Empathy & Sympathy: Which One Is Serving You Best?
Being an empath is all-the-rage these days and popular culture would have you believe that being empathetic is the most benevolent and beneficial thing a person can be. I could not disagree more!
Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, has its place in our lives but should not be a common element to every single relationship that we have in our day to day. I know, shocking! How dare I spout such blatant claims! Bear with me and I think you will agree.
What is Sympathy?
First off, let’s get to the bottom of sympathy. Sympathy is the act of having sincere concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult. Is it pity? Nope. Pity is pity. Sympathy is simply recognizing what someone is experiencing or going through. Do you have to have lived the exact experience of another person to have sympathy for them, heavens no! And thank goodness for that!
This is where sympathy and empathy diverge. Empathy is similar to sympathy and then goes further to imply that a person has sincere concern AND also has experienced the same thing and gone through the same situation, including had the same feelings through the experience as the other person. Yes, this is jarring to all you empaths out there, which is also why this blog was necessary to be written for you!
Let’s all keep in mind that each of us experiences life differently and through our own filters which we have developed through our own experiences. You can be sitting right next to someone, going through the same elements of something, and you will both come out with different experiences, unique to yourself. So to say, “I can completely empathize with so-and-so about last night” is not exactly true, in fact it is impossible to COMPLETELY empathize with anyone.
Woe be unto you empath!
Can empathy help you to unlock your compassion and aid those around you? It most certainly can! Sympathy can do the same and possibly in a healthier way!
Our society would have you believe that sympathy only gets you so far and that empathy is the more desired virtue. They are both appropriate in different situations and with different people. Empathy and being an empath these days is often framed as the only way that you can connect with people and the only way that you can relieve someone else’s suffering. This is unwholly untrue and a dangerous belief to espouse. If you cannot have appropriate compassion for someone without being empathetic, then something is off or out-of-balance inside of you.
Imagine that you are a parent of an adult child who is addicted to drugs. Do you have to understand every aspect of what they are going through to care enough to have compassion on them? I certainly would hope not. You do not need to know the anguish that they are going through when they can’t get a hit or feel the depths of depravity they are willing to reach in order to get more of an addictive substance. You can have sympathy, or sincere and genuine concern for them, and not get yourself so deep emotionally trying to empathize that you become useless and helpless to make rational decisions for yourself or them.
That brings me to compassion. Compassion in this situation is not giving a person what they want. Sometimes the most compassionate thing a parent can do for their addict child is to step away, sever ties (at least for a while), and refuse to enable behaviors. Damn that is hard to do, but could it be the best thing for that child? Yep! Compassion for someone else does not always equate action or giving.
In my profession I work with a lot of clients who identify as empaths and use that term to reason out why they are giving tons of energy and emotion to other people and relationships in their lives, usually to unhealthy levels. In many of these situations, my empaths are leaning into being empathetic to others in order to ignore huge issues and concerns in their own lives. In a sense, they have become completely negligent of their own needs with the excuse that their energy is needed in order to make everyone else’s lives better.
What happens when someone who has not met their own needs is constantly trying to meet the needs of others? Exactly what you would expect, their efforts are often fruitless, hollow, and met without appreciation by the other parties involved. This self-deprecation is simply self-serving in that it allows the “empath” to continue ignoring their own issues and stall out their own growth.
Many times the best thing we can do in our interpersonal relationships is to allow others to take ownership of their own problems and issues, after all they are ultimately the only people who can make a sustained change in their lives. This is where sympathy comes in. You can have sincere concern for others and yet allow them to own their problems.
Many people approach us with an armful of issues that they want us to help carry; imagine them as boxes full of junk. They say “Here! Help me carry this crap that is happening in my life!” If we take on those boxes and try to lighten their burden, nothing actually happens to alleviate their issues, we have simply bogged ourselves down with their crap. In these situations I recommend saying “Oh wow, yeah that is a box of crap for sure! What are you going to do with it?” and refuse to take on their problems. You have many options but accepting others’ issues and making them your own should not be one of them. You can observe without absorbing.
I recommend walking parallel with them if you are up for it. Sympathize by having genuine concern that they are in distress but stay in your lane and stay on your journey. Perhaps being parallel to them while they walk toward a dumpster is the best option. Maybe they need to get to that dumpster and then sort through their own crap or throw the box away entirely. Do you have to go through it with them, nope. Just walk as far as you feel is healthy and grant them their journey. You did not come into this world to collect everyone else’s garbage. If you are anything like me, you create enough of your own.
What is the dumpster? There are many dumpsters for us all. Sometimes a dumpster is professional help like a psychiatrist or therapist, other times the dumpster is the person that they are avoiding. A dumpster can even be a journal or meditation. Too many times what a person actually needs is to sit still with themselves and have a good heart-to-heart with the very person who is causing all of their problems, themselves.
It is super easy as humans to avoid having a heart-to-heart with ourselves by distracting ourselves with other people’s problems. This tendency can delay our growth for decades. Some people would rather make everyone in the world uncomfortable around them rather than sit with themselves uncomfortably and have an honest and healing conversation. Why is this? Because growth hurts! Facing our inner demons is not always a party, depending on what we have been shoving down.
Compassion
It all circles back to compassion. As mentioned above, sometimes the most compassionate thing to do is not the most pleasant thing. While it is great to exercise compassion on those around us, we also need to be compassionate with ourselves. This can mean firming up our boundaries with others. Sometimes having compassion with ourselves means looking inward and slitting the throats of certain hopes, dreams, expectations, disappointments, or issues that we have been refusing to accept or let go. Other times, it is simply giving ourselves enough space inside to voice our actual feelings and to listen to our bodies and brains.
Posture Massage can help you to recognize what stresses and burdens you have taken on in your body and brain. We can also help you to figure out how many of them are your own and how many of your stresses do not actually belong to you. Bring it up and try it out in your next session with Julie!
