What is Empathy?

[RichardY]

What is Empathy?

[shirgall]

What is Empathy?

 

When someone else knows why you asked a question, and you asked a question knowing what someone else would think about it.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

I know this is completely abrupt as an answer - maybe check out the most popular takings on youtube from FDR on the topic to get a more comprehensive definition - but empathy is fundamentally a form of introspection and reflection on your own thoughts and feelings. Since thoughts and feelings happen in real time, they also are empirical and can be compared to the happenstance they occur: perhaps in a conversation; or at sight of a beautiful picture. Empathy is an awareness of the subtle and logical happenstance of one's own personal experience, and a recognition that there the only directly observable experience is your own. Those who imitate empathy will feign direct knowledge of your experience as if they can know it for certain, and that is a very crude form of empathy which sociopaths utilize to attempt to inhabit the minds of others as if they themselves are invisible.

[Drew.]

Empathy is two things:

 

First, Empathy is feeling what another person is feeling.

 

When a child is crying in pain, do you feel sad?

When someone is laughing and having the time of their lives, do you feel joy too?

 

Second, Empathy is when you have felt something similar to what another person is feeling, due to both of you experiencing similar circumstances.

 

When someone is having a hard time at school because they are bored, can you relate to them being bored in school? That's empathy.

When someone loses a loved one due to a death, do you know what it is like to lose someone you love? That is empathy.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

Empathy is two things:

 

First, Empathy is feeling what another person is feeling.

 

When a child is crying in pain, do you feel sad?

When someone is laughing and having the time of their lives, do you feel joy too?

 

Second, Empathy is when you have felt something similar to what another person is feeling, due to both of you experiencing similar circumstances.

 

When someone is having a hard time at school because they are bored, can you relate to them being bored in school? That's empathy.

When someone loses a loved one due to a death, do you know what it is like to lose someone you love? That is empathy.

 

When a child is crying I don't necessary see why it would be empathetic to be sad. It might be the wrong response to feel sad (in fact it probably would be). It might be better to feel anxious or angry so that you have a reason to stop whatever is causing the child to feel sad. I don't necessarily see either what a shared experience has to do with empathy. Evil people will share experiences with others all the time to leverage over them by providing sympathy when not sympathizing with might lead them to become angry. Bill Clinton had a infamous line "I feel your pain" - this is a common tactic of sociopaths to use sympathy as a leverage to gain power over someone. If someone believes you have their best interests at heart simply because you are willing to share an experience with them, that can be very dangerous to the extent people involved will sacrifice their own happiness and adopt the sadness or pain of others to gain leverage. It is unhealthy for both parties.

 

When I am attempting to be empathetic I am not trying to imitate what the other person is feeling, because I cannot know for sure what they are feeling. I can only rely on what they are willing to share with me and try to make sense of it myself. That is why I refer to empathy as a subjective experience of one's own thoughts and feelings. 

 

Sometimes this will lead to a different emotional reaction on my part, and if this happens, I don't think I am failing in empathy. I think if I discounted my own experience because it did not reflect theirs, this would be much less empathetic than the alternative, which is to imitate their reaction.

 

I think this is explained in the FDR show What Is Empathy on youtube. The idea that feeling what another person is feeling is the basis of empathy I think is wrong, because you cannot know for certain what another person is feeling. Even if you do know, it might not be empathetic to share that feeling. If someone is feeing despair and is on the brink of suicide, the worse thing I might do is join them in despairing.

 

I would actually say empathy is giving people what they deserve.

[Drew.]

When a child is crying I don't necessary see why it would be empathetic to be sad. It might be the wrong response to feel sad (in fact it probably would be). It might be better to feel anxious or angry so that you have a reason to stop whatever is causing the child to feel sad. I don't necessarily see either what a shared experience has to do with empathy. Evil people will share experiences with others all the time to leverage over them by providing sympathy when not sympathizing with might lead them to become angry. Bill Clinton had a infamous line "I feel your pain" - this is a common tactic of sociopaths to use sympathy as a leverage to gain power over someone. If someone believes you have their best interests at heart simply because you are willing to share an experience with them, that can be very dangerous to the extent people involved will sacrifice their own happiness and adopt the sadness or pain of others to gain leverage. It is unhealthy for both parties.

 

When I am attempting to be empathetic I am not trying to imitate what the other person is feeling, because I cannot know for sure what they are feeling. I can only rely on what they are willing to share with me and try to make sense of it myself. That is why I refer to empathy as a subjective experience of one's own thoughts and feelings. 

 

Sometimes this will lead to a different emotional reaction on my part, and if this happens, I don't think I am failing in empathy. I think if I discounted my own experience because it did not reflect theirs, this would be much less empathetic than the alternative, which is to imitate their reaction.

 

I think this is explained in the FDR show What Is Empathy on youtube. The idea that feeling what another person is feeling is the basis of empathy I think is wrong, because you cannot know for certain what another person is feeling. Even if you do know, it might not be empathetic to share that feeling. If someone is feeing despair and is on the brink of suicide, the worse thing I might do is join them in despairing.

 

I would actually say empathy is giving people what they deserve.

 

When you say wrong, do you mean wrong as in inappropriate or unsuited for the situation, or do you mean wrong as in immoral? Children have a need to have their feelings understood. They have a hard time providing that need for themselves, and mirroring their emotions is a good way to help them understand how they are feeling. To feel sad does not mean that you will not feel other emotions as well, such as the anger or anxiety that you had mentioned. There are several emotions that are a mixture of more than one base emotion (glad, sad, mad, and fear) such as despair, feeling bittersweet, and a justified anger.

 

I think that evil people have the ability to empathize with others, except they choose to use their empathy in a destructive way. I view empathy as a sixth sense. We can feel the emotional currents of situation, and is an aggregate of our sense of hearing, smell, and sight.

 

In the Clinton example, he might be manipulating people based on their need to be understood. If they were mirrored and empathize with in the first place as children, they would be able to provide this need for themselves, and would not be susceptible to such manipulative tactics from others.

 

Of course, imitating what another person is feeling is not empathizing with them. It seems to me like you think that not empathizing with someone is a bad thing. I see it as a neutral. Sometimes it is harmful to empathize with another person. Sometimes it is helpful. Empathy does not mean that you relinquish your own emotions. It means that you feel what they feel in addition to your own.

 

Empathy in the case of someone experiencing despair would be to sense the sadness that they feel. This would be a case where too much empathy is harmful. I think the right amount would be to empathize--to feel what they feel--enough so that you know that they are feeling a great deal of sorrow, and then set that aside so that you can experience your own emotions too.

[AnonymousCoward2]

Empathy is two things:

 

First, Empathy is feeling what another person is feeling.

 

When a child is crying in pain, do you feel sad?

When someone is laughing and having the time of their lives, do you feel joy too?

 

Second, Empathy is when you have felt something similar to what another person is feeling, due to both of you experiencing similar circumstances.

 

When someone is having a hard time at school because they are bored, can you relate to them being bored in school? That's empathy.

When someone loses a loved one due to a death, do you know what it is like to lose someone you love? That is empathy.

 

You are mixing it up here.

 

Empathy can clearly put as "The ability put oneself in another person's shoes". Its the cognitive ability to understand other person's feelings/thoughts, it does not necessarily require empirical foundation - i.e. you do not have to be fat to understand that fat people are unhappy about being fat. 

 

The second part is about sympathy or compassion, the ability to share someone else's feelings. I am not emphatic when can't help but laughing when someone else is laughing. Sympathy is a very direct emotional bound between to persons. 

[Matthew Ed Moran]

When you say wrong, do you mean wrong as in inappropriate or unsuited for the situation, or do you mean wrong as in immoral? Children have a need to have their feelings understood. They have a hard time providing that need for themselves, and mirroring their emotions is a good way to help them understand how they are feeling. To feel sad does not mean that you will not feel other emotions as well, such as the anger or anxiety that you had mentioned. There are several emotions that are a mixture of more than one base emotion (glad, sad, mad, and fear) such as despair, feeling bittersweet, and a justified anger.

 

I think that evil people have the ability to empathize with others, except they choose to use their empathy in a destructive way. I view empathy as a sixth sense. We can feel the emotional currents of situation, and is an aggregate of our sense of hearing, smell, and sight.

 

In the Clinton example, he might be manipulating people based on their need to be understood. If they were mirrored and empathize with in the first place as children, they would be able to provide this need for themselves, and would not be susceptible to such manipulative tactics from others.

 

Of course, imitating what another person is feeling is not empathizing with them. It seems to me like you think that not empathizing with someone is a bad thing. I see it as a neutral. Sometimes it is harmful to empathize with another person. Sometimes it is helpful. Empathy does not mean that you relinquish your own emotions. It means that you feel what they feel in addition to your own.

 

Empathy in the case of someone experiencing despair would be to sense the sadness that they feel. This would be a case where too much empathy is harmful. I think the right amount would be to empathize--to feel what they feel--enough so that you know that they are feeling a great deal of sorrow, and then set that aside so that you can experience your own emotions too.

 

I meant wrong as in inappropriate and potentially immoral. I maybe could have been more clear as to what I was envisioning. If a child is very sad, and the parent's response is also to be very sad, this seems to me to fit your definition of empathy, and yet from a common sense perspective it does not seem to be overly empathetic, because it would lead the child to feel helpless. The more empathetic response, it would seem to me, would be for the parent to override their feeling of sadness if they do feel overwhelmingly sad, and to instead be assertive to help the child manage and understand his or her own sadness. Expressing sympathy for the child might be an important part of that process, but what I am skeptical of and am trying to push back against is the idea that empathy is fundamentally about feeling the same way as someone else, because that can lead to some tricky counter examples that do not seem to involve empathy, which I will try and explain.

 

If empathy were feeling the same thing as someone else, then Stockholm syndrome would be an empathetic act. However, adopting the prejudices of another person against oneself does not seem to me empathetic from a common sense standpoint, because it relies on completely suppressing the inner self to conform to an abuser. I think if a definition of empathy logically leads one to put an abusive relationship in the category of an empathetic relationship, because the two parties are attempting to share the feelings of others instinctively out of fear, then this seems troubling to me at least.

 

An alternative to defining empathy as sharing a feeling, is to say empathy is the process by which one observes their own thoughts and emotional states and recognizes the difference between their experiences and others, without jumping to that sort of existential angst that abusive people act out on. Abusive people and sociopaths have difficulty recognizing boundaries and that others can have emotions that they perceive as negative towards themselves (negative towards the abusers), because it is a source of existential angst for them. To counter this, they tend to feign but perhaps genuinely experience what they perceive to be the emotions of others ("I feel your pain" because disagreeing with the source of your pain may put me in danger does not seem empathetic). Again, this involves a sharing of feelings between two parties, but I would not call it empathy because there is no observation of the self. It is simply a response to a threat and an identification with another person out of fear.

 

The last reason that I think the definition of empathy you provided first may not stand under scrutiny is because we cannot know what other people are feeling in the same way we can understand what we are feeling. To get anywhere near what someone else is feeling, first you must recognize the distance between yourself and that person, that you inhabit difference psychological structures which are complex and cannot be completely communicated at any given moment.

 

Only after recognizing these innate boundaries can you get an empathetic understanding of what someone might be feeling. However, it is a fundamentally different experience to empathize with someone within yourself, because first you must understand your own experience and recognize that it is directly observable in a way unlike the experience of someone else. To feel what someone else feels is fundamentally an unknowable proposition because there is no apples to apples comparison. There is your directly observable internal experience, and then there is the behavior of others that you perceive. There is a difference between observing a behavior of someone else, and observing your own internal state. People who lack empathy such as abusers have difficulty understanding this because the idea that others' behaviors cannot be completely understood is threatening to them. They are compelled to imitate the behaviors of others, and this may appear to be empathetic, but my argument is that it is imitation and adaptation, not empathy that is the product of self awareness.

 

I'm sure you understand a lot of this, but I wanted to push back against your definition because I would be personally troubled with the idea that someone who is trying to inhabit the thoughts and feelings of someone else is trying to be empathetic with them. Again, sorry to repeat myself but maybe it bears repeating, what is fundamental about empathy is not experiencing what someone else is experiencing, because that is impossible and unknowable. What is fundamental about empathy is understanding the boundaries between our own experiences and the experiences of others.

 

The definition of empathy I think makes the most sense is an observation of one's own thoughts and feelings without fight/flight response, self attack, self censor, and any other response which moves one away from the observations. I think empathy is generally a good thing, even if it can be managed around abusers, because it is a form of self management that is more sustainable than fight/flight. However, in the extreme circumstance of being captive such as children are in the homes of abusive parents, then empathy may be impossible because the experience of noticing the boundaries and the idea that at any moment you could be prey to the whims of your captors that comes at your expense would be overwhelming and put one in existential danger.

 

Feeling what another person is feeling is not what is fundamental to empathy, and may not be knowable, because as you said emotions can be complex combinations, and are linked to personal histories, and are biologically influenced, and also seem to vary significantly in degree. The internal state is such a complex phenomena that sharing the same feeling may be impossible, but the degree to which there is similarity that is the result of two people having a genuine empathetic response to one another (from their own self empathy), I think empathy can lead to connection in that way, which is of a different breed than those who share the experienes of fear and boundarieslessness connect without seeming to feel any genuine empathy for one another, because they cannot empathize with themselves.

 

I'm sorry if that way really long-winded.  I appreciate the opportunity to expand on what I think because I make more connections the more I am pressured to explain it. In that way, it is a process of empathy because I am focused on explaining my own thoughts and feelings in a way that is comprehensible to myself, and delineates the difference between how I am understanding my own experience and how others respond to my experience. In other words, I am gaining empathy from this conversation.

[Drew.]

You are mixing it up here.

 

Empathy can clearly put as "The ability put oneself in another person's shoes". Its the cognitive ability to understand other person's feelings/thoughts, it does not necessarily require empirical foundation - i.e. you do not have to be fat to understand that fat people are unhappy about being fat. 

 

The second part is about sympathy or compassion, the ability to share someone else's feelings. I am not emphatic when can't help but laughing when someone else is laughing. Sympathy is a very direct emotional bound between to persons. 

 

My understanding growing up was that sympathy was feeling sorrow for another person, but never having had any related experience. If you love your father and he dies, that is not something that I can relate to. I can have sympathy for you, I can feel sorrow for your experience, but I fundamentally cannot empathize because I do not know what it is like for a loved father to die. Based on my entire history, it seems like you are the one that are mixing these things up. But maybe we have been educated different in this regard, so neither of us are truly wrong in respect to our education on the matter.

 

I disagree, that empathy is very much an emotional experience. A cognitive exercise to induce empathy is to put oneself in the shoes of another. Empathy is when you feel (or have felt) the same (or similar) as me.

[Drew.]

I meant wrong as in inappropriate and potentially immoral. I maybe could have been more clear as to what I was envisioning. If a child is very sad, and the parent's response is also to be very sad, this seems to me to fit your definition of empathy, and yet from a common sense perspective it does not seem to be overly empathetic, because it would lead the child to feel helpless. The more empathetic response, it would seem to me, would be for the parent to override their feeling of sadness if they do feel overwhelmingly sad, and to instead be assertive to help the child manage and understand his or her own sadness. Expressing sympathy for the child might be an important part of that process, but what I am skeptical of and am trying to push back against is the idea that empathy is fundamentally about feeling the same way as someone else, because that can lead to some tricky counter examples that do not seem to involve empathy, which I will try and explain.

 

If empathy were feeling the same thing as someone else, then Stockholm syndrome would be an empathetic act. However, adopting the prejudices of another person against oneself does not seem to me empathetic from a common sense standpoint, because it relies on completely suppressing the inner self to conform to an abuser. I think if a definition of empathy logically leads one to put an abusive relationship in the category of an empathetic relationship, because the two parties are attempting to share the feelings of others instinctively out of fear, then this seems troubling to me at least.

 

An alternative to defining empathy as sharing a feeling, is to say empathy is the process by which one observes their own thoughts and emotional states and recognizes the difference between their experiences and others, without jumping to that sort of existential angst that abusive people act out on. Abusive people and sociopaths have difficulty recognizing boundaries and that others can have emotions that they perceive as negative towards themselves (negative towards the abusers), because it is a source of existential angst for them. To counter this, they tend to feign but perhaps genuinely experience what they perceive to be the emotions of others ("I feel your pain" because disagreeing with the source of your pain may put me in danger does not seem empathetic). Again, this involves a sharing of feelings between two parties, but I would not call it empathy because there is no observation of the self. It is simply a response to a threat and an identification with another person out of fear.

 

The last reason that I think the definition of empathy you provided first may not stand under scrutiny is because we cannot know what other people are feeling in the same way we can understand what we are feeling. To get anywhere near what someone else is feeling, first you must recognize the distance between yourself and that person, that you inhabit difference psychological structures which are complex and cannot be completely communicated at any given moment.

 

Only after recognizing these innate boundaries can you get an empathetic understanding of what someone might be feeling. However, it is a fundamentally different experience to empathize with someone within yourself, because first you must understand your own experience and recognize that it is directly observable in a way unlike the experience of someone else. To feel what someone else feels is fundamentally an unknowable proposition because there is no apples to apples comparison. There is your directly observable internal experience, and then there is the behavior of others that you perceive. There is a difference between observing a behavior of someone else, and observing your own internal state. People who lack empathy such as abusers have difficulty understanding this because the idea that others' behaviors cannot be completely understood is threatening to them. They are compelled to imitate the behaviors of others, and this may appear to be empathetic, but my argument is that it is imitation and adaptation, not empathy that is the product of self awareness.

 

I'm sure you understand a lot of this, but I wanted to push back against your definition because I would be personally troubled with the idea that someone who is trying to inhabit the thoughts and feelings of someone else is trying to be empathetic with them. Again, sorry to repeat myself but maybe it bears repeating, what is fundamental about empathy is not experiencing what someone else is experiencing, because that is impossible and unknowable. What is fundamental about empathy is understanding the boundaries between our own experiences and the experiences of others.

 

The definition of empathy I think makes the most sense is an observation of one's own thoughts and feelings without fight/flight response, self attack, self censor, and any other response which moves one away from the observations. I think empathy is generally a good thing, even if it can be managed around abusers, because it is a form of self management that is more sustainable than fight/flight. However, in the extreme circumstance of being captive such as children are in the homes of abusive parents, then empathy may be impossible because the experience of noticing the boundaries and the idea that at any moment you could be prey to the whims of your captors that comes at your expense would be overwhelming and put one in existential danger.

 

Feeling what another person is feeling is not what is fundamental to empathy, and may not be knowable, because as you said emotions can be complex combinations, and are linked to personal histories, and are biologically influenced, and also seem to vary significantly in degree. The internal state is such a complex phenomena that sharing the same feeling may be impossible, but the degree to which there is similarity that is the result of two people having a genuine empathetic response to one another (from their own self empathy), I think empathy can lead to connection in that way, which is of a different breed than those who share the experienes of fear and boundarieslessness connect without seeming to feel any genuine empathy for one another, because they cannot empathize with themselves.

 

I'm sorry if that way really long-winded.  I appreciate the opportunity to expand on what I think because I make more connections the more I am pressured to explain it. In that way, it is a process of empathy because I am focused on explaining my own thoughts and feelings in a way that is comprehensible to myself, and delineates the difference between how I am understanding my own experience and how others respond to my experience. In other words, I am gaining empathy from this conversation.

 

I'll try to address things paragraph by paragraph. I may skip a few.

 

How would it be immoral? There is no initiation of force involved. Your argument involves a strawman. In the despair portion of my previous response, I mentioned how an appropriate level needs to be struck. Of course, too much empathy is a harmful thing in a situation like this, much like how a lot of water (so much that it goes into one's lungs or causes water toxicity) or too much heat (heat stroke, burns) can be a problem as well. Mirroring is vital for children to understand and comprehend their own emotions. If infants are not mirrored, they will not understand their feelings growing up.

 

Stockholm syndrome being an empathic act is an unpleasant conclusion, but according to the premise that I offered, it would fit. If there are no such things as ghosts because we cannot have consciousness without matter, then that really puts into question the human spirit and god. Stockholm syndrome is and always has been, in my mind, when a person begins to identify with and empathize with their captor.

 

I am not sure that I follow your new definition. I will want an example to understand it if this is something that you still hold. I disagree that abusive people and sociopaths have troubles recognize boundaries. I say this because whenever I have interacted with them, they know exactly where to strike. If they didn't have some sense of what I was feeling, if they didn't have some degree of empathy, their attacks would be blundering and random. They would not be able to inflict harm as well as they do if they did not have this capacity.

 

Empathy doesn't require perfect understanding. The only way to perfectly understand another person is to... you can't! Because chances are that the person doesn't fully understand themselves, even. To have a better understanding of another person's feelings is to empathize with them more. I agree that empathy requires two separate entities (you could also empathize with a younger version of yourself, as there is that separation between who you are now and who you were, and they are likely, effectively two different people). It seems that you are saying that we really cannot know what other people are thinking and feeling. I think that is so silly. If someone is smiling and it is genuine, it is some degree of glad. If someone is using curse words, they are probably feeling angry. There are plenty of times when I meet with someone for therapy for the first time. In our first moment of interaction, I feel the nervousness. It is not my nervousness because I have done this plenty of times, and I am the one in the position of authority, as the therapist. I ask them, are they feeling nervous? Always, always they say yes. We can empathize with other people--to a degree--we can experience what other people are experiencing and feel what they feel because we are all human beings. We all have the same neurological structures and mirror neurons that allow us to do this with each other. It is evolutionarily a beneficial thing to be able to sense what another person is feeling and properly identify it. Is the person barring their teeth threatening and angry with you or are they smiling at your presence? It may be impossible to share the exact same feelings, but the flavor of the feelings is consistent among people. Anger is always anger, no matter what it looks like or how it is expressed.

 

Too much empathy is the blurring of the self-other boundaries. That is a bad (inappropriate, unfitting, and unsuited for the situation. It is definitely not immoral) thing. That is when you have the suicidal person drive another person to feeling terrible and suicidal as well.

 

I understand that you are personally troubled by what I have been sharing. But to use the phrase, "trying to inhabit" makes the act of empathy as I have suggested it a malicious action. It certainly can be used that way, as I described above with abusers. You say that it is impossible and unknowable to know what another person is feeling. Forgive the analysis, as it may be inappropriate and unsolicited, but you opened up the door when you began talking about your defenses to me. Just because you are not capable of doing it, doesn't  mean that others cannot. I think that you are projecting your own personal experience onto others. I also think that you are resisting my definition because it is not something that you have been successful at. You are substituting a different definition--one that you can do--because you want to be an empathic person. I can understand that and respect that. You want to be an empathic person because if you do not have empathy, that must mean that you are a sociopath and abuser. No, you're not. I think that your capacity to empathize--my definition--has been damaged. You are fundamentally not a bad person for lacking this ability or struggling at it. You likely struggle with it because you have been abused. To say that you are a bad person because you cannot do this would be attacking and abusing you for fundamentally being attacked and abused in the past. I have no interest in doing that. But, I am totally open to being wrong about this. I am just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks, but I got a good feeling about these noodles. If that's true, then banishing these thoughts--that you are a bad person if you cannot empathize--would be the next step, and unfortunately that is therapeutic and inappropriate to do over the forums, nor is it easy work that I offer for free.

 

Your definition of empathy seems either like detachment/dissociation OR having processed oneself to the point that one can do that. Both led to this, as dissociation mimics enlightenment. Perhaps you are trying to empathize with yourself here. What makes human beings so great is that we have the capacity to be self-reflective. You were definitely being self-reflective in this post, you are treating yourself as an external object to make better sense of your thoughts and feelings. If you can do it one external object, then you can do it with another. If you can do it with yourself, then you can do it with others.

[algernon]

I've had this argument with people before and it seems there is a bit of misunderstanding on the subject, especially regarding the difference between sympathy and empathy.

 

I agree with Drew on this one, and it appears a dictionary definition can clear up some of the confusion.

 

em·pa·thy

ˈempəTHē/

noun

noun: empathy

the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

 

sym·pa·thy

ˈsimpəTHē/

noun

noun: sympathy

1.

feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune.

 

Regarding feeling what your child feels, yes if they are sad you can feel sad, that does not mean you let it show or you let it effect your decisions, after all they have the immature brain and need the direction, but that doesn't mean you can't feel what they're feeling and still take care of them appropriately. Having two young children I regularly experience their emotions, but my brain is mature and can handle it.

 

 

I thought I'd add this link, I've read a few like this and it seems to be pretty consistent on differences between empathy / sympathy. - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201505/empathy-vs-sympathy

 

[Matthew Ed Moran]

I'll try to address things paragraph by paragraph. I may skip a few.

 

How would it be immoral? There is no initiation of force involved. Your argument involves a strawman. In the despair portion of my previous response, I mentioned how an appropriate level needs to be struck. Of course, too much empathy is a harmful thing in a situation like this, much like how a lot of water (so much that it goes into one's lungs or causes water toxicity) or too much heat (heat stroke, burns) can be a problem as well. Mirroring is vital for children to understand and comprehend their own emotions. If infants are not mirrored, they will not understand their feelings growing up.

 

Stockholm syndrome being an empathic act is an unpleasant conclusion, but according to the premise that I offered, it would fit. If there are no such things as ghosts because we cannot have consciousness without matter, then that really puts into question the human spirit and god. Stockholm syndrome is and always has been, in my mind, when a person begins to identify with and empathize with their captor.

 

I am not sure that I follow your new definition. I will want an example to understand it if this is something that you still hold. I disagree that abusive people and sociopaths have troubles recognize boundaries. I say this because whenever I have interacted with them, they know exactly where to strike. If they didn't have some sense of what I was feeling, if they didn't have some degree of empathy, their attacks would be blundering and random. They would not be able to inflict harm as well as they do if they did not have this capacity.

 

Empathy doesn't require perfect understanding. The only way to perfectly understand another person is to... you can't! Because chances are that the person doesn't fully understand themselves, even. To have a better understanding of another person's feelings is to empathize with them more. I agree that empathy requires two separate entities (you could also empathize with a younger version of yourself, as there is that separation between who you are now and who you were, and they are likely, effectively two different people). It seems that you are saying that we really cannot know what other people are thinking and feeling. I think that is so silly. If someone is smiling and it is genuine, it is some degree of glad. If someone is using curse words, they are probably feeling angry. There are plenty of times when I meet with someone for therapy for the first time. In our first moment of interaction, I feel the nervousness. It is not my nervousness because I have done this plenty of times, and I am the one in the position of authority, as the therapist. I ask them, are they feeling nervous? Always, always they say yes. We can empathize with other people--to a degree--we can experience what other people are experiencing and feel what they feel because we are all human beings. We all have the same neurological structures and mirror neurons that allow us to do this with each other. It is evolutionarily a beneficial thing to be able to sense what another person is feeling and properly identify it. Is the person barring their teeth threatening and angry with you or are they smiling at your presence? It may be impossible to share the exact same feelings, but the flavor of the feelings is consistent among people. Anger is always anger, no matter what it looks like or how it is expressed.

 

Too much empathy is the blurring of the self-other boundaries. That is a bad (inappropriate, unfitting, and unsuited for the situation. It is definitely not immoral) thing. That is when you have the suicidal person drive another person to feeling terrible and suicidal as well.

 

I understand that you are personally troubled by what I have been sharing. But to use the phrase, "trying to inhabit" makes the act of empathy as I have suggested it a malicious action. It certainly can be used that way, as I described above with abusers. You say that it is impossible and unknowable to know what another person is feeling. Forgive the analysis, as it may be inappropriate and unsolicited, but you opened up the door when you began talking about your defenses to me. Just because you are not capable of doing it, doesn't  mean that others cannot. I think that you are projecting your own personal experience onto others. I also think that you are resisting my definition because it is not something that you have been successful at. You are substituting a different definition--one that you can do--because you want to be an empathic person. I can understand that and respect that. You want to be an empathic person because if you do not have empathy, that must mean that you are a sociopath and abuser. No, you're not. I think that your capacity to empathize--my definition--has been damaged. You are fundamentally not a bad person for lacking this ability or struggling at it. You likely struggle with it because you have been abused. To say that you are a bad person because you cannot do this would be attacking and abusing you for fundamentally being attacked and abused in the past. I have no interest in doing that. But, I am totally open to being wrong about this. I am just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks, but I got a good feeling about these noodles. If that's true, then banishing these thoughts--that you are a bad person if you cannot empathize--would be the next step, and unfortunately that is therapeutic and inappropriate to do over the forums, nor is it easy work that I offer for free.

 

Your definition of empathy seems either like detachment/dissociation OR having processed oneself to the point that one can do that. Both led to this, as dissociation mimics enlightenment. Perhaps you are trying to empathize with yourself here. What makes human beings so great is that we have the capacity to be self-reflective. You were definitely being self-reflective in this post, you are treating yourself as an external object to make better sense of your thoughts and feelings. If you can do it one external object, then you can do it with another. If you can do it with yourself, then you can do it with others.

 

There is not a single argument you have presented that I disagree with.

 

I found your attaching of a feeling of nervousness to someone else fascinating.

 

If you feel the nervousness of someone else, then at any moment in time, we're likely all sharing the emotions of one another in some way.

 

Empathy is something I think I have a capacity for, but I'm likely so screwed up in terms of processing and identifying my emotions that I have trouble recognizing my own from those which belong to others.

 

I see two extremes of empathy now (none or total), neither of which seems conducive to what a healthy, willing and honest relationship would require. And I did this all without ANY of your help. GO ME!

[AnonymousCoward2]

My understanding growing up was that sympathy was feeling sorrow for another person, but never having had any related experience. If you love your father and he dies, that is not something that I can relate to. I can have sympathy for you, I can feel sorrow for your experience, but I fundamentally cannot empathize because I do not know what it is like for a loved father to die. Based on my entire history, it seems like you are the one that are mixing these things up. But maybe we have been educated different in this regard, so neither of us are truly wrong in respect to our education on the matter.

 

I disagree, that empathy is very much an emotional experience. A cognitive exercise to induce empathy is to put oneself in the shoes of another. Empathy is when you feel (or have felt) the same (or similar) as me.

 

Well mate, I agree its a matter of semantics its all about to what you define the different words for. However, empathy is quite clearly defined in the opening sentence of wikipedia:

 

Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

 

Likewise is sympathy:

 

 

 

Sympathy (from the Greek words syn "together" and pathos "feeling" which means "fellow-feeling") is the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy

 

If we sum it up:

 

Empathy: I can understand it feels shitty to be fat. 

Sympathy: I pity that you feel sorry not being physically attractive. 

 

By all means if you wish to use the terms in any other way, its your call. However, these are the general understandings and use of the two words. 

[Drew.]

Well mate, I agree its a matter of semantics its all about to what you define the different words for. However, empathy is quite clearly defined in the opening sentence of wikipedia:

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

 

Likewise is sympathy:

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy

 

If we sum it up:

 

Empathy: I can understand it feels shitty to be fat. 

Sympathy: I pity that you feel sorry not being physically attractive. 

 

By all means if you wish to use the terms in any other way, its your call. However, these are the general understandings and use of the two words. 

 

Yeah. That's what I defined it as. That is not what you defined it as in your original post. But, maybe we have misunderstood each other at some point. It seems though, we are in agreement with each other.