I'm officially emotionally retarded...

[Mole]

I think you have it reversed.

No, Jenocyde has is exactly right.

And this important because empathy is so uniquely helpful.

However sympathy comes naturally while empathy, like literacy, has to be learnt.

 

[Mole]

...empathy I identify with you, sympathy I commiserate with you.

Yes, this is elegant.

 

[Orangey]

No, Jenocyde has is exactly right.

And this important because empathy is so uniquely helpful.

However sympathy comes naturally while empathy, like literacy, has to be learnt.

Well you can assert that all you want, but every definition posted so far states that empathy is the "vicarious experience" of another's emotions. NOT an objective understanding of other's feelings without personally experiencing the feeling.

 

[MrME]

This argument has become ridiculous. "Empathy" feels the other person's feelings. "Sympathy" understands feelings. That's why people who feel other people's emotions are called empathic and not sympathetic.

Common Errors in English
empathy/sympathy

Quotes from the site:
If you think you feel just like another person, you are feeling empathy. If you just feel sorry for another person, you’re feeling sympathy.

What's the Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy?
What is the Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy?

Grammar Mishaps: Sympathy vs. Empathy
Grammar Mishaps: Sympathy vs. Empathy

Sympathy vs. Empathy
Sympathy versus Empathy

What is Empathy?
What is empathy?

And finally...

Wikipedia entry for Empathy:
Empathy is the capability to share your feelings and understand another's emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes," or in some way experience what the other person is feeling. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.

Wikipedia entry for Sympathy:
Sympathy is a social affinity in which one person stands with another person, closely understanding his or her feelings. The word derives from the Greek συμπάθεια (sympatheia)[1], from συν (syn) "together" + πάθος (pathos), in this case "suffering" (from πάσχω - pascho, "to be affected by, to suffer"). It also can mean being affected by feelings or emotions. Thus the essence of sympathy is that one has a strong concern for the other person. Sympathy exists when the feelings or emotions of one person are deeply understood and appreciated by another person.

 

[jenocyde]

Well you can assert that all you want, but every definition posted so far states that empathy is the "vicarious experience" of another's emotions. NOT an objective understanding of other's feelings without personally experiencing the feeling.

Be nice to Victor... from your own account:

Both empathy and sympathy are feelings concerning other people. Sympathy is literally 'feeling with' - compassion for or commiseration with another person. Empathy, by contrast, is literally 'feeling into' - the ability to project one's personality into another person and more fully understand that person. ... You feel empathy when you've "been there", and sympathy when you haven't.

As I've said to Halla, I don't feel what he's feeling now, but I've been there. Call it what you want.

 

[Mole]

"I feel your pain," is empathy. "I'm sorry for your loss," is sympathy.

Well, it's interesting.

Empathy means, I understand how you are feeling, and it may be sorrow or joy or pain or pleasure, but I don't necessarily feel it.

So this leaves open the possibility that you may understand what they are feeling and feel it yourself.

However this last possibility is not open to a therapist seeing many people in a day.

So empathy is necessary for a therapist to function as well as being uniquely helpful to the client.

But as I say, empathy is not natural - it needs to be learnt.

 

[jenocyde]

Wikipedia entry for Empathy:
Empathy is the capability to share your feelings and understand another's emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes," or in some way experience what the other person is feeling. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.

Wikipedia entry for Sympathy:
Sympathy is a social affinity in which one person stands with another person, closely understanding his or her feelings. The word derives from the Greek συμπάθεια (sympatheia)[1], from συν (syn) "together" + πάθος (pathos), in this case "suffering"(from πάσχω - pascho, "to be affected by, to suffer"). It also can mean being affected by feelings or emotions. Thus the essence of sympathy is that one has a strong concern for the other person. Sympathy exists when the feelings or emotions of one person are deeply understood and appreciated by another person.

I corrected your highlights.

I'm so done with this. Like I said, call it what you want.

 

[Orangey]

Be nice to Victor... from your own account:

Both empathy and sympathy are feelings concerning other people. Sympathy is literally 'feeling with' - compassion for or commiseration with another person. Empathy, by contrast, is literally 'feeling into' - the ability to project one's personality into another person and more fully understand that person. ... You feel empathy when you've "been there", and sympathy when you haven't.

As I've said to Halla, I don't feel what he's feeling now, but I've been there. Call it what you want.

Where in that passage does it say anything about not feeling what the other person is feeling when one is empathizing? You can very well understand what someone else is feeling and feel it at the same time.

 

[Mole]

Be nice to Victor...

And you know how much I like nice people, as you can see from my post below -

Oh, How I Love Nice Girls.


My mother always told me to keep myself nice.

And I have.

I even have, "Nice"*, biscuits with my tea.

I like being nice and I like doing what my mother tells me.

Fortunately most girls are also told to keep themselves nice.

So I immediately have rapport with nice girls.

We sit together tête-à-tête dipping our, "Nice", biscuits into our warm tea.

And the more we dip, the warmer we get.

We speak of our mothers and how much we love them and how much they love us.

Until it seems we are just as nice as one another.

"Would you care for another, "Nice", biscuit?", I ask.

"Only if you will put it to my lips", she says nicely.

Oh, how I love nice girls because before long she is putting a, "Nice", biscuit to my lips - and we give one another nice biscuits turn and turn about.

Until the world's made rosy and the world's made cosy by togetherness.


* Here, we have, "Nice", biscuits.
"Nice", is pronounced, "niece", as in the city of Nice in France.
However, "Nice", biscuits are really nice.

 

[jenocyde]

Where in that passage does it say anything about not feeling what the other person is feeling when one is empathizing? You can very well understand what someone else is feeling and feel it at the same time.

I know that I CAN very well understand and feel at the same time. It's just not a prerequisite for empathy. The passage say fully understand, not fully feel, right? And can you understand that sympathy is feeling with?

Good lord, you are relentless. I have an idea - take it up with the professors who taught me this in my writing courses, and my screenwriting courses, and my psychology courses - I can PM you their names and email if you want. I don't give a shit, really.

 

[Orangey]

I know that I CAN very well understand and feel at the same time. It's just not a prerequisite for empathy. The passage say fully understand, not fully feel, right? And can you understand that sympathy is feeling with?

Good lord, you are relentless. I have an idea - take it up with the professors who taught me this in my writing courses, and my screenwriting courses, and my psychology courses - I can PM you their names and email if you want. I don't give a shit, really.

Oh calm down. You do realize that whatever your professors may or may not have told you is completely irrelevant, right? I once had a calculus prof who told the whole class that there was a repeating pattern in Pi- doesn't mean that she knew what the hell she was talking about (which she obviously didn't). Let's get one thing straight: both sympathy and empathy are forms of feeling. This means that in both cases you feel something. Otherwise it is not a feeling at all, which would mean that whatever you're experiencing is neither empathy nor sympathy. Both are affective states. Empathy may involve the cognitive understanding of another's emotions, but there is also a feeling component.

If I understand correctly what you and Victor are trying to say, it is that empathy is simply having an intellectual understanding of the feelings of another person, without actually feeling them yourself? This doesn't even really make sense, because if empathy is only a cognitive understanding of feeling, then how can it be defined as an emotional state? If you want to appeal to authority, at least appeal to a good one. I would recommend consulting Simon Baron-Cohen on this one.

Here's a quote from "The Essential Difference."

"Imagine if you could recognize that Jane is in pain but this left you cold, or detached, or happy, or preoccupied. That would not be empathizing. Now imagine you not only see Jane's pain, but you also automatically feel concern, wince, and feel a desire to run across and help alleviate her pain. This is empathizing" (Baron-Cohen 2).

 

[alcea rosea]

Any other tactics that might work?

Ask some strong F to help you in recognizing your emotions and feelings.

I made another thread of sympathy and empathy because the whole thing made me wonder about the difference.

 

[jenocyde]

Thanks for straightening me out, kid. You are right and I am wrong. And thanks for dropping all that knowledge on me that Ivy league professors weren't smart enough to figure out. Also thanks for explaining to me what I "feel" and why it doesn't make sense for me to "feel" it. Thanks for your reading recommendation. I'm calm now. Thank you, once again. See ya.

 

[Orangey]

Thanks for straightening me out, kid. You are right and I am wrong. And thanks for dropping all that knowledge on me that Ivy league professors weren't smart enough to figure out. Also thanks for explaining to me what I "feel" and why it doesn't make sense for me to "feel" it. Thanks for your reading recommendation. I'm calm now. Thank you, once again. See ya.

Alrighty then . Again, you saying "Ivy league professors" is meaningless. It is nothing more than an underhanded rhetorical tactic to try and boost your ethos. But unless you provide some source of information that confirms your understanding of what your high and mighty Ivy league profs supposedly said, then I have no reason to be convinced that what you say is correct. I've provided sources to back up my assertions. You haven't. Do you really expect people to take what you say at face value simply because you say it (and invoke the authority of Ivy league profs whose actual words we'll never know, or who may not even actually exist for all I am aware)? I'm prepared to be proven wrong, but I need to see some convincing proof first, thanks.

 

[nightning]

I am not hesitant to try it, I merely do not understand its utility and am in a position where I must make some pretty big choices soon, and have been cited by a counselor I have been working with as emotionally under-developed in comparison to my capability to think. My gut reaction? In times of crisis, go with what you know. Don't try out new weapons in the middle of a war, test them in a less mission critical environment.

FINAL DECISION:
I am taking a formal time out from any and all stresses which preclude me to make a decision that I am not willing to make at this time. I will finish my analysis as I deem necessary and will include the emotional component of decision making to the best degree possible, assuming I have not done so already in some integrated manner, as noted by Jenocyde.

Although I think the "exercises" hokey, I will try them to see what happens. How can it hurt?

Very good! You deserve that double scoop ice cream cone with the sprinkles on top after all.

What's the point of identifying emotions that you never "use"? Well the fact is you do use them... or rather you express them... unconsciously. If you're unfamiliar with something, then you have no control over it. All the more likely for it to suddenly blow up on you. (*cough cough* depression anyone?)

The first step to control is awareness, hence the point of this exercise. I have to wonder why your therapist haven't explained this to you... Incompetence? (at BS-ing? )

 

[Halla74]

The first step to control is awareness, hence the point of this exercise. I have to wonder why your therapist haven't explained this to you... Incompetence? (at BS-ing? )

I am the king of BS! I don't need his help there!

 

[CzeCze]

Hey Halla! I just saw this thread now - you know, a lot of people regardless of what their MBTI type is have a hard time "talking about" their emotions. One of my close friends was given a similar excercise - and she had me do it for her!!! I thought she was joking but she was not joking and her therapist was not amused. And she is IXFJ!!

 

[Halla74]

Hey Halla! I just saw this thread now - you know, a lot of people regardless of what their MBTI type is have a hard time "talking about" their emotions.

Waddup CzeCze! I can actually talk about my emotions with great clarity, at the drop of a hat, but I can't make decisions based on them. I've gotten better at it though since I wrote this. I made two huge decisions that were 100% feelings based and they both turned out OK. YAY!

One of my close friends was given a similar excercise - and she had me do it for her!!! I thought she was joking but she was not joking and her therapist was not amused. And she is IXFJ!!

OMG...THAT - is really funny. I'd pay $100 to see the look on her therapist's face when he realized you had done her homework. HAH! You're a real sweetheart for helping her out like that, good on you.

I guess part of the big riddle in all this for me is that it's OK to use feelings in real time decision making but only if you are sure of them. If I am not sure of my feelings now, I take 5, go off somewhere, and sort that shit out. If I don't it creeps up on me and drops a can of whoop ass on my head. Then I'm all screwed up for a few days and make stupid decisions or go off and get drunk and lay out in the sun too long.

 

[thisGuy]

i think those questions are step one in a whole sequence of steps
-this is gonna get you aware of your own emotions.
-next, your counsellor will ask you to obsever others and relate their emotional upheavs to yours...actively try to develop empathy
-i dunno what would come next. by this step, you'd atleast be aware of what goes on around you and would probably score fairly high on a EQ test [dont get into the validity of those tests...i like them because they are a measure of your perception]

 

[CzeCze]

Waddup CzeCze! I can actually talk about my emotions with great clarity, at the drop of a hat, but I can't make decisions based on them. I've gotten better at it though since I wrote this. I made two huge decisions that were 100% feelings based and they both turned out OK. YAY!

Congrats!

And honestly...I don't even know what that means...

I can understand times (like when you are in danger) the concept of listening to your gut. Or when deciding when whether or not to marry someone (which feelings play a large part). Can you give an example of the kind of questions you've been trying to incorporate your feelings more into?

I probably have the opposite problem of getting confused and overwhelmed by weighing my feelings with all the other factors - but that's kinda Ne - it can take me a long time to come to a decision on anything.

OMG...THAT - is really funny. I'd pay $100 to see the look on her therapist's face when he realized you had done her homework. HAH! You're a real sweetheart for helping her out like that, good on you.

Ha, thanks! She said she still kept that homework somewhere...my handwriting is horrendous. The therapist gave her another assignment and told her sternly she has to do it herself.

I guess part of the big riddle in all this for me is that it's OK to use feelings in real time decision making but only if you are sure of them. If I am not sure of my feelings now, I take 5, go off somewhere, and sort that shit out. If I don't it creeps up on me and drops a can of whoop ass on my head. Then I'm all screwed up for a few days and make stupid decisions or go off and get drunk and lay out in the sun too long.

Actually, it sounds like your pretty aware at least of the problem and you've pinpointed the area or issue you need to work on.

You're a step ahead of a lot of other people!

I know some people, all they know is say, "People keep on getting pissed off at me!" [i.e. "my exes f*cking HATE me!" lol] but have no idea what is happening let alone how to fix it. So at least you know what you have to fix! It's just that...you gotta, you know...fix it.