Willard wrote:
babybird wrote:
On two seperate occassions this week, I have started crying at the sight of someone elses emotions.
No, that is
not Empathy. That is
SYMPATHY. The filmmaker and actors were telling you what emotions were occurring and you resonated with those emotions.
EMPATHY is being able to read another person's nonverbal signals, understand what they may be thinking or feeling without them telling you and
knowing how to appropriately respond.Yep. It's in the very definitions of the words. Taken from merriam-webster.com...
sympathy
: the feeling that you care about and are sorry about someone else's trouble, grief, misfortune, etc. : a sympathetic feeling
: a feeling of support for something
: a state in which different people share the same interests, opinions, goals, etc.
empathy
: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this
Whew. What a definition. There's probably simpler out there. I don't understand why there's so much fuss about sympathy and empathy, though. Empathy troubles don't mean we're bad people. There's a pretty big gap between someone with an autistic experience of empathy and someone who sets cats on fire.
20 Dec 2013, 5:40 pm
