathy.
How can we build empathy skills?
Strengthening our empathetic listening skills is one of the first steps in supporting good communication and conflict resolution within our relationships. Described below are four skills that support an empathetic connection.
- Connect to the feelings. It can be challenging to sort through the information someone is giving us when they are communicating their distress. Instead of focusing on details like the timeline, the people involved, or the setting, focus on connecting to the speaker’s emotional experience. If you are unsure what they may be feeling, ask for more information about their experience. Make sure to ask for feedback when attempting to identify their emotions so that even when we mislabel someone’s emotions, the speaker and listener have the opportunity to clarify and expand on which emotions were present. This is just as empathetic as if we identified the listener’s emotions perfectly the first time. The speaker sees the effort of the listener to connect to their experience and they are able to arrive at that shared understanding together with the speaker’s guidance.
- Provide a judgment-free space. Being nonjudgmental means letting go of all preconceived assumptions about what someone feels or needs. This is crucial to the practice of empathy. Being nonjudgmental allows the listener to connect to what the speaker is saying without personal interference. This aspect of empathy can be particularly challenging if the listener takes what the speaker says personally. Personalization of another’s uncomfortable emotions triggers the stress response and moves the listener into a defensive or avoidant posture. This posture prompts the listener to blame or judge a person for their feelings instead of connecting with those feelings. To avoid this response, the listener needs to practice compassionate curiosity, which is the foundation of non-defensive listening. Remaining open and non-defensive allows the listener to remain emotionally connected to the speaker, even during difficult conversations.
- Get on their level. The aspect of empathy that takes the most bravery is the listener’s willingness to feel what the speaker is feeling. This can be pretty intimidating, especially when the speaker’s feelings are overwhelming or uncomfortable. The listener will have to connect to a vulnerable place within themself to empathize with the speaker’s feelings. When the listener connects to their own vulnerability, they are able to connect to the speaker’s.
- Validate their perspective and emotions. When the speaker has said what they needed to say, this is the listener’s opportunity to reflect and summarize what they heard. This recap involves communicating to the speaker that their perspective and emotions are natural and understandable. This validation is what really connects the speaker to the listener. Examples of validating statements include, “I can see why you feel…,” or “It makes sense that you wanted…” The listener is not offering advice or expressing their own feelings or perspective. They are simply joining the speaker in their experience.
Empathy is about seeing the world through someone else’s eyes and joining them in their emotions. It is not about problem-solving, judgment, or making bad feelings go away. Empathy is a skill that is built up throughout a lifetime and with every empathetic interaction, it becomes stronger. By embracing the empathy skills outlined above, we can build stronger, more authentic connections with others.
