Sympathy, Empathy And Compassion

Sympathy, Empathy And Compassion

By Jay Litvin

Pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion. Each is received at various times by one in distress. They are the responses engendered by our misfortunes from those we encounter. And each feels different when received. Each has a different effect on those who are suffering in the midst of psychic or physical crisis.

Of the four, compassion has a unique quality, a quality so different from the rest that it connotes a certain spiritual as well as emotional characteristic. Perhaps for this reason it is often cited in spiritual/religious texts as a virtue to be sought and developed.

The recipient of compassion feels its superiority immediately. Unlike pity, it has no condescension. Unlike empathy, it does not require a past or present similar experience on the part of the giver. And while sympathy is a wonderful virtue, it connotes less spontaneity and variety than compassion; one would not normally associate laughter or frivolity with sympathy, for example. And there is also a certain distance or separation inherent in sympathy, one sympathizes with the other. A very wonderful quality, still, sympathy stands at a different level than compassion.

While sympathy is a tender response to misfortune or difficulty, compassion is a way of life.

The dictionary offers the following root for compassion: Com (with) - pati (to suffer), to suffer with.

But there is another definition, one that does not limit compassion as a response to suffering, but rather to life itself, making it a quality that one would live with in every situation, with every person, rather than only with one who is in distress.

Com-passion: Com (with) - passion (strong feeling, enthusiasm); to be with another in strong feeling and with enthusiasm.

Compassion, then, does not require sadness, sorrow or even the desire to help, though it could include all these things. It simply means being fully present with someone no matter the circumstances of his or her life. Compassion suspends judgment and takes each circumstance equally — each as a moment of life to be lived in its fullness. It . All possible emotions and feelings and behaviors of which we are capable are inherent in every moment, in every circumstance.

And so, compassion comes with no preconceptions. It has no attitudes. It has no special face or tone of voice. It is not bound by rules of behavior, decorum, expectations, though it may be guided by all of these things.

Compassion is prepared to meet others wherever they are, recognizing that the circumstance or challenge they now face is as much a part of their life as any other part of their life. Compassion can laugh or cry, joke or commiserate, be curious and inquisitive, chatty or silent. Compassion is not afraid to be fully present, hopeful, or lighthearted. Compassion does not turn away. It is never afraid to see beauty or find humor or share a fractured heart.

Jay Litvin served as medical liaison for Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl program, and also founded and directed Chabad’s Terror Victims program in Israel.  Excerpted from here.

Sympathy and Empathy

Sympathy and empathy aren't just two different approaches to confronting the emotional challenges of others; they are diametrically opposite responses in many important ways. Sympathy places another's problems at a distance from us, places us in a position of superiority, and "drives separation", says the film's narrator, Dr. Brené Brown. Empathy, on the other hand, requires that one internalize the feelings of another. That shared experience drives interpersonal connection, she says. "What makes things better is connection." Take look at the video:

Empathy and Compassion

Matthieu Ricard shares his thoughts on the difference between empathy and compassion after teaming up with the neuroscientist Tania Singer to explore what happens with empathic distress, and its impact, particularly on those in caregiving roles.

Below is a particular passage on Empathy Fatigue.

Only Empathy Gets Fatigued, Not Compassion

When I engaged in meditation on altruistic love and compassion, Tania noted that the cerebral networks activated were very different. In particular, the network linked to negative emotions and distress was not activated during meditation on compassion, while certain cerebral areas traditionally associated with positive emotions, with the feeling of affiliation and maternal love, for instance, were.

'From this initial experiment was conceived the project to explore these differences in order to distinguish more clearly between empathic resonance with another’s pain and compassion experienced for that suffering. We also knew that empathic resonance with pain can lead, when it is repeated many times, to emotional exhaustion and distress. It affects people who emotionally collapse when the worry, stress, or pressure they have to face in their professional lives affect them so much that they become unable to continue their activities. Burnout affects people confronted daily with others’ sufferings, especially health care and social workers. In the United States, a study has shown that 60% of the medical profession suffers or has suffered from burnout, and that a third has been affected to the point of having to suspend their activities temporarily.

Over the course of discussions with Tania and her collaborators, we noted that compassion and altruistic love were associated with positive emotions. So we arrived at the idea that burnout was in fact a kind of “empathy fatigue” and not “compassion fatigue.” The latter, in fact, far from leading to distress and discouragement, reinforces our strength of mind, our inner balance, and our courageous, loving determination to help those who suffer. In essence, from our point of view, love and compassion do not get exhausted and do not make us weary or worn out, but on the contrary help us surmount fatigue and rectify it when it occurs.⁴

When a Buddhist meditator trains in compassion, she or he begins by reflecting on the sufferings that afflict living beings and on the causes of these sufferings. To do this, the meditator imagines these different forms of distress as realistically as possible, until they become unbearable. This empathic approach has the aim of engendering a profound aspiration to remedy these sufferings. But since this simple desire is not enough, one must cultivate the determination to put everything to work to relieve them. The meditator is led to reflect on the profound causes of suffering, such as ignorance, which distorts one’s perception of reality, or the mental poisons, which are hatred, attachment-desire, and jealousy, which constantly engender more suffering. The process then leads to an increased readiness and desire to act for the good of others.

This training in compassion goes hand in hand with training in altruistic love. To cultivate this love, the meditator begins by imagining someone close to him or her, toward whom he or she feels limitless kindness. The meditator then tries little by little to extend this same kindness to all beings, like a shining sun that illuminates without distinction everything in its path.

These three dimensions—love of the other, empathy (which is resonance with another’s suffering), and compassion—are naturally linked. When altruistic love encounters suffering it manifests as compassion. This transformation is triggered by empathy, which alerts us to the fact that the other is suffering. One may say that when altruistic love passes through the prism of empathy, it becomes compassion.

[Full article of the above excerpt is here. Some more useful perspectives here.]