[Monique]

Which one do you have.

i.e. if you read about a man that was tortured by Klaus Barbie, that he had hot needles shoved under his nails, that he was beaten to a pulp etc. Do you sympathize with the victim or do you empathy for him.

[::maroma::]

I would say that I would only have empathy for him if I had gone through the same or similar experience. So I guess I would sympathize.

[Spook E]

sympathy.

Sympathy is where you can say "Jeez that sucks" but have no actual experience to compare it with.

Empathy is where you can say "Sweet mother of jesus , that happened to me and it hurt like all buggery!"

Therefore, I can have no empathy for the chap as i have no life experiences that would allow me to form an emotion based on this event, if that makes sense?

[Nicko]

Indeed. I once stubbed my toe, so I might have a little empathy goin on.

[Doofy]

Neither. Can't be wallowing in sympathy if you're undertaking the task of kicking Klaus' ass.

[Salty]

In most cases I have both empathy and sympathy. In this case just sympathy. Even if I haven't gone through what a person has gone through, you've often been in similar enough situations that you can know the sorts of feelings they're having, and know how you would feel.
Actually I only realized recently how much I can't stand being in ministry with people who don't have empathy.

[BlueSky]

You come across someone who has fallen into a ditch and is injured. Empathy entails compassion and perhaps a desire to assist. Sympathy entails getting down into the ditch with the person and waiting for someone to come along and save both your sorry asses.

So to speak.

[ghporter]

I have both. Having too much empathy can be a bad thing is some lines of work; if you're a supervisor in a high-stakes industry, you can't let knowing how a worker feels impact how you get the job done. Having been there and done that-and bent some rules along the way-I found the need to change lines of work. Empathy is useful in some fields; I'm getting into healthcare as we speak.

Sympathy is something not enough people have. It means understanding why someone feels the way they do, but not necessarily HOW they feel. Having sympathy means you have to actually admit the other person exists, and not a lot of people get out from behind their own noses enough to do even a little of that. And I've been in a position to use this aspect too. As an instructor, I had to counsel students on a very wide variety of subjects, and sympathy for their current plights was essential to finding the motivation in them to correct their problem. That doesn't mean it was easy...