What is the difference between sympathy and empathy?
Brene’ Brown says that compassion is a deep, spiritual decision and commitment to practice empathy and that empathy begins with “perspective taking” - being able to see the world as others see it. An example; my 8th grader arrived home the other day very upset because she dislikes having to share a locker at school. She is a bit of a packrat and all her important things are not fitting properly. I listened to 45-minutes of painful, dramatic complaining about this problem, complete with tears.
But what I was thinking right before she arrived home (and honestly, while she was actually talking a bit too…no expert here) was “How can I help my co-worker who is in pain and dying?” (RIP Maryalice) and “How we are going to find and afford another car (transmission blew) AND still manage to have a decent Christmas and continue to pay our mortgage?”
My daughter is talking about how she was so embarrassed when her math book fell out of her locker - because that’s where she is at…in middle school…and I’m thinking “Has my sister noticed like I have how bad my Dad’s memory is getting?” "What can our family do to ease the suffering of the refugees from war in our world?" Am I alone in finding it super difficult to listen empathetically to my kids? Their experience is so different than ours as adults, right? What I wanted to say to her is “locker problems are not on my radar right now - they don’t qualify as urgent” or something along the lines of “Grow up! Count your blessings! Buck up!” Not very empathetic I’m afraid….
Brene’ goes on to say that empathy is also wholly non-judgmental. Sounds like someone else we know, right? How many times does Jesus say “Do not judge” in the scriptures? Empathy only happens if we stay out of judgment. It’s about knowing ourselves, not being afraid to share our own imperfections and effectively communicating that incredibly healing message of “You’re not alone.”
Pema Chödrön, writes: “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we sit in the dark with others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” Absolutely beautiful.
How is this different than sympathy? Brown offers this image. Let’s say we have a friend who's fallen down into a hole (i.e. depression, addiction, shame from any number of bad choices) and we call down and ask “Are you OK?” And our friend responds, “No, I'm really struggling.”
And we offer, “Can I come be with you?” and we go down into the hole to be with our friend, but only if we know how to get back out! Namely we take our “listening-with- perspective-taking-and-no-judgment” skills; in short, neither of us gets out of the hole without empathy.
Sympathy on the other hand is walking up to the edge of the hole and saying “What’s happening friend?” and our friend responds “Something really bad happened” and we say “Oh, sorry to hear that, but there is no way I’m going down into that hole. I’ll feel bad for you up here where people don’t do the kind of stuff that gets them into holes like the one you are in.”
Sympathy or “you poor soul” kind of sentiments, actually distance us from one another. Empathy recognizes that our “imperfections are not inadequacies; but rather reminders that we're all in this together” and that God doesn’t love us despite our faults and failures but in and through them he connects us and builds God’s kingdom.
Send your "Crazy Catholic Questions" to Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org or read past columns at: http://crazycatholicquestions.blogspot.com.
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