PSYCHOLOGY CORNER
AMY L. CHAVES
Jan.
16, 2000
SYMPATHY
DESCRIPTION:
This is a form of relating where a person “enters” into and
shares with the feelings or interests of
another. This is grounded on the ability to be
sensitive and be affected by another’s emotions, experiences, particularly
sorrows and pains. The best example
is the experience of someone dying. You
can not exactly feel the pain or sorrow experienced by the next of kin but if
you are sensitive, you can sympathize and be with them in grief.
It is as though you feel their pain and you bear their sorrow.
DEFINITION:
The term sympathy comes from the Greek
word “sympatheia”
which means having common feelings.
It is the capacity of entering or sharing the feelings of another in the
spirit of compassion or commiseration. It
is grounded on the capacity to care and feel deeply for another person. In
counseling, the least that a counselor can do is to be able to sympathize with a
counselee. But to be an effective
counselor, one must be able to have empathy, which brings us to the next
exposition.
DISTINGUISHING
FEATURES:
Sympathy occurs almost always during bereavement or experiences of pain, such as
a painful loss of someone close or dear. When
there is an instance of loss, there is an ensuing pain.
This is the basis of sympathy. One
does not sympathize in the absence of pain.
EXPERIENCE:
I am a person who can care intensely and
sympathize deeply. Every time a person dies, I always sympathize with those who
are left behind. My feelings even
become more acute if the dead person is also someone I know or someone close.
I experienced these many times when a person I know dies.
I feel the tremendous loss, a feeling that I share with others who are
related or close to the person who left. It is the pain who brings us closer
together—we are huddled in our own pain.
When
Fr. Agathonico F. Montero, S.J., died, I felt the tremendous loss, even
until now. What I felt was at the
least, sympathy. But I felt as
though he also left me. I
lost a father, friend, and teacher. I
lost a confidante, one of the best counselors there ever was, at least for me.
He was not a Psychology major but he had such deep capacity for empathy.
So when he died, something inside of me died with him.
EMPATHY
DESCRIPTION:
Empathy is an essential element in every
close relationship. It enables the counselor or caregiver to gain insight into
the other person’s personality. It
is necessary when there is a need for confrontation with a potentially
painful truth. It is more than entering into the world of another person—it
is living that world, feeling what the other feels, thinking what the other
thinks. In
sympathy, you share the feelings of another person. In empathy, you feel those feelings—like agonizing with the person. It
is accompanying the other person. As
Carl Rogers says: “It is sensing the
client’s world as if it were your own without losing the as
if quality.”
DEFINITION:
It is a special mode of perceiving the
psychological state or experience of another person.
It is an “emotional
knowing” of another human being rather
than an intellectual understanding. In
short, empathy means to share and experience the feelings and maybe thoughts of
another person temporarily.
DISTINGUISHING
FEATURES: It
is listening from the outside yet also listening from the inside
as if I am that person or I am the patient. It is a temporary and partial
identification with another person. It
is feeling the various feelings of the other as though they were my own.
It is temporarily living with another person, in his own world without
making judgments.
EXPERIENCE:
Empathy is a gift that one can give to another person.
I can count with my fingers those persons in my life who was able to give
me empathy. One such person is my
best friend since high school. We
are still the best of friends at present even if she’s now living in the
States. She always knows what I feel, without my telling her. She is the best psychologist when it comes to knowing
non-verbal communications. I will
never be able to find a friend like her who is willing to empathize with me, not
just in some moments in my life but at any time when there is a need to do so.
As
a teacher-counselor, I am empathic except during checking and computing grades.
I always try to be objective and cool.
Other than that, inside the classroom and outside, I am capable of
feeling what my students feel even in the non-verbal way.
It is because of this ability that I can teach well.
When I know that they are bored, I crack jokes.
When I know that they want to be serious, I become serious.
I identify with them—while I am standing I am also with them, sitting.
http://amychaves.bizland.com/articles/sympathy.htm