Empathy is Not Sympathy There is an important distinction between empathy and sympathy. We offer our sympathy when we imagine how a situation or event was difficult or traumatic to another person, we may use phases like, ‘I am very sorry to hear that’ or ‘If there is anything I can do to help…’, we feel pity or sorry for the other person. This is how many people would react to the famine, there is nothing wrong with sympathy, and it can help to offer closure. Perhaps by sending a donation to a charity to help with the famine we can think, ‘I’ve done my bit’ and forget about it. To empathize is to feel how others feel, to see the world as they do. Empathy with the people in the example above would require, for many of us living in the West, a leap of imagination.
Posted on: Sat, 21 Jun 2014 20:00:00 +0000
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