Empathic or Sympathetic or both, which one are you?

MonoVCPHG

New member
Redpepper and I talk a lot. We also have different views on many things from relationships to social inadequacies and capitalism. It is our differences and constant learning that makes our love more destiny than logical. There is armour around us that we built over time which things can't penetrate.

After having several interesting discussions with Redpepper about our different approaches to friendships and emotional resolution to things that happen, I believe it has a lot to do with one major difference. I am more sympathetic and she is empathetic.

"Both sympathy and empathy involve "tuning in" to ("entering") the other person's inner world. After tuning in, the person using empathy temporarily becomes that person in a limited way ("identifies with"), for example, the grieving and loving son; this does not usually happen for the person using sympathy." http://www.empathy-and-listening-skills.info/#summary

This plays a role in how we connect with people in general and how we assist others. Although I have empathic tendencies they usually involve actually living in the negative experiences I see which makes me in turn negative in my own life. I have learned that being sympathetic is much more healthy for me.

I love her being an empath. This is just one of many reasons I find her fascinating as well as beautiful. I think she believes this causes a rift between us but it does not. It makes me appreciate her letting me share in her love even more.

So here's the question..do you feel more sympathetic or empathetic?
 
Good topic! Unfortunately, I'll have to respond to it at a later time -- as my partner and I are on out the door headed for breakfast. Yum! I'll think about what to say in response to the topic.
 
Good topic! Unfortunately, I'll have to respond to it at a later time -- as my partner and I are on out the door headed for breakfast. Yum! I'll think about what to say in response to the topic.

Have a great breakfast my friend! :D
 
For me it really depends on the person and situation. Most people tell me I'm empathetic. If I have feelings for someone, be they family ties, love or friendship, I am much more empathetic. To children I am empathetic most times because they just strike that nerve in me. With people I don't know well or don't have strong emotional ties to I find myself more sympathetic. I think it's because I know them less well and therefor can't "become" them for the moment. Also, if someone is in a situation I am opposed to and could never do myself (ex: my friend knowingly had unprotected sex but had an abortion during a stable period in her life as an adult with her long time bf) I cannot feel empathy but I can feel sympathy for the hurt they feel.
 
Neither, really. Most of the time I try to mind my own business and wish others would do the same.

LOL, I love it. I find your response alluring. Wow, what does that say about me?

I have always had difficulty in finding a clear separation between the definitions of these two words. The definition of sympathy = the ability to enter into, understand, or share somebody else's feelings....to think or feel alike. The definition of empathy = the ability to identify with and understand somebody else's feelings or difficulties.......to vicariously experience the feelings, thought and experience of another. I think the true definition for either is found in the individual, in how they are hard wired to interpret life. For me I am capable of both. I feel compelled to jump on the Myers-Briggs band wagon again. It depends on the innate personality that we were born with. I am an INFJ and have very little difficulty in sensing what is going on with another person, and interpreting what I sense on a feeling level. It translates to both an empathetic and sympathetic understanding. True, sometimes I wish I did not understand. I've had people share horrendous things with me, and true to my nature, I have felt it and wished I had not. I doubt that I have helped clarify anything other than my own confusion about the definition of the two words, and because of that do not see how the difference, whatever it may be, could be the source of a bone of contention. I think both are good.
Barry
 
I am an empath. Plain and simple. Always have been, always will be. I also happen to be a very strong empath, sometimes knowing what a person is truly feeling before they are ready to admit it to themselves...and when we discuss it they agree with me that that is really how they have been feeling (which makes this whole Elric thing that much harder).

The definition to me is really simple. Sympathy is when you can imagine how a person may feel, Empathy is when you KNOW how a person feels. A widow feels empathy for another widow. A friend who has never lost someone important feels sympathy for a friend who just lost a parent.
 
Sympathy is when you can imagine how a person may feel, Empathy is when you KNOW how a person feels. A widow feels empathy for another widow. A friend who has never lost someone important feels sympathy for a friend who just lost a parent.

Vandalin,

Perfect....that rings clear and true. Thanks!

Barry
 
I have a fair bit of the Researcher in my soul, so I'll have to poke around and think a bit before saying anything about the difference between empathy and sympathy -- and the relation of these to compassion, altruism, etc.

At least one significant philosopher, Evan Thompson, [http://individual.utoronto.ca/evant/] has argued that empathy is at the very root and core of human consciousness -- that only via empathy do we become conscious human beings to begin with! I think he's onto something important, there.

I was just thinking before beginning to write here that empathy grows, it expands, it evolves.... And via this development and maturation of empathy over time we discover, for example, that same-sex love is essentially like heterosexual love, and that people of differing so-called "races" also partake of a common human experience, and are essentially alike, etc.... So empathy allows us, over time, to include more and more of humanity, and even of other species, into our kind -- our kindred. Difference doesn't dissolve kindredness, it merely expands it! Most enemies and strangers are so very near to being friends!
 
Most enemies and strangers are so very near to being friends!

I am discovering this more and more as I expand my social environment and explore friendships with people I normally would write off because of their appearance. Yes I used to do that.

I am stepping out of suburban bliss, which has its benefits but also has its downfalls. If I understand your take on sympathy JRM, I have gotten to sympathise with many different people since meeting Redpepper. She thinks I'm not learning anything but I am. That doesn't mean I will abandon my core beliefs and not challenge others. Nor does it mean I will be friends with everyone. But it does mean that I am always aware that it is people I am talking to too and not just opinions without the same fundamental desires as myself....to be happy and care for people.
 
I am indeed an empath. My Myers Briggs is ENFP.

I have pushed myself to not be or at least to separate myself from my emotions and others. To take on my stuff and be an observer of others instead. This forum has been good practice of that for sure.

Right now my empathy lies with mono's ex wife. She recently found out about us and I feel everything she might be about her loss, her anger, her confusion and judgment and hatred. Last night I couldn't get beyond it for various reasons that I won't go into on here, but I cry often for her sake. I'm not sure why I feel it so fully and endlessly. I wish it would stop sometimes and I wish I could go over there and explain to her everything that will take her pain away.

I know that is not possible and a pie in the sky alternative. It is very possible that she feels none of those things and is infact more happy than she ever was before. Who knows. I hope one day I get to meet her and find out for myself.

If I were sympathetic I would simply think these things rather than feel them.
 
Last edited:
And via this development and maturation of empathy over time we discover, for example, that same-sex love is essentially like heterosexual love, and that people of differing so-called "races" also partake of a common human experience, and are essentially alike, etc.... So empathy allows us, over time, to include more and more of humanity, and even of other species, into our kind -- our kindred. Difference doesn't dissolve kindredness, it merely expands it! Most enemies and strangers are so very near to being friends!

I have been accused at times of sharing things that are too personal, and perhaps this is one of those times. "J", your description of the maturation process that we all go through, instantly brought back a memory that is forty years old. I served in the Army in the Republic of South Vietnam in 1969. During that time there was a practice of utilizing some of the captured North Vietnamese soldiers as Scouts for both the US forces and the South Vietnamese forces. My unit had two Scouts assigned for the purpose of identifying and interpreting cryptic symbols and signs left in the jungle by the NVA that we had previously not recognized nor understood. The Scout that worked with my team was a former North Vietnamese First Sergeant that had been wounded, captured and sent to the South for "re-indoctrination." At the end of his twelve months of "political" training he was sent to us. On one particular mission we encountered a heavily armed "Chinese" recon team and the shit hit the fan. When all was said and done a soldier from Alabama that was on my team was killed. During the lull my feelings caught up with me. Our Scout Ti was next to me and we caught each other eyes and both began to sob, embraced and held each other. It was a defining moment for me. It was a moment that determined the direction that I would head, in life, as a man. It was a moment that made me clearly understand that "we" all share a commonality that defines us as one global species. We cry, we bleed, we laugh and love, we long for people, places, things, and we live and die. The differences between all of us are superficial and miniscule. Ti was a man without a country. He gave up his wife and children when he agreed to serve the Republic of the South. He would never be able to return home. I think about him often and wonder if he died in combat after I left Vietnam in 1970. If he survived he was most certainly executed during the fall of the South in the mid Seventies. He was first and foremost human; an equal; a husband, a father, and a soldier. He forever captured a place in my heart. As you so clearly stated "differences do not dissolve kindredness.
Barry
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think I am a good balance of both.... sometimes I wish I could say I was more like YGirl. >sigh<
 
I have been accused at times of sharing things that are too personal, and perhaps this is one of those times. "J"

Not in the least! Thanks for sharing that story, Barry.

Telling the truth of our experience is one of the ways we all help liberate each other and ourselves, I think.
 
I'm a very strong empath, both emotional and physical. Sometimes I can literally feel other people's ailments, aches and pains. Although I think this thread is mainly dealing with emotional empathy.

I am an empath. Plain and simple. Always have been, always will be. I also happen to be a very strong empath, sometimes knowing what a person is truly feeling before they are ready to admit it to themselves...and when we discuss it they agree with me that that is really how they have been feeling (which makes this whole Elric thing that much harder).

I'm an empath much in the same way you are. I tend to pick up on people's subconscious emotions before picking up on their conscious ones, which often throws me into a role of making them aware of their subconscious emotions.
 
Fascinating! And that must also be very challenging!

If you're a linguist, as you say you are, then you're steeped in a scientific/rationalistic world view, most likely. I've been steeped in that, but have also had many experiences which shake the same world view, or suggest at least a need for further research or paradigm shifting....

I've had both "psychic" experiences of knowing facts about folks that could not be known by "ordinary" means and ... simply EXTREME empathic connection of the sort you spoke of -- as in feeling other people's somatic experience in my own body..., etc. ... We know that we're bioelectromagnetic creatures -- all of us animals ..., but how that works in relation to "psychic" and empathic connection seems to be little understood.... What do you think?

I think the psychic experiences you mention are simply an extension of the electromagnetic properties of the Universe. If every atom is connected to every other atom through atoms, then I don't see why it would be impossible for information to be transferred from one place to another. I'm connected to you through atoms, and your thoughts are made up of the energy in those atoms, so why can't that energy wave travel? The answer, in my opinion, is that it can.

I have had other empathetic experiences well. I empathized with a friend of mine during one of her manic episodes (she has bipolar disorder). She was hearing voices and I could hear the same voices. We had a detailed conversation about the voices that were going on in her head, commenting how their voices sound and what they're saying.

Even though I'm a linguist, I wouldn't say I'm steeped in the rationalistic/scientific view. The way I see it is that psychic abilities aren't mystical or supernatural, they are part of nature. They are just properties of the Universe like gravity, the Strong Force, and the 4 dimensions we know of in the physical world. I think that we are either limited in what we know or our perceptions create a frame that leads us to the a dualistic view -- having physical phenomena and then metaphysical phenomena. Rather than having the physical and the metaphysical, the "metaphysical" phenomena ARE physical phenomena that we either haven't come to understand yet, or that we understand within a frame created by our senses.

I am a strong believer in this because I have always been able to feel the presence of people in a room without seeing them or hearing them. I have felt sensations through other people, so the only conclusion I can come to is that I'm making use of some of the physical properties that are still denied by most people in the scientific world.

nim
 
I am More Empath then Sympathetic. Im a fairly emotional person and I tend to feel a person emotions quiet strongly. Those emotions tend to envelope me and tend to influence my own feelings. I often have strong feelings of things being unsettled/wrong or Off with those around me that I care for and love. And I have learnt to trust those feelings as they have not often been wrong.
 
I read this:

I am an INFJ and have very little difficulty in sensing what is going on with another person, and interpreting what I sense on a feeling level.

And giggled. I'm an ENFJ. :) I don't even know anyone else who knows about that but my dad!
 
I'm any emathy person. I feel like I'm living it when I talk with someone about their emotions, experiences, feelings. I occassionally have a "huh I can sympathize" moment-but that is VERY rare.
 
Back
Top