Empathy vs. Sympathy

“Please accept my deepest sympathies.” A common phrase so often used when someone dies. But what does it really mean? What do we mean when we offer someone Sympathy?

Have you ever been struggling and someone says to you “well, at least it could be worse'“? or “Someone else has it worse than you.”

These phrases can be said with good intentions but how do they impact the recipient? Brene Brown says empathy drives connection, while sympathy drives disconnection.

Let’s think about it… Let’s imagine work is stressful. Your manager keeps offloading tasks onto you, tasks WAY out of your job description and tasks that get you no recognition. You tell your friend about this after work, you tell them how you don’t feel supported, you feel stressed and have started to resent your manager because of this.

How would you like your friend to respond?

“Well, at least you have a job”

“At least your manager trusts you with the tasks”

“At least you’re off at the weekend.”

While these statements have truth in them. Yes, you have a job, yes your manager trusts you with the tasks and yes, you do have the weekend off BUT, do you feel supported by your friend? Do you feel heard, or understood?

Would it have been more helpful for them to say, “ This sounds stressful for you, I feel frustrated for you”

Do you see how the first response pushed the potentially uncomfortable emotions away, the friend rushed to ‘fix it.’ This was sympathy.

To feel empathy, we need to connect with a time we felt the emotion the other person is feeling. Empathy requires us to tap into a place of hurt or pain to connect with the emotions. This can be difficult if we aren’t familiar with or sure how to do this.

Sometimes, sympathy is appropriate. Sometimes, we don't want to connect with someone else in this way [maybe we don’t have the capacity or it feels inappropriate to the context] but often, within our more familiar relationships, we do. Often, our relationships need more empathy and less sympathy to strengthen and grow them.

Does this resonate with you? Would you like some support in exploring it?

I’d love to talk with you more about this. Click here.