“Empathy fuels connection; sympathy drives disconnection.” —Brené Brown

“When Job’s three friends… heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.” —Job 2:11

As we defined it last week, empathy is a learned practice of drawing on our own emotions, thoughts, and experiences to relate to others. Empathy requires solid boundaries and self-awareness since the practice hinges on knowing where my emotions end and yours begin. Though I cannot literally feel someone else’s pain, I know how my pain makes me feel, and I can use this to relate. Of course, draw that boundary more rigid, and you wind up with a different type of response: sympathy. We often define empathy in opposition to sympathy. Both involve the Greek word pathos (feeling, experience, or suffering), but while sympathy means with-feeling, empathy means in-feeling. A sympathetic person can identify a feeling and provide support; an empathetic person can relate to a feeling and provide companionship.

Empathy is good for counseling.
Sympathy is good for casseroles.

Empathy sits with you in silence.
Sympathy has a word of encouragement.

We only have “sympathy cards,” not “empathy cards,”
because the empathetic person will be present with you,
while the sympathetic person takes a little more space.

Here’s the thing though:
they both have their place.

The key difference is “sympathy” implies more distance from a hurting person, while “empathy” involves getting deep into another person’s pain with them. Job’s friends in the biblical book of Job offer a great example. While they sit with Job in silence for several days and provide support during his mourning, they ultimately can’t relate to him. They eventually come at him with explanations and suggestions and —at their worst— judgments. Job’s friends are sympathetic at first, but they are not empathetic, and their sympathy soon breaks down. While they try to support Job, they are unable to tap into their own fears and pains and relate to what their beleaguered friend is feeling.

With the increasing emphasis on empathy in our culture, I think sympathy sometimes gets a bad rap. I’ve encountered situations so far outside my understanding or so uncomfortably close to my own experience that sympathy was all I could really muster. I needed a little distance, and sympathy can still provide relief and support even if it can’t provide empathy’s level of understanding.

Empathy says, “I can relate to your pain, and I’m here for you.”
Sympathy says, “I can’t get too close to your pain, but I want to support you however I can.”

Both still involve showing up for someone.