Empathy

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How do you define it?

I was wondering if people define empathy differently or experience it differently?

Basically (not word for word but...)

I was reading another post that was talking about empathy and they mentioned that when a group of friends get excited when their team wins at football their positive emotions tend to feed off each other and they get excited as a group (although the individual stated that they did not connect with this (hope they don't mind my mentioning their post! If so I can use a different example, I don't mean to offend. If I do offend anyone here please do feel free to tell me as that is not my intention).

Personally I can identify with the person who wrote that as that does not happen to me either. If a group of ladies get excited and start jumping up and down I don't get excited and start jumping up and down with them. I just feel uncomfortable actually.


However I still consider myself as having empathy because if a person is upset I will feel upset for them as I don't like to see suffering. So I assume I am empathising with them.

What is your definition of empathy and how do you interpret it?

Are peoples personal definitions different?

Lacking empathy doesn't mean we lack emotions. The problems we aspies have is that we cannot TELL deep emotions just by looking into other people's faces. For instance, if two of my friends have had a row and are mad at each other, no matter how much they ignore each other or how cold they act when the other one's around, I won't notice.

But it they tell me they've had a row and they're mad about it (or if they feel sorry, or lonely) I will understand, even though I wasn't able to tell in the first place.

How do I define empathy?

Hmmm. I suppose a rough definition would be the ability to put myself in another person's place and to be able to imagine what they are thinking and feeling.

It took me a long time to learn to empathise. Oddly enough, it didn't happen for me until I took a postgraduate module in Soviet foreign policy and I had to study international relations and war studies from a Soviet perspective. It then started to fall into place for me.

Definitions seem to vary from sympathy including positive emotions to being able to feel what other people are feeling through magic, I'd recommend getting a dictionary, they normally only give a few definitions

I am wondering if I confuse sympathy for empathy but I wanted to hear other peoples experiences and definitions of it.