To empathize with a particular person, I need to have at least some knowledge of who he is and what he is doing or trying to do. Create a website or blog at WordPress.com, Pity vs. Sympathy means you can understand what the person is feeling. Bob Jones • December 30, 2016 Behaviors, Brene Brown, Feelings, Growing Up. There is a close relationship between empathy and compassion. Compassion vs Empathy. Empathy. It involves, first, seeing someone elseâs situation from his perspective, and, second, sharing his emotions, including, if any, his distress. Compassion vs Empathy: Compassion : Empathy: Definition: Sympathetic feeling and concern for a person who is suffering: An ability to understand and feel exactly what the other person is suffering: Feelings evoked: A feeling of pity, concern, and sympathy: A feeling of understanding: Actions Taken: Implies that the compassionate person will help Conversely, psychopaths with absolutely no sympathy for their victims can nonetheless make use of empathy to snare or torture them. Compassion gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another’s suffering. Before we talk about compassion, let's first talk about empathy. For example, when someone experiences the death of a loved one, you feel sympathy towards … And compassion is a … Indeed, sympathy is akin to compassion – as the OED points out, sympathy means ‘feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune’ (as in they had great sympathy for the flood victims). Let’s unpack this more to understand the difference between compassion, sympathy, and empathy. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window). This reveals our confusion about compassion… “Empathy is walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, sympathy is being sorry their feet hurt!” Continued on page 42 Practitioners and staff will both benefit by understanding the differences. Empathy, sympathy, and compassion are three words that many use interchangeably. Sympathy should also be distinguished from benevolence, which is a much more detached and impartial attitude. We often want to believe we’re empathetic, that we understand someone else’s struggles and pain and that this enables us to make connections with other human beings. Compassion Takes Sympathy And Empathy A Step Further Adam P. Natoli , PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Sam Houston State University In brief, sympathy suggests an understanding of another’s feelings or other emotional experience whereas compassion tends to take sympathy (and empathy) a step further. For me to share in someone elseâs perspective, I must do more than merely put myself into his position. Speaking from my own experience, what I’ve observed for my entire life is that people often feel pity or sympathy on a daily basis. Empathy vs. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Published: 11 May, 2019. And compassion is a broader sense of care for the world at large. In most cases it perceives its object as suffering, inferior and unable to help themselves. Sympathy To feel sympathy, it means you are able to understand what the person is feeling. • Pity can have slightly negative connotations, whereas sympathy is sharing of feelings. Compared to pity, sympathy implies a greater sense of shared … Change ). Sympathy. Pity is a feeling of discomfort at the distress of one or more sentient beings, and often has paternalistic or condescending overtones. As a verb compassion is (obsolete) to pity. However, I don’t find this to be completely true. Empathy vs. Compassion We often want to believe we’re empathetic, that we understand someone else’s struggles and pain and that this enables us to make connections with other human beings. The basis for both sympathy and empathy is compassion, a blending of understanding and acceptance of others that can be seen as being derived or enhanced by knowledge and wisdom.. Compassion recognizes the "me" in "you," the shared commonality of feelings between individuals. Sympathy vs. Sympathy and empathy sound very similar, but they have one key difference. 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