Having now walked through the highlights of the various—and, in my judgment—the most appropriate definitions and usages of these terms, as well as a brief excursion into the crucial importance of sincerity in their expression, we turn now to the effects that those expressions may have on those who receive them as well as those who offer them.

The potentially positive and negative effects of sympathy and empathy

We normally place both sympathy and empathy in the “good and helpful column,” and with good reason. When offered sincerely, as they usually are, and received gratefully, as is commonly the case, they are generally reassuring to the receiver and offer the giver a sense of satisfaction from having tendered something beneficial to a person who needed it. But while I don’t believe that it is as often the case, there are times when the effects of sympathy and empathy can be negative and even hurtful for either or both of the stakeholders. Now, from that simple and honest generalization, let’s dig a little deeper into each of these possibilities for both receivers and givers of sympathy and/or empathy.

First, consider the receivers, since both sympathy and empathy are essentially meaningless until they are offered to persons who are in need of them due to physical or emotional circumstances in their lives.  The effect on the receiver may, of course, be positive or negative, depending on several factors. Here are a few examples and their possible impacts.

We have communicated enough about sympathy and empathy that we don’t need to explore the nuances more deeply. As noted earlier, one simple but clear way to distinguish between them is that sympathy says “I feel for you,” while empathy declares “I feel with you.” So sympathy tends to involve feelings of pity and sorrow, while empathy usually comes from a shared experience, and you have an idea of what the person is going through. Either and both of those may be accepted gratefully and can be truly helpful to a person undergoing a wide range of personal needs although, obviously, empathy is the stronger of the two, more difficult to convey, and usually more deeply felt by the person receiving it.

As Carl Rogers points out, one meaning of empathic understanding to the recipient is that someone values him/her, cares, accepts the person that (s)he is—i.e. “this other individual trusts me, thinks I’m worthwhile. Perhaps I am worth something. Perhaps I could value myself. Perhaps I could care for myself.”  Rogers, again, puts it this way: “When someone really hears you, without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good!”

However, if the person offering empathy—or, in this case, more likely sympathy—does so in a way that pities the receiver, or if the receiver simply perceives as pity what is offered in good faith, the result can be damaging. As Neel Burton observes, If the person attempting to offer comfort projects a feeling of discomfort at the other person’s distress, or somehow comes across as paternalistic or condescending, then the “blown” attempt to offer sympathy may amount to little more than an acknowledgement of the person’s plight.

Similarly, the Grief Experts note that care needs to be taken that the person doesn’t feel that, whatever their experience has been, empathy has been offered in a way that seems to minimize it, to take it lightly. For example, empathy should never start with the words “At least…”—such as, “At least you had twenty good years with your husband”, “At least you have a good relationship with your daughter”, “At least you got to say goodbye,” At least your cancer has not spread.” This will almost certainly create a real disconnect.

Now, let’s move to a consideration of some of the possible positive and negative effects of sympathy and empathy on the “givers,” those who offer them to persons in need of such understanding and comfort.  Consider, first, the ways that givers of sympathy and empathy can be enriched and encouraged by doing so.

Among the many things that might be said, I want to focus on one. As we have already established a number of times, “Empathy begins with understanding life from another person’s perspective” or at least trying to do so. I resonate with that quotation from Sterling K. Brown, as well as with the rest of what he said: “Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms.” In a narrative which was first written over four decades ago, I spoke of our “experience of reality” as being interpreted through our individual “filters and funnels.” The point I was making then was similar to Brown’s. I put it this way:

I believe that that it is crucial to human beings that we make some “sense of things,” and that we seek our sense of meaning in a variety of ways that can be summarized in the twin metaphors of the “filter” and the “funnel.” That is, we possess (or are possessed by) certain basic assumptions about the world. We employ those assumptions—sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously—as filters through which we view the world—as categories or clues by which we interpret our experience. Or, to put it another way, we use them as funnels through which we “pour” our experience.

These assumptions we so employ are never our inventions. We don’t create them, we inherit them; we don’t compose them, we learn them. But we also appropriate them, so that the “filtered and funneled” world which results from our uses of them will have clear commonalities based on many of our culturally derived assumptions, but may also be highly individualized. Which brings me back to Brown’s point—when we try to empathize, we are trying to “see” that person’s experience through their “prisms,” their “filters and funnels.” And to the degree that we are able to do that, we not only offer that person the gift of empathy, but in Daniel Goleman’s words, “when we focus on others, our world expands. . . and we increase our capacity for connection, or compassionate action.” It may even be that “our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller.” That, and those, are among empathy’s gifts to the giver.

I’ll turn briefly now to a couple of ways that empathy can have negative effects on the giver. In scientific literature, having too much empathy is called hyper-empathy. To use a different term, according to a website post on “5 Dangers of Empathy,” people who cannot regulate their high levels of empathy in a healthy way are known as empaths, who often fall into “empathy traps” and become exploitable by the very people they are trying to help. I’m not going to dwell here, because, while this may be a high-risk probability for some “high touch” professionals, I doubt that it is for most people. Some professionals, however, in fields such as teaching, nursing, medicine, law, ministry, and other similar lines of work, may find that the requirements for high levels of empathy can cause what is known as “empathy fatigue.” Another common term is “burnout,” but labels aside, this experience can cause physical and emotional exhaustion and even levels of depression or anxiety that can cause one to dread going to work and to be less effective when they do.

With a great deal obviously—but, perhaps, gratefully—left unsaid, we will leave the positive and negative effects of sympathy and/or empathy on its receivers and the givers, and turn to two observations in a fourth, and gratefully brief, final post: first, some of their social benefits, and, finally, from three of the world’s religions, some endorsements of sympathy and empathy.

I hope you’ll join me for this fleeting finish.

A list of sources consulted/cited will be appended to the final post of this blog.