Empathy vs sympathy, all the differences

Both coming from the Greek, in their etymological origin both empathy and sympathy share the root "pathos" which would refer to the emotional world of the person, and which has been translated as "passion, suffering, feelings and even disease". The main difference between the two lies in the prefix. "In" could be translated as "inside", while "syn" expresses the idea of ​​"putting in common, with".

• In our daily interactions we all have moments when, without knowing it, we are more or less empathic more or less nice, and we can all exercise both qualities in our daily communications with others.
• In a simple way, it could be said that empathic phrases in a conversation would be more related to a search for understanding the other and sympathetic to a desire to express what one feels without real interest in the other.
• Examples of nice phrases: “don't give it any more thought”, “it will be solved”; and empathic phrases: "I'm here for you", "I imagine how painful this must be" ...

Differences between empathy and sympathy

Examining the etymology of both words quickly we already realize a big difference: empathy It implies being able to examine the internal world of the other from within, that is, vibrate with him, try to capture what he has inside and try to understand it with my own mental and emotional tools. This, without a doubt, implies being able to abstract from one's own feeling or thinking to become his own, through empathic understanding, that which belongs to the other.

On the other hand, the word sympathy, makes more reference to the sharing of both individuals in an attempt to tune in emotionally without anyone having to abstract from what they think or feel. We can affirm that sympathy has more to do with the subjective expression of feelings and thoughts, while empathy seeks the objective understanding of the internal world of the other.

It is important to note that the empathy is a quality of the human relationship without which our mind would not have been able to structure itself healthily and learn to establish relationships with the world or with itself in a certain harmony and security, since in order for us to be able to make sense of our own internal world someone has had to do it before for us. The baby, in its still unstructured mental state and full of very primal anxieties, has needed a mother to recognize its internal states and respond to them, little by little the child has internalized this function of the mother and has learned to do this with herself. same. Therefore, there can be no healthy development of the personality if you have not experienced a relationship of empathy.

Let's put theory into practice

In our daily interactions we all have moments in which, without knowing it, we are more or less empathetic or more or less sympathetic and, of course, with exceptions related to the field of psychopathology, we all have the capacity to exercise both qualities in our lives. daily communications with others. Despite what has been said, we must bear in mind that if what we really want is for the other to feel close to us and thus be able to provide peace in their interaction with us, it is necessary that we become aware of the way in which we relate, and that implies the way we communicate.

Empathic communication vs sympathetic communication

Next, we are going to cite a series of examples of phrases that we use in our daily interactions with others in order to differentiate with practical examples which would be more related to a search for understanding the other and which would be related to a desire to express what that one feels without real interest in the other.

Examples of nice phrases

• "Think positive"
• "Do not give it more laps"
• "What you have to do is not think about it anymore"
• "You'll see how it can be solved"
• "The same happened to me and the truth is that ..."
• "Something worse happened to me"

As we can see, this type of communication could be translated as follows: “what you are telling me makes me uneasy as it may be complex or difficult to understand, so to handle the discomfort and the effort that thinking about it involves me I am going to tell you what I think or feel quickly and thus take the conversation to a more manageable terrain for me ”.

Unfortunately, these types of phrases do not produce in the other the feeling of being understood but, rather, they can make them feel that their experience is minimized. It is important to understand that due to the fact that we communicate with so many people throughout the day it is very difficult to maintain an attitude empathic With all of them, however, the objective of this article is to help us reflect on the type of communication that predominates in our relationships, since their quality may be determined by it.

Examples of empathic phrases

• "I'll be here if you need me"
• "This must be very painful."
• "I imagine you are suffering a lot"
• "And how are you dealing with it?"
• "It must be difficult to face all that"

As we can see, empathic communication is a trial that could be translated as follows: “what you have inside interests me, surely I cannot fully understand it, it is even possible that a part of me finds it difficult to approach your pain, but I have the genuine feeling of understanding you ”.

It should be emphasized that the connection between human beings cannot be manualized: the good mother allows her child to feel understood and comforted without using words, in the same way, in our interactions as adults, it is not by saying one or the other phrase that we will make the other feel understood if we do not really have a genuine interest in understanding it.

Enric Artés Specialist in Clinical Psychology Advance Medical Consultant Psychologist